Trump should remove the Iran War’s most dangerous tripwire

The economic warfare against Iran under Operation Economic Outcast runs on two clocks: destroying Iran’s economic timeline and extending the global economic timeline. Further escalation against Iran offers diminishing returns.

The blockade hurts Iran, but it no longer justifies the risks. The more consequential side of the equation is extending the global economic runway by scaling energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz.

The basic premise is that imposing sufficient economic pain on Iran before President Trump is forced to cry uncle could bring about mass uprisings that topple the leadership. That outcome may be unlikely, but it is not impossible.

However, Iran has made clear multiple times that it is adopting a posture that is “offensively defensive.” If sufficient pressure is imposed by the U.S., Tehran will seek to escalate before those uprisings are potentially sparked.

Unfortunately, this runs into the most fundamental problem for the Trump administration in this war: escalation dominance. Iran has shown not just the willingness, but the capability to strike Gulf energy and desalination infrastructure throughout this war. Add to this the well-documented depletion of American interceptor missiles , and it is difficult to credibly assert that the U.S. can reliably prevent such a response from Iran.

If sufficient economic pressures are imposed upon Iran, they will certainly pull the lever of targeting Gulf infrastructure, even if that significantly deteriorates relations with neighboring countries. This is an existential war. But before pursuing that avenue, Iran may determine that striking American forces offers a more justified escalation pathway that avoids deteriorating relations with their Gulf neighbors.

Iran may therefore seek to target the U.S. warships imposing the blockade instead as an eventual step up the escalation ladder. Just this past weekend, U.S. Central Command acknowledged that Iran had targeted two American warships with ballistic missiles, forcing both to make evasive maneuvers.

Whether or not the blockade remains, Iran retains the ability to escalate against Gulf infrastructure. It does, however, provide Tehran with an additional and potentially appealing escalation pathway: striking American vessels or troops in the region. One successful strike on a U.S. warship could produce an American mass casualty event. Thousands more Americans remain exposed at bases in Jordan , despite limited benefit to the economic warfare campaign at this scale.

At that point, Trump’s political calculus changes entirely. The question is no longer whether Washington should escalate. It becomes whether an American president can politically afford not to. That is how another Middle Eastern forever war begins.

The blockade also fails under either possible strategic scenario. If Project Freedom — created to get commercial ships safely through the Strait of Hormuz — cannot extend the global economic runway beyond Iran’s economic runway, then Washington will run out of time before economic pressure produces the political rupture it seeks. The blockade cannot fix that.

But if Project Freedom can extend the global runway long enough for Iran’s economy to reach a breaking point, then the blockade is no longer necessary to preserve that pathway. Sanctions, financial isolation and accumulated wartime destruction can continue to maintain the terminal tailspin while the global economy is kept alive.

In neither scenario does the blockade solve Iran’s ability to retaliate across the Gulf. It only adds another target set: American forces.

By removing the U.S. blockade, the Iranian economy does not magically undo the roughly hundred billion dollars in damages suffered during the U.S. bombing campaign. It does not erase the losses imposed by two iterations of the blockade. And it certainly does not reopen the economic escape valves Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is seeking to shut through Operation Economic Outcast.

Prior to the Iran War, Iran’s economy was already in atrocious condition. Since the war began, inflation has continued to skyrocket . The Rial has fallen to 2.2 million per dollar, and intensified U.S. sanctions have further constrained Tehran’s ability to relieve that pressure.

The war did not create Iran’s economic crisis. It deepened it. Removing the blockade may slow the deterioration, but it does not stop the clock.

Paired with the American focus on scaling and maintaining navigation along the Omani coastline under Project Freedom, the Trump administration can still seek to extend the global economic runway beyond Iran’s economic runway. Whether the U.S. is moving 8 million barrels per day along this route or 10 million , the strategic objective is the same: to buy more time.

The U.S. doesn’t need to make Iran collapse faster by accepting potentially catastrophic risk. It needs to make the global economy last longer than Iran can. If sufficient economic pressure ultimately forces Tehran to escalate against Gulf infrastructure, that option exists regardless of whether the blockade is maintained. Washington cannot solve Iran’s escalation dominance by keeping American ships in place. It can, however, remove unnecessary escalation pathways.

The blockade does not solve the equation. It merely accelerates Iran’s slide toward the point at which it may decide to retaliate, while simultaneously exposing American forces to the most dangerous forms that retaliation could take.

Washington cannot eliminate Iran’s escalation dominance. It can, however, eliminate the risks from the blockade and reduce unnecessary American force posture.

Brett Erickson is managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors and an advisory board member at Seton Hall School of Diplomacy and International Relations and DePaul University Driehaus College of Business.