Dr. Salem AlKetbi is a UAE political analyst and former Federal National Council candidate
After nearly six months of war, Washington seems ready to move its fight with Iran into a new arena that could hurt more than bombs. Military damage can be fixed or softened over time. Long war drains something no state can survive without. That something is money.
The U.S. strategy is shifting toward cutting off the funds that keep both Iran’s government and its war machine running, and blocking the paths where money comes in and trade goes out.
This is why recent comments from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent matter so much. Bessent calls the measures against Iran “unprecedented" in the history of isolating a country economically. Washington builds on existing foundations. It already has broad maritime pressure and sanctions targeting oil, ships, financing and weapons procurement networks. Since President Donald Trump’s administration returned to office, U.S. actions have targeted more than 1,000 people, vessels and aircraft linked to Iran.
Adding new names to Treasury blacklists remains one consideration. The more pressing issue is whether Washington can tie these measures together so financial pressure becomes a noose that follows Iranian trade on the sea, in the air, through banks and possibly across land borders too.
The pressure is already visible in the oil sector. In May, Iranian crude exports dropped to about 260,000 barrels a day, according to Kepler data cited by Reuters. That compares with an average of about 1.67 million barrels a day in 2025, a drop of more than 1.4 million barrels daily. The lost oil volume carries major consequences. The same steep decline cuts deeply into foreign currency flows, just when Iran needs money to pay for the war, fix what has been destroyed and keep its economy working.
President Donald Trump has put the loss even higher. He says it could reach $500 million a day because of the blockade, though he also cited figures of 200 million or 300 million. That makes clear how much Washington is betting that economic pressure can do what bombing alone cannot.
Export numbers tell only part of the story. Sanctions also reduce the money Iran makes from whatever trade it still manages. Shipping, insurance and middleman costs go up. Buyers willing to take the risk demand bigger discounts. Collecting payment becomes harder.
This is especially true at sea, where sanctions have reached dozens of ships linked to the so-called shadow fleet. That is a network of tankers and go-betweens used to hide shipping routes and dodge restrictions. Sanctions also target the transport, insurance and service companies that help this network operate.
The squeeze covers more than just the sea. Air travel is another path that sanctions can make more expensive and difficult to use. The Treasury has warned foreign companies and governments not to provide services to sanctioned Iranian airlines. The restrictions cover everything from spare parts and maintenance to fuel, supplies, landing fees and banking services.
As sea and air routes tighten, land routes become more important to Iran. This is where Washington faces its hardest challenge. Iran has long borders and many crossing points with neighboring countries. Watching them all requires political and security cooperation from many nations, which is hard to guarantee fully. So land routes remain slower to seal off and less tight than maritime pressure. This gives Tehran room for maneuvering, even if that space grows more expensive over time.
When trade and financing paths narrow together, pressure moves quickly from ports, airports and banks into the core of Iran’s economy. The latest IMF estimates from its July 2026 update show Iran’s economy shrinking by about 5.4 percent this year. Average inflation is expected to hit 68.9 percent. Iranian figures put annual inflation at about 66 percent in July, with food prices jumping 128 percent. These numbers directly raise the cost of living and doing business, just as the government finds it harder to get the money it needs for the war, repairs and basic economic activity.
But Iran remains far from completely trapped or on the edge of collapse. For decades, Iran has built up wide experience in dealing with sanctions. It has created front companies, middlemen, alternative payment systems and many ways to hide the movement of ships and goods.
Iran’s ability to find workarounds forms just one piece of the picture. The calculation changes when those workarounds themselves become draining. The riskier it gets to move oil, the harder it becomes to collect payment. The more Iranian trade is pushed onto longer, more expensive routes, the more Tehran pays just to keep a reduced level of economic activity going.
Washington’s success, in the end, turns on something other than how many sanctions it imposes. It hinges on its ability to link them so that dodging sanctions becomes part of the punishment itself. If that happens, the damage will run deeper than a sharp drop in one month’s exports or an estimate of hundreds of millions lost daily. It will become a running cost piled onto an economy that is already shrinking and living with inflation nearing 70 percent.
So will Trump’s last weapon work? It will almost certainly drain Iran heavily. But whether it can squeeze Iran hard enough to change its political choices or its ability to keep fighting depends on two things. Those are how long the pressure lasts, and how well Washington can close off escape routes.
Tehran will likely keep looking for new paths, as it has for years. But each new route will cost more than the last. Every dollar lost to shipping, middlemen and discounts is a dollar that never reaches Iran’s economy or its war machine.
That is the strength of this new weapon.
Success comes without blocking every single path. It only needs to make keeping those paths open more expensive than Iran can afford over time.
