Trump’s shift toward relying on economic sanctions as the main tactic to force Iran’s surrender lacks credibility.
President Trump accepted Secretary of War Hegseth’s upbeat military assertions (‘U.S. military potency is awesome’) at face value, only to belatedly realize that America is depleted of interceptors in a conflict heavily dependent on air defense. ‘The restock mathematics is just as cold. Four years to refill the stocks (not four months), because components include rare earth materials that are controlled by China’.
Hegseth appears to have fallen out of favor, while Treasury Secretary Bessent’s influence is rising.
Reportedly, Bessent has repeatedly assured Trump that the oil shortage caused by the Hormuz Strait blockade is “temporary and manageable” (which is untrue), further claiming that energy-related inflation will subside as global tensions ease. He has staked his reputation on this belief. Trump seems convinced by the manipulation of oil markets and futures.
Nevertheless, Washington’s circulated figures about tankers passing through the Oman route are fabricated. Brett Erickson of Obsidian Risk Advisors writes:
“After speaking to several of my professional colleagues that I trust absolutely, there is zero evidence whatsoever to support that 8M barrels per day are transiting via the Omani Route, and zero evidence that 9Mbpd is exiting the Strait of Hormuz per day. Zero. Not “maybe”, not “potentially”. No evidence. And even more damning, [there is] evidence directly to the contrary”.
When asked, “Is their plan to just lie low until everything falls apart? What then?”, Erickson answers:
“From what I understand, they actually think some of this information is correct. They’re stupid, not disingenuous necessarily … which is worse”.
Trump’s turn to economic tactics as the principal means to coerce Iran into submission is not believable. Even if a stricter blockade worsened Iranian suffering, it is unlikely their hardship would lead to a favorable outcome such as a Delcy Rodrigues style regime change.
Iran is engaged in an existential conflict with the U.S. and Israel, and if Iranian leaders face a choice between surrendering and escalating the conflict, escalation is the probable choice. Indeed, the decision to intensify the military response—to exert pressure on Trump—appears already made, as shown by recent remarks from Mosen Rezaei, the new Secretary of the Supreme National Security Committee. Iran intends to continue proactive military efforts, even if Trump refrains from taking military action.
Despite the renewed U.S. blockade, Iran shows no sign of economic collapse. At the conflict’s outset, Iran reportedly had 120–140 million barrels of oil offshore in tankers and has exported another 80 million barrels under the MoU’s limited timeframe. The Rial has actually strengthened during the MoU period. This raises the question: What happens if Iran not only rejects capitulation but instead hardens its stance against Trump—as current indications suggest?
Danny Citrinowicz, a prominent Israeli military analyst, observes that the ongoing stalemate is costly for the U.S. The Strait of Hormuz remains heavily restricted; Saudi exports are blocked in the Red Sea; U.S. forces must maintain an expensive military presence and blockade; and American munition stockpiles are strained. Furthermore, Tehran still possesses several ways to disrupt U.S. activities and threaten regional shipping. Meanwhile, the economic impact from interrupted energy supplies is not borne by Iran alone. As the Wall Street Journal reported this week:
“Persian Gulf energy producers are concluding that Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz will become permanent, disrupting their oil and gas exports and global energy supplies indefinitely … [effectively they have] no good option for countering [a more assertive Iran]”.
Energy is not the only sector affected by this conflict; essential supply chains have also been disturbed.
If it turns out the U.S. entered this war without properly verifying the status of its armaments (wrongly assuming a quick victory, as David Barnea, head of Mossad, insisted at the July 11, 2026 White House briefing), and if the Treasury Secretary misrepresented the true energy conditions, serious accountability questions will arise.
Israeli strategic analyst Shemuel Meir raises critical questions:
- Was the Iran conflict genuinely a ‘preventative’ war triggered by a fabricated imminent threat?
- Did Netanyahu deceive about the immediacy of the Iranian nuclear peril?
- Put differently, did Netanyahu mimic the deceit used in the ‘Iraq and its Weapons of Mass Destruction’ narrative to push Trump toward war?
Earlier this July, the respected Israeli commentator Ben Caspit called out Netanyahu:
“Really, Bibi? Did the Iranians have atomic bombs? Are you serious about that? You know, you’re the Prime Minister. Every statement, sentence or word you utter makes the headlines. When you say something like that, it has consequences. Are you aware of that? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint [you] … but Iran did not have atomic bombs. Not at all. Not even as a joke … One cannot say that Iran possessed atomic bombs. Because that is not true … Because it is entirely fictional”.
(Indeed, Conflicts Forum noted earlier in July (see here) that alongside Caspit, a host of former Israeli security and intelligence figures and commentators have accused Netanyahu of fabricating the Iranian nuclear threat leading up to the Iran war—and that he continues to persist with these falsehoods).
Shemuel Meir highlights that in Israeli military doctrine, a pre-emptive war is meant to neutralize an existential threat perceived as immediate and undeniable.
However, Meir explains:
“We [the Israeli public] essentially do not know what happened or how the decision was made to launch a preventive war on June 13, 2025 (“Operation Rising Lion”), and its continuation in the second round of the preventive war on February 28, 2026 (“Lion’s Roar”). How the decision was taken to launch this war remains, as Aluf Benn puts it, Netanyahu’s ‘Black Box’ of decision-making.
He continues:
“Let us then try to examine the facts as far as possible. To determine how solid the justification was for a war that has changed the face of the Middle East and…despite being a conventional war, was the first nuclear preventive war in history. And one conducted with the approval of the U.S. President.
“The question arises: how is it that we have not seen a critical scrutiny and detailed investigative reporting into the decision-making behind the June 2025 preventive war? This is especially striking in light of two investigative reports published, rather surprisingly, in Israel over the past two weeks …
“Both these further investigations … rely on strong intelligence sources and good access to senior levels of the IDF General Staff. In both reports, we learned something that we had not heard anywhere else: facts and details concerning the Chief of Staff’s reservations about the second [28 February] preventive war, which was intended to solve the nuclear problem – by bringing down the regime”.
Meir adds:
“According to the investigative reports, the Head of Military Intelligence AMAN (the national intelligence assessor within the Israeli system) and the Head of the Intelligence Research Division assessed and wrote in the intelligence reports that were delivered to the Prime Minister and Cabinet members, that there was a low probability of success in the Second Iran War. For anyone familiar with Israel’s intelligence history, this was a courageous assessment”.
“In launching the two rounds of the same preventive war, Netanyahu stated that the reason for the war was “new intelligence” warning of an immediate existential nuclear threat to Israel’s destruction. According to him, Israel could not stand by and watch; there was an immediate imperative to go to war. To illustrate the immediacy of the threat, Netanyahu saturated the public discourse – both in the run-up to the first war and during the year between the two “wars” – with existential metaphors such as “a sword at our throat,” and compared Iran’s nuclear sites to the extermination camps of the Holocaust of European Jewry”.
“On the night of June 13, 2025, concerning the immediate existential threat posed by an Iranian nuclear weapon. Netanyahu declared that “we are in the twelfth hour”. Iran had reached the point of no return. In recent months, Iran had been racing ahead in “clear steps it had never taken before toward weaponization, that is, toward creating a nuclear weapon, and not merely accumulating fissile material””.
Did an existential threat truly exist on June 13, 2025, as Shemuel Meir questions—
“The ostensibly intelligence-based arguments concerning “new intelligence” presented by Netanyahu and the heads of the IDF General Staff about an acceleration of Iran’s nuclear weapons program in the immediate timeframe (weaponization was the key term in their arguments) stood in contradiction to highly reliable, up-to-date intelligence assessments. These included U.S. intelligence reports that contradicted the claims of an immediate nuclear threat and were apparently known to Israeli intelligence”.
“According to an investigative report by Ronen Bergman (Yedioth Ahronoth, June 26, 2026), based on senior Israeli intelligence sources, Israeli intelligence did not possess solid information indicating that a weapons program was actually being activated. There was only “troubling information about thoughts and talk,” but no smoking gun indicating that weapons laboratories were being activated.
The question stands: “Did all the senior officials in the IDF General Staff and Military Intelligence agree with and fully support the Prime Minister’s argument that this was a necessary preventive strike to thwart an immediate nuclear threat? Was this a war to eliminate an immediate existential threat, or a war of “opportunity exploitation”?”
(Other accounts suggest none of the senior officers in attendance raised concerns that Iran might survive or emerge stronger from the conflict.)
Meir further wonders if the senior IDF officers involved followed proper procedures, or whether they were swept up by Netanyahu’s fervor, failing to recognize the metaphysical role he assumed as “Protector of Israel”—to attack Iran and block any chance of a diplomatic nuclear deal. Meir previously analyzed in “Requiem for the Nuclear Deal” that roughly a third of Netanyahu’s autobiography “My Story” centers on this metaphysical mission—his lifelong aspiration to wage war against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
This represents a deeply existential issue for Israelis, especially considering how the conflict failed utterly in its declared objectives.
Nonetheless, it also holds crucial relevance for Americans. At the February 11, 2026 White House Situation Room briefing, Netanyahu made a strong case to President Trump, promoting the idea that Iran was ripe for regime change and expressing confidence that a joint U.S.-Israeli operation could bring an end to the Islamic Republic.
Were the U.S. officials present, some of whom doubted Israeli assertions, aware that the Head of Israel’s Military Intelligence AMAN and the Head of Israel’s Intelligence Research Division had assessed and communicated in reports delivered to Netanyahu and Cabinet members that there was a low probability of success in seeing the Iranian regime collapse? The Mossad Chief, by contrast, asserted that the war would be swift and simple.
The AMAN evaluation aligned with credible leaks from U.S. intelligence sources published during the June 2025 12-Day War.
Major U.S. news outlets like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and CBS reported that these intelligence officials saw no new evidence suggesting Iran was rushing to develop a nuclear bomb; the threat assessment had not changed; Iran was not on track to build a weapon; and no instruction had been given to advance weaponization.
Yet, Trump proceeded with the war—a conflict that still endures today. Why?
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