US severe economic pressures on Iran are unlikely to have more success than the half-year of US-Israel military assaults...but should trigger new mediation to find a negotiated end of the war

Key points:

1. The latest US move to pressure Iran economically, following Washington’s inability to defeat Iran militarily, will hurt economies all over the world, but will not cause Iran to surrender. The US’ incompetence and incoherence in waging military or economic war is more evident every week.

2. If anyone in the world could write a book on how to survive sanctions and evade them, it’s Iran, which has survived half a century of sanctions. Big states like Russia and China will not suffer much from sanctions, which rather will hurt intermediaries like insurance firms, shippers, middlemen, smugglers, and shell companies that make it possible to evade the impact of sanctions.

3. The US wants Iran to surrender, which will not happen, but we should hope for and expect serious mediation behind the scenes to negotiate an end to the war that US-Israel launched half a year ago.