By Iranian Studies Unit
How is Iran Thinking of Sustaining This War?
The United States and Israel have declared war on Iran, having previously reassured themselves that Iranian missile capabilities would not cause significant losses in terms of destruction or hitting targets. However, the surprise is that Iran has engaged in an unexpected and dangerous war in terms of its level of risk. Instead of a repeat of last summer’s 12-day war—where success was measured by the number of Iranian missiles falling on Israeli cities and American military bases—Iran prepared thoroughly in the current conflict to transform its missile disadvantage against Israel into a position of superiority within the global economic network. It is leaning on its greatest destructive strength: its low-cost control over the Strait of Hormuz and the disruption of shipping chains through and near the Gulf, including oil and gas shipments. Within a few days, the American citizen found themselves paying over 16% more for every fuel refill, and it appears this percentage will rise to encompass all economic sectors as long as the price network of the economy remains interconnected.
So far, no calm has been achieved on the ground, and there are no signs that ships can continue sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 20 percent of the world’s oil passes—marking the worst disruption to energy supplies since the 1970s. Since the plan is now operational, an Iranian military official spoke, directing his words to the United States: “Prepare for the price of a barrel of oil to reach $200, because the price of oil depends on the regional security that you have destabilized.”
Consequently, Iran does not seem preoccupied with destroying American and Israeli military targets; it is shifting the center of gravity to the economy, energy, corridors, and investment confidence, linking the cost of war to the world’s livelihood. This is evident from the pattern of targeting itself: disrupting commercial navigation, striking civilian ships, targeting oil facilities in the Gulf, issuing threats to financial institutions and companies, and keeping the Strait of Hormuz in a state of strangulation. This ensures the impact of the war transcends the battlefield to reach the entire global market and, regionally, strikes at the economic prosperity of wealthy neighboring countries.
According to this hypothesis, Iran is not telling its adversaries this time: “I will defeat you militarily,” but rather: “I will make your war so exorbitant that it pressures your economy, your allies, and the markets upon which your influence lives.” When nearly one-fifth of the global oil and liquefied gas trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz, tampering with this artery is a blow to the global economic nerve. This explains why eyes quickly turned from the results of military strikes to oil prices, supply chains, maritime insurance, and strategic oil reserves.
The latest reports speak of targeting commercial ships near the Strait of Hormuz, and of attacks or attempted strikes on oil facilities, alongside Iranian threats directed at banks and financial institutions in the Gulf.
What supports this strategy, secondly, is the choice of the Gulf as a pressure arena. Gulf economies, unlike besieged or closed economies, are built on openness: energy, shipping, aviation, ports, finance, services, and cross-border investments. Therefore, an injury to the Gulf does not stay in the Gulf. When this space experiences tremors in its ports, navigation, insurance, or energy exports, the impact moves rapidly to Europe, Asia, and the United States. Precisely for this reason, recent analyses have linked the war to a threat against the “Gulf model as a globalized regional center,” because disruption in energy, ports, airspace, or networks strikes the very infrastructure of interconnectedness upon which this model is based.
Thirdly, the market itself supports this. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicted that Brent crude would remain above $95 over the next two months due to supply disruptions and raised its estimate for the 2026 price, with expectations of rising gasoline and diesel prices in the United States. In recent days, there has been talk of sharp price spikes, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) has resorted to drawing from strategic reserves, while G7 countries study alternative options for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The Western world and its allies are racing against time to return the battle to a purely military war and neutralize Iran’s tactic of “leaving the ring to attack the spectators in the stands!”
This strategy appears consistent with Iran’s traditional logic of asymmetric warfare. Iran knows it does not possess the aerial or technical superiority to engage in a long, classical confrontation with the United States and Israel based on the total and direct destruction of their military capabilities. Therefore, the field that allows it to compensate for this imbalance is the weaponization of geography: the Strait, energy, ships, ports, oil fields, the business environment, insurance fears, and raising the cost for the Western consumer. Consequently, studies and analyses have described this pattern as an extension of the doctrine of “deterrence through disruption” or hybrid warfare in the Gulf, where the goal is to make the continuation of the war costly and painful—politically and economically. This point is very important because the United States, regardless of its military might, remains highly sensitive to any shock in energy prices, inflation, market confidence, and the internal consumer mood. Some analyses framed it clearly: from Washington’s perspective, the cost of living remains more sensitive than many other files; thus, pressure on energy may turn into an American internal political problem no less important than the external military dimension.
Here, the “Gulf point” emerges with extreme clarity. If Iran is indeed intentionally striking regional economic prosperity, it is choosing the link that transmits pain most quickly to the world. The Gulf is a global financial, logistical, and investment hub. Therefore, targeting it achieves more than one result for Iran simultaneously: it pressures oil markets, raises shipping and insurance costs, confuses multinational corporations, sends a message that the region is no longer a stable environment for business, and embarrasses Washington before its allies who depend on it for security. This precisely explains the concern that Gulf countries are the ones who will pay the “direct price,” even though the war was ignited by the United States and Israel against Iran.
The international economic system possesses no quick or easy remedy for a shock of this nature. By betting on the economy, Iran is betting that the industrial and commercial world simply cannot bear these losses, nor can it absorb the shock without a significant political and economic cost. The longer the war lasts, the more the value of the Iranian economic weapon increases, because a strategy of economic exhaustion does not usually work in the early days alone, but becomes more effective as time goes on.
However, the success of this destructive, “Samsonian” strategy is not guaranteed, despite indicators suggesting it is working. President Donald Trump’s challenge may yield counterproductive results, and he himself may prolong the war without fear of the voting public in the upcoming autumn mid-term Congressional elections. Additionally, Tehran has lost a genuine regional cover that, until the moment of the recent war, sought to spare Iran and the region this conflict. Prolonging this Iranian strategy may shift the direction of the war in terms of participants, and Gulf states may find themselves forced to participate in responding to Iranian attacks. This would give the war a broader regional character, moving it seriously toward a world war where two continental arenas of engagement intersect: the stalled war in Ukraine and the expanding war in the Middle East.
