The conflict with Iran, for all its intricacy and global impacts, reduces to a single question: Who can tolerate the suffering the longest?
A rise in oil prices indicates what may be Iran’s most effective tool and the United States’ greatest vulnerability in sustaining the campaign: Undermining the global economy. A steep increase in gas prices has alarmed consumers and financial markets, while international travel and shipping have faced severe disruption.
U.S. President Donald Trump seems cognizant of the risk. As oil climbed to nearly $120 per barrel on Monday, the highest since 2022, he suggested the war would be “short-term.” This helped calm markets, and the price dropped to around $90 — even as Trump, almost simultaneously, pledged to continue the war and penalties against Iran.
On the opposing side, Iran must endure a near-constant series of American and Israeli airstrikes it cannot defend against. So far, the Islamic Republic has managed to keep its leadership and military unified and in control. The Iranian public, which previously rose up against its theocracy in nationwide protests in January, still burns with anger but has stayed home as they strive to survive the heavy bombardment. Security forces have been present daily on the streets to prevent anti-government demonstrations from forming.
Pressure is also mounting on U.S. allies. Gulf Arab states, though not yet combatants in the war, face seemingly endless and occasionally deadly Iranian attacks targeting oil fields, cities, and critical water infrastructure. Meanwhile, Israel, while claiming to have inflicted significant damage on Iran’s missile program and other military targets, continues to be targeted by increasingly advanced Iranian missiles that rain high explosives like buckshot over its cities. Frequent air-raid sirens have disrupted daily life, closed schools and workplaces, and created a tense atmosphere across the region.
No off-ramps seen in fighting
There is no immediate end to the war in view — nor to the rhetoric from both America and Iran, whose animosity stretches back decades to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis.
“We’ve already won in many respects, but we haven’t won enough,” Trump stated in a speech Monday in Doral, Florida. “We move forward, more resolved than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will eliminate this long-standing threat once and for all.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry official Kazem Gharibabadi offered a reciprocal comment from Tehran, boasting that the Islamic Republic had rejected ceasefire talks he said had been proposed by China, France, Russia, and others.
“At present, we hold the advantage,” Gharibabadi told Iranian state television late Monday night. “Just examine the state of the global economy and energy markets — it has been extremely painful for them.”
He claimed that it is Iran that “will decide when the war ends.”
Iranian strategy remains havoc
For years before Israel and the U.S. initiated the war on Feb. 28, Iran warned that if attacked, it would retaliate across the entire Middle East, targeting the oil infrastructure that made its Gulf Arab neighbors enormously wealthy. In contrast, Tehran’s economy has been crippled by international sanctions.
Iran has now backed its threat with salvos of missiles and drones. Qatar was compelled to halt its natural gas production, and Bahrain announced its oil operations could not meet contractual obligations. Other producers like Saudi Aramco are affected, disrupting a key energy source for Asia — particularly China, which has dispatched a top envoy to the region.
Shipping has largely ceased in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow entrance to the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all traded oil and natural gas passes, and up to 30% of global fertilizer exports. Iran did not need to mine the waterway — its attacks on several ships prompted companies to stop sending vessels through the strait.
Trump has proposed U.S. warships providing escorts to tankers, but this has not yet materialized in a way that would restart traffic.
Early Tuesday morning, he threatened that if Iran blocks oil passage through the strait, “they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far.”
“Additionally, we will target easily destroyable sites that will make it nearly impossible for Iran to ever be rebuilt as a Nation — Death, Fire, and Fury will descend upon them — But I hope, and pray, that this does not occur!” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Iran, however, only intensified its stance. The Revolutionary Guard warned on Tuesday that it will not allow “a single liter of oil” to exit the Persian Gulf.
What is victory?
For Iran’s theocratic leaders, victory means remaining in power after the campaign, regardless of the costs to the country and region.
Trump has been vague and inconsistent about his war objectives. At times, he appears to push for overthrowing Iran’s theocracy; at others, he seems willing to stop short, stating broadly that he wants to ensure Iran is no longer a threat to Israel, the region, and the U.S.
This could give him flexibility in declaring victory, especially if tangible harm begins to affect the U.S. economy.
But if the war ended immediately, both the U.S. and Israel would face major challenges.
One involves Iran’s leadership. After an Israeli airstrike killed 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the war’s start, Iranian clerics appointed his 56-year-old son Mojtaba to the position, elevating him to ayatollah rank.
Now Iran’s ultimate ruler, the younger Khamenei has long been seen by analysts as even more hard-line than his father, with close ties to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Israel has already labeled him a target in its campaign, while Trump has said he wants someone else in the role.
Additionally, Iran retains its stockpile of highly enriched uranium — a factor Israel and the U.S. have both cited as a reason for the war. Iran had been enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, a short technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%.
The U.S. bombed three Iranian nuclear sites in June during the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran, likely burying much of the stockpile under debris. These sites remain inaccessible to international inspectors to this day.
Mojtaba Khamenei could issue a religious decree, or fatwa, reversing his father’s earlier statements and ordering the uranium to be used for weapons. This is something both America and Israel, long considered the Mideast’s sole nuclear-armed state, aim to prevent.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — Jon Gambrell, news director for the Gulf and Iran for The Associated Press, has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran, and other locations across the Mideast and broader world since joining AP in 2006.