“Senior Trump administration officials have doubled down on economic pressure in the fight with Iran, making lower oil prices a top war aim and vowing financial sanctions that would force Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Nevertheless, Iran late Thursday attacked two United Arab Emirates ships in the strait, Emirati officials said, an indication Tehran is impervious to more economic sanctions and is willing to take the military initiative even when President Trump appears reluctant to return to a shooting war.
With President Trump relying more on the Navy's blockade of Iranian ports as financial pressure on Tehran, Iran's leaders are trying to show they won't relent and will keep the strait closed until energy prices force the U.S. to back off, analysts said.
"Tehran has drawn a simple lesson from every game of chicken with Washington: Hold your nerve long enough, and America swerves first," said Ali Vaez, International Crisis Group's deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa. "For a system that believes it is fighting for survival, existential threats tend to harden resolve, not impose a price ceiling on resistance."
Washington this week indicated it would slap new restrictions on Iran's economy in the coming days. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it would be a "one-two punch" along with the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports.
The efforts by both sides to inflict economic damage put them further from the off-ramp they appeared to reach with the deal in June. That agreement set out financial rewards for Tehran if it reopened the strait and entered serious negotiations on its nuclear program.
Vice President JD Vance spelled out the administration's priorities Thursday, telling Fox News that keeping energy prices down was "goal number one."
"And then obviously goal number two is to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon," Vance said. "I feel confident we're accomplishing both of those goals."
"Both goals are equally as important to the president," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Friday. "That's why the administration has done so much to keep the markets stable, but also ensuring Iran can never get a nuclear weapon is the president's priority with respect to the ongoing conflict, and it's something he's going to see through one way or another."
Trump, a Republican, began the war declaring that his goal was to force Iran into a deal that would prevent it from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.
The White House has become increasingly pessimistic in recent weeks about achieving a final nuclear settlement with Tehran. Instead, Trump has focused on squeezing Iran's battered economy so the regime does a deal to open the waterway that would let him declare victory in the war and move on, U.S. officials said.
For Iran, control over Hormuz enables it to make demands on the U.S. without having to concede anything over its core nuclear program.
Iranian officials believe they have time on their side and have expanded their demands for reopening Hormuz. Tehran has said the U.S. needs to end the war, lift its blockade and provide relief from sanctions and freezes on Iranian cash.
The central question of the conflict has now become: which side blinks first under economic pressure.
The war of words ramped up Friday. "After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States," Trump said during a speech in New York. A White House official later said Trump's remarks were made in jest.
In response, Iran's deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi said on X that "The Strait of Hormuz has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian; this strait will only be closed and opened under Iran's command."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday the Navy could sustain the blockade on Iran indefinitely. U.S. officials said the military is preparing to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the region with the USS George Washington, amid concerns over living conditions aboard the Lincoln.
Iran has used force to keep commercial vessels out of the strait. Analysts said Tehran's ability to escalate militarily makes it harder for Washington to wring out concessions with economic pressure alone.
The attack on ships affiliated with the U.A.E.'s Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. brought the total to six in August. The U.A.E., a major oil exporter, has pushed to get shipments quietly through Hormuz despite Iran's chokehold.
The waterway remains largely closed, with most ships unwilling to cross without a go-ahead from Iran. Those that do use the route administered by Tehran.
Ship-tracking data from Kpler says that just 13 vessels Thursday crossed a waterway that routinely handled more than 130 before the war. Nine of them took the route administered by Iran. Traffic this month has slowed from July, when an average of 26 vessels crossed the strait every day.
International oil prices have recently oscillated under $90 a barrel as the flows from the strait remain curtailed, but the region's producers have managed to find workarounds beyond the chokepoint to keep their crude moving. Still, the disruptions are running down global oil inventories.
"The latent tensions between the U.S. and Iran over the status of the waterway will keep the risk of another crisis -- and another closure -- relatively high through the rest of 2026," analysts at Eurasia Group consulting firm wrote in a note to clients.
Miad Maleki, a former senior Treasury Department figure now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Iran's oil exports have dropped from two million barrels a day before April to near zero and that Tehran has a shortfall of 29 million liters a day in gasoline supplies.
"The blockade can bring the regime to its knees if Washington makes clear that it will not be lifted on a timetable Tehran can wait out," he said.” [1]
There are Iranian swarms of precise drones and missiles, constantly increased by supplies from China. This could change the calculations too.
The combination of Iranian precision drone and missile swarms, bolstered by Chinese industrial and material support, significantly alters modern military calculations. This dynamic challenges traditional air defense economics, compresses decision-making timelines for regional and global powers, and strains interceptor stockpiles.
Strategic Impacts
• Cost Asymmetry: Inexpensive drones and short-range missiles force defenders to expend multi-million-dollar interceptors, creating an unsustainable economic imbalance.
• Saturated Defenses: Swarm tactics overwhelm radar tracking systems and missile defense batteries by attacking simultaneously from multiple vectors.
• Supply Chain Leverage: Industrial backing from China helps Iran sustain production despite heavy sanctions and combat losses.
• Deterrence Shift: Traditional deterrence models struggle because low-cost autonomous threats lower the threshold for offensive action without direct attribution.
If Iran gets desperate, Iran can take out all Iran’s neighbors with swarms of drones and missiles. Trump would get a big mess on his hands. The best way for him is to declare victory anyway and move on. If you see that you are digging a trap for yourself, just stop digging. Let the Israelis to do it.
1. War With Iran Hinges On Who Blinks First. Kantchev, Georgi; Norman, Laurence. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 15 Aug 2026: A1.
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