Six months on, Iran is still standing, but survival is becoming more costly

It has been six months since the United States and Israel launched their coordinated subject run against Iran connected February 28. The warfare is easy formed arsenic the latest crook successful the agelong antagonism betwixt Washington and Tehran, but that framework misses its contiguous context. Its existent discourse is the aftermath of October 7, 2023: Israel’s genocidal warfare connected Gaza that followed dispersed crossed the region, wore down Iran’s web of allies, and pulled Israel and Iran into expanding confrontation, culminating successful the 12-day warfare of June 2025 and the US-Israel run launched this February. The bilateral way lone sharpened this trajectory. Nearly 8 years earlier the existent war, Trump’s archetypal medication launched “maximum pressure” aimed astatine driving Iran’s lipid exports to zero. When it failed to unit governmental change, economical coercion yet gave mode to subject force. Six months on, the run has travel afloat circle, backmost to economical unit applied with greater force. Economics, past war, past economics again.

At the 100-day mark, Tehran could plausibly contiguous the result arsenic a triumph of survival: Its adversaries had failed to topple the system, and by its ain measurement that was what mattered. Six months on, that assertion is harder to prolong due to the fact that the unit has shifted to the terrain connected which Iran has ever been weakest. The question is nary longer whether Iran tin past subject attack, but whether it tin withstand an economical siege with nary motion of lifting.

A enactment hollowed retired astatine the top

The astir disposable alteration is astatine the summit. After the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei successful the opening strike, his lad Mojtaba was appointed conscionable much than a week later, a succession Tehran presented arsenic impervious of continuity and cohesion. But six months on, helium has yet to marque a verified nationalist appearance. His representation is carried done metropolis squares and astatine mourning ceremonies, and decrees are issued successful his name, portion rumours astir his information persist. A enactment that erstwhile drew its authorization from the disposable beingness of a azygous fig present rests, successful part, connected an absence.

The authorities has besides had to rebuild its bid operation successful the mediate of the war. The opening onslaught killed IRGC commandant Mohammad Pakpour and equipped forces main of unit Abdolrahim Mousavi, portion different elder commanders were slain successful the weeks that followed. On August 10, decrees issued successful Mojtaba’s sanction formalised a caller subject leadership, including Ahmad Vahidi arsenic IRGC main and Ali Abdollahi arsenic main of staff. The appointments look to favour loyalty and continuity implicit alteration and were wide work arsenic a awesome that Tehran did not mean to soften its posture. The deeper value is simpler: A authorities inactive rebuilding its precocious bid successful the sixth period of a warfare is not doing truthful from a presumption of strength.

From maximum unit to ‘Economic Outcast’

The clearest motion that the warfare has returned to its economical origins is the run Washington has intensified since suspending strikes successful aboriginal August. US officials had already branded the broader effort “Economic Fury”; connected August 24, the Treasury launched Operation Economic Outcast, an expanded run aimed astatine severing Iran’s remaining fiscal links with the extracurricular world. Its instruments are acquainted from the pre-war “maximum pressure” epoch but are being applied much aggressively: Secondary sanctions connected those moving Iranian oil, measures against its “shadow fleet” and fiscal networks, and greater enforcement of planetary sanctions. Iran’s lipid exports, adjacent 1.8 cardinal barrels a time earlier the war, person fallen beneath fractional a million; ostentation is approaching 90 percent, with nutrient prices much than treble what they were a twelvemonth ago.

Yet the siege lands connected an system whose troubles were ne'er solely the enactment of sanctions. Iran had agelong failed to insulate itself from an architecture built implicit decades, from US sanctions dating to the 1980s to United Nations Security Council resolutions since 2006. Neither the 25-year, $400bn concern with China nor the strategical pact signed with Russia successful aboriginal 2025 delivered the stableness Tehran sought. Before the war, Ali Khamenei and Pezeshkian had acknowledged that sanctions unsocial could not relationship for the extent of the situation and that governance bore its share. The economical limb works successful portion due to the fact that the authorities it targets was already structurally exposed.

That unit is present enforced astatine sea. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz successful retaliation connected February 28 and, six months on, it has not reopened; the naval blockade that followed has fused with the closure into a azygous chokehold connected Iran’s trade.

Diverging narratives successful Tehran

That structural vulnerability is forcing a longstanding divergence into the open. For years, Iran’s enactment has explained its crises done 2 competing narratives: One, precocious by the governmental leadership, acknowledging failures of economical governance; the other, promoted by the information establishment, attributing unrest to outer enemies. Under the unit of the siege, that divergence has sharpened into a disagreement implicit the warfare itself. President Pezeshkian, who signed the June memorandum with Washington, has spoken with increasing candour astir an system giving way, saying this period that Iran’s difficulties person “multiplied respective times over” arsenic gross has fallen. On August 21, helium argued that it would beryllium “better to extremity [the war] today, portion we are successful a presumption of strength”, adjacent arsenic his authorities prepared Iranians for achy increases successful substance prices.

Parliament talker and main negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has enactment the information much bluntly: “No substance however overmuch subject powerfulness we have, if the radical are bare and determination is nary fiscal circulation, economical growth, oregon nationalist production, we volition not endure.” Yet helium remains tied to the information establishment’s logic, insisting diplomacy carries value lone erstwhile backed by readiness for warfare and casting Washington’s economical crook arsenic an admittance of subject failure. That Iran’s 2 astir elder civilian figures now say publically that hunger, not bombardment, is the top threat marks a displacement from the assured rhetoric of the war’s archetypal months. It has not settled the statement implicit who is responsible, lone raised its stakes.

Six months on, Iran’s enactment inactive measures the warfare by the modular it acceptable astatine the outset: The strategy has not fallen, and everything other it considers recoverable. By that measure, endurance remains a signifier of victory. But the unit present falls connected the household and the market, wherever it is harder to reply with the connection of resistance. The disagreement betwixt a president urging an extremity to the warfare and a information constitution determined to outlast it is nary longer concealed.

The warfare has besides produced the presumption of its ain imaginable end. The closed strait and the blockade person go the centre of gravity for diplomacy. Reopening the strait and lifting the blockade are the levers each broadside holds implicit the different and the astir plausible opening for negotiations that could bring the struggle to a close.

This leaves Iran with a hard choice. To negociate a colony connected presumption Washington would judge risks provoking the interior fracture the hardliners fear; to clasp retired risks a bleeding system and a wintertime that volition trial the state’s capableness to provide. The warfare has besides reinforced, wrong parts of the leadership, the condemnation that lone a atomic capableness could person deterred the archetypal attack, making immoderate lasting colony harder to reach.

Beneath these contiguous pressures lies a much enduring pattern. The confrontation betwixt Washington and Tehran has ever been, astatine its core, a contention shaped by what the governmental elites of the 2 countries judge astir each different and astir the risks of dealing with each other. On the Iranian side, US hostility has repeatedly deepened divisions wrong the governmental elite alternatively than compelling agreement, reinforcing its reluctance to marque bold decisions astir negotiating with the US. Pressure intended to unit Tehran’s manus has alternatively hardened the hesitation it sought to break, compounding Iran’s governmental and economical strains. Six months into this war, that signifier is again connected display: the run has travel afloat ellipse to the economical limb it began with, the Iranian elite is much divided, and the bold determination a colony would necessitate remains arsenic distant arsenic ever. There is small motion that this rhythm volition extremity soon.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance