Before dawn Thursday, Kuwait's air defenses lit up over the Gulf again — Patriot batteries and radar networks tracking another wave of Iranian ballistic missiles and drones aimed at US military installations across the country. The intercepts worked.

But each one came at a price that defense analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies say the United States is running out of time to pay: the US has already burned through roughly two-thirds of its pre-war Patriot missile interceptor inventory since February, and production lines cannot restock until 2029 — regardless of how quickly Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's financial siege forces Iran to the table.

The simultaneous arrival of Thursday's strikes and Bessent's declaration that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is in "economic death throes" frames the central tension of a seven-month-old conflict that is now being prosecuted on two interlocked fronts: a kinetic exchange that is draining irreplaceable missile defense hardware faster than it can be manufactured, and a financial siege whose most critical variable — whether China continues buying Iranian oil — remains stubbornly unresolved.

The question for every American taxpayer watching gas prices hover near $90-per-barrel levels is which front gives way first. Missiles Before Dawn: What Kuwait Intercepted Kuwait's General Staff confirmed Thursday morning that its air defense systems were actively confronting Iranian missiles and drone attacks, urging residents to follow safety instructions and explaining that any explosion sounds were the result of interception operations — not impacts on populated areas.

Iranian state broadcaster IRIB separately reported that US military bases on Kuwaiti soil had been struck, with local sources describing smoke rising from at least one installation. As of publication, neither US Central Command nor Kuwaiti authorities had confirmed damage to bases or casualties from Thursday's exchange.

The strikes were part of a broader Iranian retaliatory salvo that also targeted US assets in Jordan, Bahrain, and Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region. Jordan's air defenses intercepted 10 of 13 Iranian ballistic missiles, with three falling in remote areas without casualties.

Bahrain reported destroying Iranian drones. The IRGC claimed it struck a maintenance center and warehouses in Erbil. The exchange followed a September 1 CENTCOM strike package explicitly designed to degrade Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz — hitting what CENTCOM described as IRGC targets including air defense sites, radar systems, maritime assets and facilities, mine-laying capabilities, and communications sites.

Tehran's response followed within hours, as it has each time: Iranian state-affiliated media promised retaliation "several times greater" than the US strikes, and missiles and drones were in the air across the region before the next day's sunrise. What Every Intercept Actually Costs The operational logic of Kuwait's air defenses — and those of its Gulf allies — conceals a structural problem that Thursday's barrages are making measurably worse.

CSIS analysts Mark Cancian and Chris Park published an analysis in late July documenting what the conflict is doing to US missile defense inventories. Their findings: the US has expended approximately 65% of its pre-war Patriot interceptor inventory — burning through roughly 1,060 to 1,430 missiles from a pre-conflict stockpile of 2,330.

THAAD inventories have declined by approximately 38%, leaving between 234 and 278 interceptors from a pre-war supply of 452. Cancian and Park concluded there are no good alternatives to Patriot and THAAD for ballistic missile defense. Navy ships armed with Standard Missiles — the SM-6 and SM-3 — can theoretically fill some gaps, but the analysts noted they are generally too far away for effective ground-based base defense in Kuwait and Bahrain.

The production math is stark. The US took delivery of only 172 Patriot interceptors in fiscal year 2026 against a consumption rate of more than 1,000 since the war began. Even with a record $58.6 billion Lockheed Martin contract signed in late July to ramp production of the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor through fiscal 2032, the pipeline cannot be accelerated retroactively.

"It takes several years to produce a missile," Cancian told the BBC. "If you put money into the system today, you wouldn't get a missile for three or four years. Sometimes even five. What we're getting now are missiles that were funded in 2023." THAAD stocks, projected to return to pre-war levels by the end of 2029, face similar timelines.

Tomahawk cruise missiles — also heavily consumed in strikes on Iranian targets — are not expected to return to pre-war levels until late 2030 or early 2031. The strategic implication, per CSIS, is not primarily about this conflict: it is about what comes next.

"The greater strategic risk is not sustaining the current conflict," Cancian and Park wrote, "but responding to another high-intensity contingency before Patriot and THAAD inventories can be rebuilt." A Taiwan Strait crisis or Korean Peninsula escalation that erupts before 2029 would find US allies and forces with measurably degraded air defense capacity.

The cost asymmetry compounds the problem. Each Iranian Shahed drone costs its manufacturer roughly $20,000 to $30,000. Each US Patriot interceptor fired to stop it costs approximately $3.9 million — a ratio of roughly 130:1. Kuwait's defenses alone have intercepted 97 ballistic missiles and 283 drones since the conflict began in late February.

The UAE's air defense networks destroyed 537 ballistic missiles, more than 2,250 drones, and 26 cruise missiles through early April alone — a consumption rate that has driven urgent discussions in Washington and Gulf capitals about interceptor replenishment timelines.

What the Fateh-110 Debris Field Reveals The tactical danger is not only about what gets through. It is also about what gets intercepted. On May 30, a single Iranian Fateh-110 short-range ballistic missile — a precision-guided system with a range of roughly 200 to 300 kilometers (124 to 186 miles) — targeted Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait.

Kuwaiti air defenses intercepted it successfully. But debris from the intercept wounded approximately five US military personnel and civilian contractors and destroyed one MQ-9 Reaper drone while severely damaging a second — representing an estimated $60 million in hardware losses from a single engagement.

Each MQ-9 Reaper carries a procurement value of approximately $30 million, making even successful intercepts a costly proposition when the debris field lands on high-value assets. A subsequent incident at Camp Buehring in northeastern Kuwait demonstrated a different failure mode altogether.

Reporting from late April 2026 revealed that an Iranian Air Force F-5 fighter aircraft had penetrated the installation's layered defenses and conducted a successful bombing run — a reminder that drone and missile saturation attacks can overwhelm the detection and tracking capacity of air defense architectures that were not designed to handle simultaneous threat streams across multiple vectors.

Bessent's Financial Campaign: Bombing Without Bombs While missiles arced over Kuwait before dawn Thursday, a different campaign was being prosecuted from Asheville, North Carolina — where Bessent had been meeting with G20 finance ministers through the week.

"Iran is in economic death throes," Bessent told reporters. The IRGC was being "economically asphyxiated," he said, and Tehran would soon be ready to negotiate. Addressing IRGC leadership directly, Bessent warned: "We know where in the British Virgin Islands your accounts are at these trust companies.

We know the $100 million houses you have around the world, and we are going to freeze those." The mechanism he is wielding is called correspondent banking — the unglamorous but load-bearing plumbing of the global financial system. Here is how it works: oil is priced in US dollars globally.

For a bank in Dubai or Shanghai to settle a dollar-denominated transaction, it needs an account at a US financial institution — a "correspondent" relationship. Remove that account, and the bank cannot participate in the global oil trade. This is not a symbolic sanction; it is a structural severing.

The Treasury Department demonstrated this precisely on August 28 under Operation Economic Outcast, when its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network proposed revoking correspondent banking access for the UAE branches of Banque Misr — Egypt's second-largest bank.

Treasury assessed that between January 2024 and June 2026, those five branches processed approximately $1.8 billion for 103 companies potentially linked to Iranian shadow banking networks, including apparent front companies used by Iran's Defense Ministry and the IRGC.

The UAE Central Bank responded by opening a forensic probe of the branches. Bessent confirmed at the G20 that a specific bank sanction would likely be announced in the coming days, with another the week after — a shift to weekly action following August 24's "Economic D-Day," when the administration sanctioned nearly 60 corporations, individuals, and vessels across multiple jurisdictions.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control has sanctioned more than 100 vessels linked to Iran's shadow fleet since the start of the year — ghost tankers that use AIS transponder spoofing, false flags, falsified cargo records, and ship-to-ship transfers to route Iranian crude to China while evading detection.

Bessent told the Associated Press the campaign would mean "financial violence if necessary." The China Problem Nobody Has Solved The financial campaign's most critical variable remains China. Beijing buys roughly 90% of Iran's oil exports — approximately 1.

38 million barrels daily in 2025 according to analytics firm Kpler — and has so far issued defiant warnings rather than compliance signals. China's independent refiners commonly purchase Iranian crude relabeled as Malaysian or Indonesian oil, routed through intermediaries specifically to avoid the dollar-based financial system.

The US has targeted smaller Hong Kong and mainland entities involved in these flows, but has stopped short of sanctioning major Chinese financial institutions — a step that sanctions historian Nicolas Mulder of Cornell University warned would "cause serious upheaval and prompt retaliation.

" Mulder also flagged a second-order risk: secondary sanctions that disrupt global oil flows would push inflation higher and could force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates — a problem for a Treasury Department that Mulder noted was "already finding itself having to quell a growing unease in the bond markets.

" Bessent told the AP that "all options are on the table" for sanctioning Beijing for continued Iranian crude purchases, while insisting that US-China dialogue at the G20 had been "productive" and "intentionally quiet." He said both sides agree on the need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — a statement of alignment that has so far not translated into Chinese compliance.

The initial results of the August 24 sanctions package fell short of the dramatic behavioral change the administration's language suggested. Chinese entities continued buying Iranian crude. Iranian bank branches in Dubai and Abu Dhabi remained open days after the UAE had pledged to sever financial ties.

Commercial flights between Iran, Turkey, and the UAE continued. One US official acknowledged the "cure period" built into the sanctions architecture — intended to give third parties time to comply voluntarily — had yet to produce visible behavioral change in the most critical trade relationships.

Former Treasury official Claire O'Neill McCleskey, co-founder of sanctions advisory firm Clarity Compliance Consulting, offered a measured assessment of the campaign's current status: "So far this appears to be just the threat of additional secondary sanctions under authorities that Treasury has had since 2020.

" Tehran's Answer: Defiance and Oil Leverage Iran's leadership has shown no inclination toward concession. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf — who also serves as Tehran's chief negotiator — was unambiguous in June: his Switzerland remarks made clear that "management of the Strait will never return to the way it was before the war.

" More recently, Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, warned Gulf neighbors that if they join Washington's economic campaign, "not a drop of oil will leave the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz," with additional threats to target "other routes through which oil is exported from the Persian Gulf.

" Iranian Economy Minister Ali Madanizadeh told state television that Tehran had prepared a two-year strategy for dealing with the sanctions and predicted the United States would suffer "another defeat." That defiance is backed by real economic leverage.

Before the conflict, roughly 20% of the world's daily oil supply — and approximately 20% of global liquefied natural gas — transited the Strait of Hormuz. Commercial tanker traffic through the strait has fallen more than 90% since late February. The World Bank slashed its 2026 forecast to 2.

5% growth, describing the slowdown as the worst blow to the global economy since COVID-19. US crude oil prices climbed more than $4 per barrel — nearly 5% — to approximately $90 following this week's renewed exchange, with Brent crude rising above $94.

Most Gulf producers — Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iran itself — have no practical alternative export route. Saudi Arabia can reroute some exports through its East-West pipeline to the Red Sea, and the UAE can use its 1.5-million-barrel-per-day Fujairah pipeline — but these options cannot compensate for what the strait handles at volume.

The US has attempted to restore shipping through a combination of naval escort operations, mine-clearing, and strikes on Iranian radar and missile infrastructure along the coast. Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated last month that combined US Navy operations and pipeline flows were moving roughly 15 million barrels of oil and products out of the Persian Gulf region per day — though the baseline remains a fraction of pre-war throughput.

Two Campaigns Racing the Same Clock What has emerged by September 2026 is a conflict being prosecuted simultaneously on two distinct but interlocked fronts: kinetic operations that are consuming irreplaceable missile defense hardware at rates that outpace production, and a financial siege that the Treasury Department explicitly frames as "the financial equivalent of a bombing campaign.

" The convergence of these two timelines is the story beneath Thursday's strikes. Iran's launch failure rates appear to be degrading — US officials noted roughly half Iran's missiles fired at Jordan on September 1 failed to reach their intended airspace — suggesting that sustained American strikes on Iranian radar, communications, and logistics are compounding the regime's operational capacity.

But the IRGC retains enough capacity to sustain weekly salvos, and Tehran's political calculus appears to be that continued defiance serves the regime better than concession. On the financial side, the Bessent campaign's most important test remains ahead — whether the escalating weekly bank sanctions can compel behavioral change from China before the economic pressure on Iran either softens or provokes an escalation that derails the financial campaign entirely.

Every time an Iranian missile fails to reach its target over Jordan or Kuwait, it registers as evidence that US kinetic pressure is working. Every time a Chinese refinery refiles an Iranian crude cargo as Malaysian, it registers as evidence that the financial siege has a ceiling.

CSIS's analysis makes the stakes explicit: the US and its allies cannot sustain this pace indefinitely. The Patriot depletion that Thursday's intercepts are deepening creates a multi-theater vulnerability window that extends until at least 2029 — meaning any simultaneous crisis in the Pacific would find US air defense networks measurably thinner than they were when this conflict began.

Whether Bessent's financial campaign can force a resolution before that vulnerability window becomes strategically decisive is a question that Thursday's before-dawn missile trails over Kuwait brought into sharper relief. For more than 50,000 US service members currently deployed across Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, and Iraq, the abstract calculus of interceptor production timelines plays out in a more immediate register: another pre-dawn scramble, another round of air raid sirens, and another morning spent accounting for every soldier within the blast radius of a debris field.

Frequently Asked Questions How many Iranian missiles has Kuwait's air defense actually intercepted since the war began? According to compiled conflict figures, Kuwait's air defense intercepted 97 ballistic missiles and 283 drones since Iran began striking Kuwaiti targets in late February 2026.

This pace has stress-tested Patriot missile batteries and their interceptor inventories throughout the conflict, contributing to the broader US stockpile depletion documented by CSIS. What is "correspondent banking" and why is Bessent using it as a weapon against Iran?

Correspondent banking is the plumbing that connects the global financial system. Because oil is priced in US dollars, any bank anywhere in the world that wants to settle a dollar-denominated transaction needs an account — a "correspondent" relationship — at a US financial institution.

The US Treasury can use regulatory authority to revoke that correspondent access, effectively cutting the bank off from the global oil trade without issuing a formal sanction in the traditional sense. This is the mechanism behind the Banque Misr UAE action: FinCEN proposed barring US banks from maintaining dollar-clearing accounts for the Egyptian bank's UAE branches after assessing they processed approximately $1.

8 billion for companies in Iranian shadow banking networks. Why does the US Patriot missile depletion crisis matter beyond the Iran conflict? CSIS analysts Mark Cancian and Chris Park concluded that the greater strategic risk is not sustaining the current conflict but responding to another high-intensity contingency before Patriot and THAAD inventories can be rebuilt.

Patriot stocks are projected to return to pre-war levels by mid-2029; THAAD by the end of 2029. Tomahawk cruise missiles face an even longer timeline. Any major conflict that erupts in the Pacific or Korean Peninsula before those stockpiles are rebuilt — involving China, Russia, or North Korea — would find US air defense networks measurably degraded relative to where they stood in January 2026.

Will China ever stop buying Iranian oil under US pressure? That remains the central unresolved question of the US financial campaign. China's independent refiners imported roughly 1.38 million barrels daily in 2025, relabeling it as Malaysian or Indonesian oil to avoid dollar-based payment systems.

Cornell historian Nicolas Mulder, who specializes in sanctions, has warned that sanctioning a major Chinese bank — the step needed to truly coerce Beijing — "would cause serious upheaval and prompt retaliation," potentially including China dumping US Treasuries or restricting rare-earth exports.

Bessent has said "all options are on the table" but has not yet moved against any large Chinese financial institution. ⓒ 2026 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

Vice President JD Vance downplayed the scope of the conflict in Iran, saying he would not describe it as “a war” given that major combat operations ended several weeks ago — even though military strikes recently intensified in the region.

Trump turns to dual economic, military approach to squeeze Iran Summary Trump is using a dual approach of economic pressure and military force to try to squeeze Iran, with Operation Economic Outcast and renewed strikes raising fears of a wider regional war.

The campaign has not yet forced Tehran to back down, while sanctions, inflation and shipping disruptions continue to strain the Iranian economy. Trump said Wednesday that he did not think the conflict would last much longer and dismissed election concerns for Republicans.

Key Facts - The White House said Operation Economic Outcast is underway to sever Iran’s remaining economic lifelines and that the naval blockade remains in force. - Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains well below pre-war levels, with 102 transits last week and 126 the week before, compared with 130 or more per day before the war.

- White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said the strait is open and all mines have been cleared. - Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the price Iran will pay will be primarily economic, while the administration reserves the right to take military action when necessary.

- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described Iran as a snake that has been decapitated and said the regime is in demise. WASHINGTON — Confronted by an intransigent Iranian government that has refused to back down in the face of a massive military campaign, President Donald Trump appears to have settled on a dual-prong approach that combines economic pressure with the potential of a devastating escalation in force .

Having launched “Operation Economic Outcast” just last week to try to isolate Iran from its remaining global trade partners , the Trump administration also resumed strikes in recent days, prompting Iranian retaliation that has renewed concerns of an all-out regional war.

However, the combination of already intense sanctions on Iran and an off-and-on bombing campaign since the war began more than six months ago has not bowed the Iranian leadership and has left the administration struggling to find a way to wind down the conflict .

Tehran has dug in its heels — to Trump’s frustration — as energy prices rise, the global economy roils and poll numbers on the administration's handling of the war dip ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections. Trump said Wednesday that he didn't think the conflict would last “much longer,” but he again shrugged off suggestions that its unpopularity and high gasoline prices resulting from Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz would affect the elections for Republicans.

“It doesn’t matter. And I’m not affected by the election,” he told reporters. "I’m not running. But my party is running, and I’m going to help my party. But I think my party respects the fact that we’re not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” A regional diplomat briefed on the matter described the current impasse between Tehran and Washington as reflective of both countries' domestic priorities: the midterm elections for Trump and Republicans and the internal crises within Iran .

Domestic issues are critical reasons why neither side is willing to blink first, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations. The diplomat said negotiations, including those between Iran and Oman or even Iran and the U.

S., will not go anywhere without addressing the initial catalyst of war: Israel. And the diplomat was skeptical of the Trump administration's new sanctions plan, saying the threats require more explanation than what the U.S. has provided so far. The Trump administration's economic isolation of Iran is off to a slow start The administration's new push for Iran's economic isolation was announced with great fanfare last week and a dire warning for all remaining countries to cut off financial and trade ties with Iran or face U.

S. retaliation — but the campaign so far has fallen flat. Just one branch of an Egyptian bank in the United Arab Emirates has been targeted so far. For actual sanctions to bite, experts agree that they must apply to Iran’s main trading partners : mainly China but also India and Russia.

But Trump is loath to target China especially as he is preparing to host President Xi Jinping later this month. Trump also insists that the U.S. has control over the Strait of Hormuz, where one-fifth of the world’s oil transited before the war began.

The strategic waterway has been a key pressure point for Iran, and reopening it fully has become one of the prime goals for the U.S. administration. Ship traffic through the strait is well below pre-war levels due to the risk of attack if vessels don’t comply with an Iranian vetting regime near its coastline, which is in sharp contrast to the unhindered navigation before the war.

There were 102 transits last week and 126 the week before, according to shipping data company Lloyd’s List Intelligence, compared with 130 or more per day before the war. “As President Trump said, the strait is open and all mines have been cleared,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said Thursday.

“The naval blockade remains in full force and effect, and Operation Economic Outcast is underway to sever every remaining economic lifeline sustaining the regime.” The White House has repeatedly touted the economic impact that the sanctions have had on Iran, citing its rampant inflation and the massive loss in the value of its currency .

U.S. officials have described Iran's financial system as “one big house of cards.” Going forward, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said “the price” Iran will pay will be primarily economic, “but we reserve the right ... to take military action when necessary — not just to protect ourselves but to prevent them from being able to threaten others as well.

” “They’re going to continue to feel the squeeze,” he told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade in an interview that aired Wednesday. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week likened Iran to a snake that has been decapitated but whose body is still writhing.

“We are burying the head of the Iranian snake,” he said Tuesday. “The snake doesn’t know it’s dead yet, but it will stop wiggling when the sun goes down. And so the Iranian regime — they are in demise, and they will figure it out.” Combining military force and sanctions on Iran ‘is the only option,’ one analyst says Complicating things for the U.

S., Iran’s leadership has shown signs of divisions between moderates more open to a diplomatic solution and hardliners who want to press ahead with a more confrontational approach. President Masoud Pezeshkian is one of the most prominent voices still calling for a negotiated solution .

But the hardliners appear to have gained the upper hand, and Iran shows no sign of backing down. Tehran continues to lash out at U.S. interests and allies around the region in response to military strikes. “This kind of a hybrid approach — the combination of military force, blockade and economic pressure — that is the only option that seems to be available to the United States at this moment,” said Hamidreza Azizi, consulting senior Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Still, he said, “it’s been for a long time, but now maybe more than ever, a battle of endurance between the two sides.” Amr Hamzawy, director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, pointed to two main reasons for the deteriorating situation.

“One, none of the two parties is satisfied with the outcome — meaning that the current situation does not serve U.S. interests well, and it does not serve Iranian interests well,” Hamzawy said. The other reason is how leaders from both sides are perceived at home.

“The Trump administration is afraid of being portrayed in the U.S. as an administration that failed to end a military campaign successfully, and that’s going to impact the midterm elections," he said. “And the Iranians, especially the Revolutionary Guard, are quite afraid of appearing as if they are submitting to U.

S. sanctions with no actions on their side, which might hurt them domestically.” Explore More - Q. - Q. - Q.

Trump's Iran strategy mixes sanctions and war threats as deadlock deepens Donald Trump has settled on a two-track Iran strategy of sanctions and military pressure. Domestic politics, Hormuz disruptions and Israel-linked regional tensions are keeping both sides locked in place.

US President Donald Trump appears to have settled on a two-track strategy on Iran, combining economic pressure with the threat of a sharp military escalation, as the conflict shows little sign of easing more than six months after it began. The approach has not forced Tehran to back down, even as recent US strikes and Iranian retaliation have again raised fears of a wider regional war.

At the same time, the Trump administration's new sanctions drive, called "Operation Economic Outcast", has made only limited progress so far. With energy prices rising, the global economy under strain and the administration's poll numbers slipping before November's midterm elections, the stand-off remains unresolved, with both Washington and Tehran seen as unwilling to give ground because of pressures at home.

Trump said on Wednesday that he did not think the conflict would last "much longer", but dismissed suggestions that its unpopularity and high petrol prices linked to Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz would hurt Republicans in the elections. "It doesn't matter.

And I'm not affected by the election," he told reporters. "I'm not running. But my party is running, and I'm going to help my party. But I think my party respects the fact that we're not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon." A regional diplomat briefed on the matter said the current deadlock reflected the domestic priorities of both countries, with the midterm elections weighing on Trump and Republicans and Iran dealing with its own internal crises.

The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, said neither side was willing to blink first. The diplomat also said talks, including those between Iran and Oman or even Iran and the US, would not move forward without addressing Israel, which was described as the initial catalyst for the war.

The diplomat was also sceptical of the administration's new sanctions plan, saying the threats needed more explanation than Washington had provided so far. The administration announced its latest push to isolate Iran economically last week, warning countries still trading with Tehran that they could face US retaliation, but the effort has started slowly.

So far, only one branch of an Egyptian bank in the United Arab Emirates has been targeted. Experts say the sanctions would have to hit Iran's main trading partners, chiefly China, as well as India and Russia, to have real impact. But Trump is reluctant to target China as he prepares to host President Xi Jinping later this month.

Trump has also insisted that the US has control over the Strait of Hormuz, though shipping through the waterway remains well below pre-war levels because of the risk of attack unless vessels comply with an Iranian vetting system near its coast. Lloyd's List Intelligence said there were 102 transits last week and 126 the week before, compared with 130 or more a day before the war.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said on Thursday, "As President Trump said, the strait is open, and all mines have been cleared. The naval blockade remains in full force and effect, and Operation Economic Outcast is underway to sever every remaining economic lifeline sustaining the regime.

" The White House has repeatedly highlighted the economic damage already done to Iran, pointing to high inflation and the steep fall in the value of its currency. US officials have described Iran's financial system as "one big house of cards". Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the main cost for Iran would be economic, but added, "we reserve the right ...

to take military action when necessary -- not just to protect ourselves but to prevent them from being able to threaten others as well." He also said, "They're going to continue to feel the squeeze." Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent used even harsher language this week, saying, "We are burying the head of the Iranian snake.

The snake doesn't know it's dead yet, but it will stop wiggling when the sun goes down. And so the Iranian regime -- they are in demise, and they will figure it out." For the US, the situation is further complicated by signs of divisions within Iran's leadership between moderates who are more open to diplomacy and hardliners who favour a more confrontational path.

President Masoud Pezeshkian remains one of the most prominent voices calling for a negotiated solution, but hardliners appear to have gained the upper hand, and Tehran has continued to target US interests and allies in the region in response to military strikes.

Hamidreza Azizi of the International Crisis Group said, "This kind of a hybrid approach -- the combination of military force, blockade and economic pressure -- that is the only option that seems to be available to the United States at this moment." He added that it remained "a battle of endurance between the two sides".

Amr Hamzawy of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said the situation was worsening because neither side was satisfied with the current outcome and because both were concerned about how they would be viewed at home. "The Trump administration is afraid of being portrayed in the US as an administration that failed to end a military campaign successfully, and that's going to impact the midterm elections," he said.

"And the Iranians, especially the Revolutionary Guard, are quite afraid of appearing as if they are submitting to US sanctions with no actions on their side, which might hurt them domestically." Overall, the conflict remains stuck between military pressure and economic coercion, with Washington and Tehran both showing little sign of stepping back.

The US says the sanctions and blockade will tighten further, while analysts and diplomats say domestic politics, the Strait of Hormuz and the unresolved regional issues continue to stand in the way of any clear end to the crisis.