More than 23 weeks into the war on Iran, United States President Donald Trump has signalled he would rather rely on squeezing Tehran\u2019s economy than returning to a military offensive, as he had warned he might last week.<\/p>\n
Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway now central to negotiations aimed at ending the war, remains disrupted by Iranian forces as a US naval blockade tightens its grip on Iranian ports.<\/p>\n
While Iran and Oman have said they are close to reaching an agreement on the management of the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said the US is \u201conly semi-negotiating\u201d with Iran. Tehran has denied direct talks at all with Washington.<\/p>\n
So after months of expansive fighting, why is Trump turning to economic pressure over military force in this conflict?<\/p>\n
![\"At](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/reuters_6a759e2a-1786093098.jpg\")
At the beginning of the month, US President Donald Trump had threatened attacks on Iran at levels \u2018not seen since World War II\u2019, but he has since cancelled them and reverted to economic tactics [File: Evelyn Hockstein\/Reuters]What has Trump said about changing strategy?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are low-keying it,\u201d Trump told the news website Axios in an interview on Sunday regarding the US approach to the war on Iran. This signals a complete change from his comments last week when he gave \u201cduplicitous\u201d Iran \u201cone last chance<\/a>\u201d to make a deal or suffer catastrophic strikes.<\/p>\n Now, Trump said, he wants to hit Iran economically instead.<\/p>\n He said Iran is in \u201cvery bad shape\u201d financially, citing high inflation and difficulty paying its own soldiers, and credited a US naval blockade in place since April with increasing that pressure.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Trump also claimed that falling prices of oil, which was trading at about $78 a barrel on Monday, have eased the economic impact on US consumers of the war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which had sent oil prices above $100 a barrel for a time.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will work out. It always works out. It\u2019s like a chess game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Speaking about the war on Iran on Saturday, Vice President JD Vance told Fox News: \u201cWe\u2019re in the middle of the game, and we\u2019re applying a whole host of tools \u2013 diplomatic, economic, military tools \u2013 to ensure that we get the best outcome for the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n The US has maintained a naval blockade against Iranian ports since mid-April. The aim is to reduce Iran\u2019s oil exports \u2013 estimated at about 1.5 million barrels per day \u2013 and thereby significantly decrease its oil revenues.<\/p>\n On Saturday, the US military\u2019s Central Command (CENTCOM) reported redirecting 53 commercial vessels, boarding two and disabling two others.<\/p>\n Trump described this as an unyielding \u201cwall of steel\u201d. Iranian authorities have attested to near-zero crude exports due to the blockade. The oil export constraints are adding to Iran\u2019s existing economic woes, linked to domestic structural issues and mismanagement, topped off by years of harsh sanctions.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s infrastructure has also suffered significant damage during the war launched by the US and Israel in late February. Tehran has asked the US to compensate it for these losses as one of the conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n Is the US short on munitions?<\/p>\n Several US media reports have indicated that Washington is running low on munition<\/a> stockpiles due to the fighting in the Middle East and Ukraine.<\/p>\n At the end of last month, Axios reported that the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, had cautioned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump that a shortage of air defence interceptors could hamper the US ability to protect its forces and allies in the Middle East.<\/p>\n The Pentagon has asked the US defence industry to rapidly escalate the production and delivery of weapons, including munitions in extremely short supply due to the war with Iran, The Washington Post reported, citing a Department of Defense memo.<\/p>\n However, a Pentagon official on Saturday told Al Jazeera that the US has enough munitions to sustain its military operations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have sufficient munitions for the task at hand,\u201d Jarred Conley, the principal deputy director at the Defense Department\u2019s Defense Innovation Unit, told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview. \u201cThe department has everything it needs today to execute a war.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump began his second term in the White House at the beginning of last year promising to avoid \u201cstupid wars\u201d.<\/p>\n Currently, his war on Iran is unpopular in the US, where the president and his fellow Republicans are seeking to defend their narrow congressional majorities in November\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n Only about 35 percent of Americans approve of the war, a recent Reuters\/Ipsos poll suggested. Asked which political party has a better approach to handling war and \u201cterrorism\u201d, registered voters picked Democrats over Republicans \u2013 37 percent to 36 percent.<\/p>\n This is the first time Democrats \u2060have led since Reuters\/Ipsos polling began posing the question in December 2024 when Republicans led 39 percent to Democrats\u2019 28 percent.<\/p>\n Will economic pressure work against Iran?<\/p>\n Mehran Kamrava, professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, said negotiations between Iran and the US are progressing very slowly and cast doubt on whether Washington\u2019s economic pressure campaign would succeed.<\/p>\n He noted that Iran has been able to exert considerable pressure on Gulf countries where US military assets and infrastructure are located by attacking them with missiles and drones.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we have seen is that the Iranians are trying to put economic pressure on the regional neighbours, particularly on countries like Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, so that they would in turn put pressure on the US to negotiate with Iran,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cMeanwhile, the US is putting economic pressure on Iran. \u2026 So neither side is willing to take that first step and extend an arm and say, \u2018Let\u2019s sit down and negotiate,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Kamrava said he was sceptical that US economic pressure would prove effective, particularly as Iran\u2019s leaders are not under the same internal political pressure as the Trump administration.<\/p>\n \u201cTehran is under tremendous economic pressure, but we need to bear in mind that Iran\u2019s political system is ultimately a very repressive one. It\u2019s not that people making decisions directly care about the plight of the middle classes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey want to stay in power,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cSo I\u2019m not sure if this tactic is going to work at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n Has the US achieved any of its stated war goals?<\/p>\n Not really. The US and Israel time and again have shifted the goalposts considerably since launching the war on February 28, the day they killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the outset, the US said the war was about restricting Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, which Tehran said it was never intending to do, and forcing a change in Iran\u2019s government, which Trump has quietly dropped since. The US also made other demands, including restricting Iran\u2019s ballistic missiles programme and ending its support for Iran-aligned armed groups around the region, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and others in Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n As the war has continued, the cost to Gulf countries and the global energy crisis unleashed by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have put pressure on Washington to reach a peace deal with Iran.<\/p>\n Iran put forward several conditions of its own for ending the war, including lifting the US sanctions and naval blockade and unfreezing Iranian assets. But a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that Iran and the US signed on June 17 to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and begin a 60-day negotiation period unravelled within days, mainly over disagreements about the management of the strait.<\/p>\n![\"FILE](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786370123_788_2026-07-30T113314Z_1788987410_RC2IKLAVXPE4_RTRMADP_3_IRAN-CRISIS-GULF-CHINA-1786093923.jpg\")
A vessel in the Strait of Hormuz is seen from the beach at Bandar Abbas, Iran [File: Amirhosein Khorgooi\/West Asia News Agency via Reuters]What effect has the US naval blockade had on Iran?<\/p>\n![\"STANSSTAD,](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/getty_6a72252e37-1785865518.jpg\")
Trump sent Vice President JD Vance, background right, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, second from left, to negotiate with an Iranian delegation, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, far left, to Switzerland in June for talks mediated by Pakistan and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, centre, after the two countries signed an MoU [File: Nathan Howard-Pool\/Getty Images]Is Trump under pressure at home over this war?<\/p>\n