On August 24, Seyed Mohammad Marandi, the University of Tehran professor who has served for years as the Islamic Republic’s English-language voice toward Western media, wrote that the military conflict would quite possibly reignite in the days ahead. He added that any regime cooperating with Trump and Bessent to starve Iranian civilians would be dealt with brutally, warning that the global economy stood on the brink. Hours later he added five words that Washington and Jerusalem had aimed at Tehran for twenty years: all options are on the table.

One word in that first message does the most work. Global.

Trump’s blockade cut Iran’s crude exports first. Closing the Strait of Hormuz afterward cost Tehran nothing it had not already lost, and that pressure has now been applied for weeks without moving Washington.

Its crude exports have been throttled to a fraction of prewar volumes, the rial passed 2.03 million to the dollar on August 24 after trading near 1.53 million in early March, annual inflation runs near seventy percent, and the International Monetary Fund projects the economy shrinking by more than five percent this year. Fewer than twenty vessels crossed the Strait of Hormuz last weekend. The strait is effectively shut, and Tehran has already absorbed the cost of that closure.

The Persian Gulf coastline holds the rest: the refineries, stabilization towers, liquefaction trains and export terminals that supply a fifth of the world’s crude and roughly a fifth of its liquefied natural gas. The desalination plants producing drinking water for several Gulf states sit along the same shore.

Tehran has described this card openly. On March 11, Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesman for the Khatam al-Anbiya central military headquarters, told the world to prepare for oil at two hundred dollars a barrel. Later that month, as Trump threatened to strike Iranian power plants, Iranian officials specified that they would target energy, information technology, and desalination infrastructure across the region if their own facilities were struck.

Brent crude had already climbed above 113 dollars by late March. Nobody has........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)