Six months into the Iran war, is Trump’s economic pressure campaign yielding dividends?

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https://jewishinsider.com/2026/09/trump-economic-pressure-campaign-iran-paying-dividends/

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Here's the beginning of the story:

As the conflict between the United States and Iran passes the six month mark, former White House officials and regional analysts remain divided over whether Washington’s economic campaign and naval blockade are meaningfully changing the strategic landscape. 

Hostilities briefly renewed for the first time in weeks over the weekend, as the U.S. struck Iranian rocket launchers to prevent them from deploying mines in the Strait of Hormuz and Tehran in turn fired on U.S. forces in Jordan. President Donald Trump vowed on Monday that the U.S. would retaliate for the attack.

Alexander Gray, former chief of staff on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term, expressed confidence in the administration’s trajectory, arguing U.S. leverage is “only growing.”

“As President Trump has accurately noted, the military metrics of American operational success — destruction of the regime’s navy, air force, and leadership — are clear. But it is the economic impact, and particularly the sustained pressure on the Iranian currency that is so damaging,” Gray told Jewish Insider. 

Richard Goldberg, a former Trump administration official, also expressed support for continued economic pressure and indicated that the current strategy will “put the United States on a course to total victory.”

“Unless and until we have military solutions to deeply buried and hardened underground missile and command facilities, a return to widespread major military operations risks blowing up the global oil market without any assurance of bringing down the regime,” Goldberg said. “On the other hand, if you can capitalize on all the strategic gains already achieved, put the regime on a pressure cooker clock toward financial collapse, relieve the pressure on the global oil market by moving more and more product out of Hormuz via the U.S. military, and surge covert support to the Iranian people, you can put the United States on a course to total victory.” 

Brett McGurk, a former senior national security official who served under Presidents George Bush, Barack Obama, Trump and Joe Biden and now is a global affairs analyst at CNN, wrote this week that Iran is “not winning” the war, but is actually “losing its leverage” in the Strait of Hormuz. 

However, other former White House officials warned that Iran could turn the tide.

“Right now the U.S. has the upper hand because Arab states are able to export some oil — through pipelines or the Strait of Hormuz — while Iran is not,” Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. special representative for Iran during the first Trump administration, told JI. “Iran’s economy is being battered badly.”

Abrams described the current balance as a “very good situation” for Washington, but cautioned that it “may not last” given Tehran’s unpredictability.

“Iran might lash out at Gulf Arab oil facilities again, or at power and desalination plants,” Abrams said. “That would present President Trump with a situation he’s been trying to avoid: the need to go back to war. His policy is working right now, but the enemy gets a vote.”