A large, openly declared war against Iran would be risky, expensive, and domestically explosive. A form of blockade combined with sanctions, sabotage, and intermittent strikes, on the other hand, is cheaper, deniable, and far more flexible …

Nel Bonilla

I closed part 2 with the suggestion that an either/or option – will the US attack Iran, or back off? – is a “false dichotomy” premised on understandings of ‘war’ as confined to the hotly kinetic. By contrast, this third and final post in the series hosts a writer making a compelling case, very much in line with the take of Brian Berletic, that the US is not about to fold, its bluff called, on its latest threat to Iran.

But neither does she assume a US prepared to use its full might, with a second and possibly third aircraft carrier said to be bound for the region, ¹ in all out attack which, to quote again from part 2:

… must trigger a war igniting the region … threatening US compliant Arab autocracies … committing US forces in numbers not seen since Vietnam (with Americans, MAGA in particular, averse to “our boys” coming home in body bags) … exposing all US assets in West Asia and, when Iran closes the Hormuz Strait, seeing crude hit $150 a barrel (for which the world, its grand-mother and the MAGA will blame Trump) to send the global economy into 1930s style slump …

I first encountered Nel Bonilla by way of a comment on a post last July, after I’d cited Canadian economist Radhika Desai. Asked why Europe’s leaders act so manifestly against the interests of their people and economies, she (Radhika) had replied:

… the only reason I can find is that at the present moment the United States is in this sweet spot where the people it has groomed have taken power in major European capitals.

This prompted a voice new to the site, one Phil Adams, to supply a link to a recent piece by a writer unknown to me. Upon reading her Elite Capture & European Self-Destruction, I was sufficiently impressed to feature it prominently in a subsequent post, Road to WW3. Part 3: capturing minds.

Latterly another comment, by steel city regular Johnny Conspiranoid, appeared below Part 1 of this series. Johnny wrote:

The US may be planning a long term war of attrition in which the forces it has massed in the Gulf just sit there while a war of attrition involving seizing ships, sabotage, proxy armies etc. is waged for years with peace talks designed to just string things out.

A very good exposition of this argument is given here at https://themindness.substack.com/p/the-illusion-of-retreat

I read and was again impressed by – you guessed it – the same Nel Bonilla. You too will be impressed by this young woman – an academic who has not sold out, can actually write, and has both a first class brain and a working moral compass – on why Uncle Sam, aware of his inevitable decline, still has aces to play in dictating its terms.

Dated February 10, this half-hour read begins:

The Illusion of Retreat

Why the West’s “De‑Escalation” Toward Iran Is Just a Quieter War

A narrative is gaining traction: faced with rising risks and Iranian warnings, the Trump administration is supposedly backing away from confrontation with Tehran. A reported partial pullback of a carrier group, talks in Muscat in Oman, and a softer US tone are being interpreted as signs of restraint, recalibration, even a new realism in Washington. This reading is dangerously short‑sighted. It misunderstands the strategic logic now governing the Atlantic system, what I have called the Bunker State. What looks like de‑escalation is, within that logic, simply the transition to a more sustainable, more ruthless form of warfare. The transatlantic system is shifting to the method best suited to the long‑term management of its own signs of decline: economic strangulation through maritime control, covert destabilization operations, and kinetic strikes held in reserve. The form of warfare has changed. The objective has not. ²

Most mainstream analysis still uses a 20th‑century template: escalation equals visible troop build‑ups, massive bombing, and invasion, or at least the preparation for such operations. Pause those, or stop threatening them publicly, and you have “de‑escalation.” Viewed through that lens, these recent developments do look like a retreat: The reported partial repositioning of the USS Abraham Lincoln from the Arabian Sea. The diplomatic choreography of indirect talks in Muscat, Oman, and media stories that frame renewed sanctions as a bargaining chip instead of actually being part of an ongoing war effort against Iran.

But this reading ignores that the blockade preparations and sanctions architecture remain fully in place and are being expanded, not relaxed. Further, covert and financial warfare against Iran is intensifying, not slowing. Last but not least, the US force posture in the Gulf consisting of 30,000–40,000 troops in range of Iranian missiles, has not meaningfully changed. The story is therefore not one of retreat, but of open preparation for a condition of a permanent hybrid war that the transatlantic system now prefers.

From Airstrikes to Economic Warfare: Blockade & Siege as Primary Weapons

If we define war only as something that happens when bombs fall or parliaments formally declare it, we miss the fact that the hybrid war on Iran is already in full swing. Since late 2025 Washington’s measures have added physical control of energy flows to the sanctions already in place.

In December 2025, Trump ordered a complete naval blockade of sanctioned oil tankers bound to or from Venezuela, a step that, under classic international law definitions, clearly qualifies as an “act of war.” In Iran’s case, the same administration is advancing not (yet) a formally declared “total blockade,” but a rapidly narrowing de facto oil blockade: After nuclear talks in Oman stalled in early February 2026, Washington announced additional sanctions on Iran’s oil sector, targeting firms and intermediaries that trade in Iranian crude and petrochemicals. In parallel, the State Department has begun systematically dismantling Iran’s “shadow fleet.” In a February 2026 statement, it designated 14 shadow‑fleet tankers as blocked property and sanctioned 15 entities and 2 individuals involved in transporting or trading Iranian‑origin oil, petroleum products, or petrochemicals, vowing to “continue to act against the network of shippers and traders.” Further, US forces have physically seized multiple tankers: the Marinera after a two‑week chase in the Atlantic near Iceland; the Sophia, carrying two million barrels of Venezuelan crude in the Caribbean; and other ships linked to Iran’s shadow fleet.

This is a targeted effort, and not just symbolism: Iran exports around 1.3–1.8 million barrels of oil per day, roughly 90% of it to China. Cutting a substantial fraction of that is functionally equivalent to sustained strikes on the main arteries of Iran’s economy.

“Making Iran Broke Again”

Trump officials have been unusually explicit about what they are doing. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent boasted that the maximum pressure campaign was “designed to collapse Iran’s already buckling economy,” to “collapse Iranian oil exports,” and to “shut down Iran’s oil sector.” He celebrated the results: currency depreciation, bank failures, dollar shortages, import paralysis, and then added:

“This is why people took to the street… this is economic statecraft. No shots fired.”

Addressing Wall Street at the Economic Club of New York in March 2025, Bessent said it even more bluntly: the goal was “making Iran broke again.” The room of financiers applauded.

Sanctions as Structural Warfare

What we are watching is the structuralization of sanctions as a permanent state of war. World Bank and UN human rights data show a clear pattern: After sanctions were eased under the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal, Iranian inflation fell to about 7% in 2016. When Trump tore up the deal unilaterally in 2018 and re‑imposed sanctions in violation of the UN Security Council resolution, inflation shot back up into the 40–50% range and has stayed there. UN special rapporteurs have repeatedly warned that unilateral US sanctions on Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela violate international law and risk “man‑made humanitarian catastrophes,” with starvation and denial of basic rights likely outcomes.

Of course, none of this is conceptually new regarding the use of sanctions. A 1960 State Department memo on Cuba already articulated the blueprint: the goal of embargo was to “weaken the economic life of Cuba” and “bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government.” What is new is the Bunkerization of this logic: plans once treated as policy options are now embedded as standing structure, applied by default to any state that enables multipolar resilience …

And this is the point. Nel’s argument is that imperial strategies set out with remarkable candour, in papers seldom read by the public or even committed opponents, by such ‘think tanks’ as The Brookings Institute (Which Path to Persia?) and The Rand Corporation (Extending Russia) are moving from a la carte  optionality to established MO.

So what does this mean for Iran, West Asia, and a multipolar world much to be desired?

Read this superb piece in full. You do got half an hour, right?

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1. I have this from Alexander Mercouris at the Duran yesterday. He hears the USS George HW Bush is on its way, while it’s no secret that a USS Gerald R Ford no longer needed to menace the Caribbean is doing likewise. Though Alexander is in the either/or groove I opened with, he and many others of similar mind remain indispensable voices. As for the “climbdown” option, he makes the point that a force of three carrier groups, sailing home without a result, will be difficult even for Trump’s spin doctors to call a success. Which from the either/or perspective leads him to conclude that war of the “hotly kinetic” kind is inevitable.
2. Nel Bonilla’s argument is today made, albeit with less confidence, less detail and as I say – though I must own up to a permanent state of irritation with the man – less insight, by Andrew Korybko:

   The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump 2.0 is considering imposing a Venezuelan-like oil blockade against Iran. It hasn’t yet done so due to concerns that Iran might attack the US’ regional military assets and/or seize its Gulf allies’ oil tankers, with either scenario destabilizing the global oil market and spiking the risk of war, so it might never ultimately happen. If the US were to successfully impose such a blockade, however, then it might be able to adroitly divide-and-rule Russia, India, and China.