America’s Last Hope: Try To Starve Iran
The new American strategy toward Iran aims to completely isolate the country. President Trump has already realized this war will not be won by means of missiles and bombs.
Operation Economic Outcast is the name of the plan to isolate Iran totally and cut the country off from all economic contact with foreign countries. It is supposed to be an economic war “on an unprecedented scale” — an “economic D-Day,” as Donald Trump puts it, referring to the day of the Allied landings in Normandy during World War II, which greatly contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany.
This is a brand-new idea for U.S. military success after six months of fighting, during which both the U.S. and Israel failed to achieve any of the goals of the campaign against Iran, except for one: the delay in Iran’s nuclear program.
The plan to overthrow the theocratic and oppressive dictatorship ended in complete failure — at least for now. At the beginning of the war, Trump called on Iranians to seize the moment and take power by overthrowing the hated regime. He hoped, just like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that American bombs and missiles would lead the public to a new revolt against the ayatollahs’ rule, as happened around the turn of the year.
Trump Is Testing the Limits of Iranian Power
There is no doubt that Washington and Jerusalem now hope the complete isolation of Iran and the sharp deterioration in the living conditions of its more than 90 million people will lead to street protests ending in the fall of the regime.
“The U.S. has maintained sanctions against Iran for 47 years. The war broke out, among other things, because opponents of Iran recognized that sanctions did not lead to the collapse of the system. And now, because the bombings also failed to produce the expected results, President Trump is returning to the first idea. As can be assumed by analyzing history — not only Iranian history — these sanctions do not have to lead to the expected changes,” Juliusz Gojło, former Polish ambassador to Tehran, told Rzeczpospolita.
Information coming out of Iran suggests things have never been this bad. And these are just the preliminary results of Operation Economic Outcast.
According to UK publication The Guardian, in August of this year vegetable oil, a staple of Iranian cooking, cost almost four times as much as a year earlier. The price of eggs is three times higher and that of red meat one and a half times.
In early September, the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar on the Iranian free market reached about 2.2 million rials (officially 1.6 million rials), a new record. Reuters reports that the average monthly salary is currently $125, or 275 million rials at market rates and 200 million at the official exchange rate. According to official Iranian data, it costs more than three times the average monthly wage to maintain a three-person household.
Social Unrest in Iran? Unlikely
These are consequences not only of the economic D-Day but also of the previously imposed blockade on exports of Iranian oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian oil shipments fell to about 260,000 barrels per day in August from about 1.7 million a year earlier, according to data from the oil analytics firm Kpler. Only a small part of the oil is transported by truck, train or smaller ships across the Caspian Sea. Tehran says it still has tens of millions of barrels stored in tankers outside the blockade zone that it can sell, but the new sanctions mean brokers are pulling back or demanding steep discounts.
In any case, the flow of funds to the state treasury has been severely limited. The authorities, therefore, lack the means to subsidize the prices of basic products. Still, the price of gasoline, rationed to 60 liters per month, has been kept relatively low at 15 rials per liter.
In Tehran, however, there are rumors that the government will be forced to raise prices. Such a move led in 2019 to an outbreak of social discontent that was drowned in blood, as was the last round of protests shortly before the U.S.-Israeli invasion of Iran.
“We do not have any reliable way to assess the resilience of the Iranian people. Living conditions have deteriorated, but we must remember that this is also due to the ongoing war. And this is an important factor in shaping public opinion. This does not automatically lead to an outbreak of social discontent, as happened in the past, because its causes change,” argues Ambassador Gojło.
Ukraine Instead of Iran: It’s Not Likely That American Diplomacy Will Succeed
Most experts do not expect the war to end in the near future. President Trump has just begun campaigning ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections in the belief that they will be a referendum on his record. Before hitting the campaign trail late last week, he told reporters that the war with Iran was no longer a war. “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing,” he said, referring to the recent attacks on targets in Iran. The most recent came last Tuesday in the village of Kuhestak, where five people were killed at a wedding and 67 were injured. Iran responded unsuccessfully with a series of missiles aimed at U.S. bases in the region. This, however, clearly shows that Tehran still has a stockpile of ballistic missiles.
“We are dealing with a stalemate that may persist for many months, if not longer. It is unlikely that the regime in Tehran will collapse as a result of a popular uprising due to deteriorating living conditions, which is nothing new for this nation. Nor should we forget that many Iranians hate the U.S. and Israel more than the ayatollah regime,” said Ilter Turan, a retired professor at Bilgi University in Istanbul.
Professor Dominique Moisi, co-founder of the French Institute of International Relations expressed a similar view in an interview with Rzeczpospolita. In his opinion, toughened sanctions will not bring Iran to its knees, and President Trump will not achieve the desired success before the November elections in the U.S. The attention of the American administration is therefore directed toward the Russian-Ukrainian war, Moisi says. However, even there, success for American diplomacy should not be expected — at least not one that could be presented to American voters as a substitute for the lack of progress on the Iranian front.
Operation Economic Outcast is the name of the plan to isolate Iran totally and cut the country off from all economic contact with foreign countries. It is supposed to be an economic war “on an unprecedented scale” — an “economic D-Day,” as Donald Trump puts it, referring to the day of the Allied landings in Normandy during World War II, which greatly contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany.
This is a brand-new idea for U.S. military success after six months of fighting, during which both the U.S. and Israel failed to achieve any of the goals of the campaign against Iran, except for one: the delay in Iran’s nuclear program.
The plan to overthrow the theocratic and oppressive dictatorship ended in complete failure — at least for now. At the beginning of the war, Trump called on Iranians to seize the moment and take power by overthrowing the hated regime. He hoped, just like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that American bombs and missiles would lead the public to a new revolt against the ayatollahs’ rule, as happened around the turn of the year.
Trump Is Testing the Limits of Iranian Power
There is no doubt that Washington and Jerusalem now hope the complete isolation of Iran and the sharp deterioration in the living conditions of its more than 90 million people will lead to street protests ending in the fall of the regime.
“The U.S. has maintained sanctions against Iran for 47 years. The war broke out, among other things, because opponents of Iran recognized that sanctions did not lead to the collapse of the system. And now, because the bombings also failed to produce the expected results, President Trump is returning to the first idea. As can be assumed by analyzing history — not only Iranian history — these sanctions do not have to lead to the expected changes,” Juliusz Gojło, former Polish ambassador to Tehran, told Rzeczpospolita.
Information coming out of Iran suggests things have never been this bad. And these are just the preliminary results of Operation Economic Outcast.
According to UK publication The Guardian, in August of this year vegetable oil, a staple of Iranian cooking, cost almost four times as much as a year earlier. The price of eggs is three times higher and that of red meat one and a half times.
In early September, the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar on the Iranian free market reached about 2.2 million rials (officially 1.6 million rials), a new record. Reuters reports that the average monthly salary is currently $125, or 275 million rials at market rates and 200 million at the official exchange rate. According to official Iranian data, it costs more than three times the average monthly wage to maintain a three-person household.
Social Unrest in Iran? Unlikely
These are consequences not only of the economic D-Day but also of the previously imposed blockade on exports of Iranian oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian oil shipments fell to about 260,000 barrels per day in August from about 1.7 million a year earlier, according to data from the oil analytics firm Kpler. Only a small part of the oil is transported by truck, train or smaller ships across the Caspian Sea. Tehran says it still has tens of millions of barrels stored in tankers outside the blockade zone that it can sell, but the new sanctions mean brokers are pulling back or demanding steep discounts.
In any case, the flow of funds to the state treasury has been severely limited. The authorities, therefore, lack the means to subsidize the prices of basic products. Still, the price of gasoline, rationed to 60 liters per month, has been kept relatively low at 15 rials per liter.
In Tehran, however, there are rumors that the government will be forced to raise prices. Such a move led in 2019 to an outbreak of social discontent that was drowned in blood, as was the last round of protests shortly before the U.S.-Israeli invasion of Iran.
“We do not have any reliable way to assess the resilience of the Iranian people. Living conditions have deteriorated, but we must remember that this is also due to the ongoing war. And this is an important factor in shaping public opinion. This does not automatically lead to an outbreak of social discontent, as happened in the past, because its causes change,” argues Ambassador Gojło.
Ukraine Instead of Iran: It’s Not Likely That American Diplomacy Will Succeed
Most experts do not expect the war to end in the near future. President Trump has just begun campaigning ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections in the belief that they will be a referendum on his record. Before hitting the campaign trail late last week, he told reporters that the war with Iran was no longer a war. “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing,” he said, referring to the recent attacks on targets in Iran. The most recent came last Tuesday in the village of Kuhestak, where five people were killed at a wedding and 67 were injured. Iran responded unsuccessfully with a series of missiles aimed at U.S. bases in the region. This, however, clearly shows that Tehran still has a stockpile of ballistic missiles.
“We are dealing with a stalemate that may persist for many months, if not longer. It is unlikely that the regime in Tehran will collapse as a result of a popular uprising due to deteriorating living conditions, which is nothing new for this nation. Nor should we forget that many Iranians hate the U.S. and Israel more than the ayatollah regime,” said Ilter Turan, a retired professor at Bilgi University in Istanbul.
Professor Dominique Moisi, co-founder of the French Institute of International Relations expressed a similar view in an interview with Rzeczpospolita. In his opinion, toughened sanctions will not bring Iran to its knees, and President Trump will not achieve the desired success before the November elections in the U.S. The attention of the American administration is therefore directed toward the Russian-Ukrainian war, Moisi says. However, even there, success for American diplomacy should not be expected — at least not one that could be presented to American voters as a substitute for the lack of progress on the Iranian front.
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