Iran Analytic @IranAnalytic

🚨🚢🛢️Around 40 tankers transited in and out of the Strait of Hormuz through the southern deep channel on Friday night. Around 16 million barrels of oil moved out of the strait through the southern channel on Friday night, three U.S. officials told me

Any remaining tie to Tehran will hasten a nation's economic oblivion, whether that tie be purposefully constructed or willfully ignored.

Treasury Secretary Bessent on Iran: We are going to have the toughest sanctions in history, and I will tell you, this will work. It worked in Venezuela once we put up the blockade. It is working in Cuba right now, and it is going to work in Iran, and we are going to collapse this regime.

President Donald Trump’s effort to squeeze Iran’s economy hinges on the UAE curbing the financial and trading networks that have made Dubai a major gateway for Tehran to global markets, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The UAE supplied more than 30% of Iran’s imports in 2024, worth about $21 billion, according to the World Trade Organization, while Dubai has long served as a financial hub for Iranian companies and individuals seeking to bypass Western sanctions, the report said. US officials have pressed the UAE to target Iranian financial networks, including those linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, arguing that disrupting money flows could have a greater impact on Tehran than the US naval blockade of Iranian ports, according to people familiar with the matter, the report added.

Trump should keep the naval blockade in place until the regime goes bankrupt. Trump should also arm Iranian protestors and provide air support to Iranian protestors through drone strikes against IRGC & Basij thugs. Iranians will finish the job with Trump & Netanyahu’s support. Mr. President, help Iranians finish the job, and Iran will be once again an unshakable ally of the United Stated and the West. @realDonaldTrump

BREAKING 🔴 U.S. President Donald Trump: "No one has given the Islamic Republic of Iran a greater opportunity to make a Deal than me. TRAGICALLY, for them, they have failed to take it. Therefore, today, I am announcing the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY! This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale. Their navy is gone, their air force is destroyed, their military factories are now rubble, their currency is worthless, and their country is hanging by a thread. Today, I am also announcing that ANY country that allows its financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences. Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies — It all needs to stop NOW. You know who you are. This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our Allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat. These maniacs are on the ropes, and these HISTORIC MEASURES will cripple them and their ability to project terror worldwide. IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER. President DONALD J. TRUMP".

U.S. officials said the operation was enabled by strikes that degraded Iranian radar and maritime surveillance, while U.S. aircraft defend the corridor against Iranian drones and cruise missiles. - Axios

Faytuks Network @FaytuksNetwork

3 days ago

The U.S. military has quietly established a shipping corridor through the southern channel of the Strait of Hormuz, with 15–20 tankers reportedly transiting in and out each night under U.S. military guidance. Roughly 10 million barrels of oil a day—around half the pre-war

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The US military has quietly established a shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz that is helping move about 10 million barrels of oil a day, Axios reported Wednesday, citing two US officials. The operation has been underway for several weeks, with 15 to 20 tankers moving in and out of the strait each night through a southern channel along the coast of Oman, the officials said. The US military is also helping empty tankers enter the Persian Gulf from the Arabian Sea to load oil in the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait before coordinating their passage back through the strait. The task force overseeing the operation is being run from the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division headquarters at Fort Bragg, according to the report. One US official told Axios that Washington has controlled the southern lane of the strait for two months, saying the Revolutionary Guards could still be a “nuisance” but did not control the waterway. President Donald Trump told Axios Wednesday that a “tremendous amount of oil” was moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

Director of the Strategic Communications Department at MoFA: All Trade, Commercial Exchange, and Financial Transactions with Iran Halted The Director of the Strategic Communications Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), Afra Al Hameli, rejected all allegations regarding the status of the economic relationship between the United Arab Emirates and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Al Hameli reiterated the UAE’s steadfast commitment to dialogue, cooperation, and regional integration as essential means of advancing peace, stability, and prosperity in the region. Al Hameli underscored that, in light of regional escalations that undermine regional and international peace and security, all trade, commercial exchanges, and financial transactions with Iran have been halted until further notice. Al Hameli emphasized that the UAE remains firmly committed to safeguarding the integrity of the international financial system, in line with international law and the highest global standards.

The passage of the 60-day window without a deal--which should come as no surprise to anyone--is just another example of how there will likely never be a durable diplomatic deal with #Iran's regime as long as it's in power. That's just that hard truth--regardless of the fantasies and the soaring rhetoric about how there is no military solution and only a diplomatic solution. Sometimes there are limits to what diplomacy can achieve with a regime like Iran's. Leaving issues unresolved with Tehran is the rule, not the exception across multiple administrations given the nature of the Islamic Republic. Is it messy and imperfect? Yes, but that's sometimes what's necessary. That leaves a pressure campaign to gradually weaken the regime. The U.S. has traditionally been unwilling to use the full force of its military against the Iranian regime--e.g. ground operations. But diplomacy has also repeatedly failed as well across Democratic and Republican administrations. That leaves a middle course of U.S. economic pressure coupled with occasional, but circumscribed, military operations to counter threats from the regime. foxnews.com/politics/iran-…

Iranian-American Comedian Max Amini Says the U.S. is Fighting a ‘Species’ w/ ‘No Sense of Morals’ “We are not our government. Those are not our people … because the people that are fighting today against the U.S. and Israel are not the Iranians. They are this species that have no sense of morals … I think Trump made it very clear the war is not on the people of Iran, the war is with the government of Iran.”

If there is a way to cut off the cash available to pay rank-and-file IRGC salaries, now is the time to do it. The same for covert operations targeting the power of the regime’s new leadership…The clocks are ticking, writes @aaronbmaclean thefp.com/p/two-clocks-i…

“Iran notably pays its troops, government employees, security forces and industrial workers in cycles, with about 60% of the money coming from its oil exports, Maleki said. If its exports continue to be hamstrung in the next cycle, the regime will have few options to shield its soldiers and elites from the economic shock.”

Mark Dubowitz @mdubowitz

5 days ago

US blockade has caused Iran's oil exports to crater — and could finally destabilize regime says @FDD @miadmaleki nypost.com/2026/08/17/wor…

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Iran’s leaders are increasingly concerned that tougher US economic measures could deepen hardship and trigger renewed nationwide protests, Reuters reported Monday, citing Iranian officials and political insiders. Three Iranian officials told Reuters that mounting domestic pressure posed a growing risk as the country deals with high inflation, a weakened currency, energy shortages, war damage and disrupted trade. President Donald Trump said Friday that Washington would hit Iran hard economically, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said measures Tehran had “never seen” could be imposed as early as this week. Iran’s annual inflation reached 66% in July, while consumer prices were 87.9% higher than a year earlier and food inflation stood at 128%, according to Iran’s Statistical Centre. Rents rose 31% year-on-year in March, while Iranian media reported housing prices in Tehran about 50% higher than a year earlier. The dollar value of Iran’s minimum wage has also fallen from about $105 to $86 since late March, Reuters reported. The US naval blockade has added to economic pressure by disrupting trade and effectively cutting off gasoline imports, Iranian lawmaker Reza Sepahvand told ILNA on Saturday. Iran is producing about 130 million liters of gasoline a day against consumption of 137 million liters.

@JasonMBrodsky An over-confident Islamic Republic may ultimately prove strategically advantageous. When the Islamic regime overplays its hand and misjudges its position, that creates an opportunity for the U.S. and Israel to act at a moment when the regime is least prepared.

“The Iranian regime hides its vulnerability by acting immovable. Though it negotiates from a position of weakness, it frames survival itself as victory.” A must read by @NazeeMoinian

NazeeMoinian @NazeeMoinian

a week ago

Washington holds vastly superior firepower. It can’t outmuscle the regime’s self-image as leader of an “axis of resistance,” a role its own founding myths assign it, an identity that makes ordinary compromise feel like apostasy, not prudence. My take on today’s @WSJ

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Esfandyar, you picked the wrong person for this. Maybe take these to Ben Rhodes's echo chamber next time. Your whole essay rests on three errors. 1. Your baseline is refuted by the regime's own chief economic adviser. Masoud Nili dates the flatline of Iran's real national income to 2007–08; five years before your story begins. Iran's own censuses show +70,000 net jobs from 2006 to 2011, during the largest oil windfall in Iranian history. 2. The "independent private sector" wasn't killed by sanctions. It was killed by the regime. Only ~13% of Article 44 "privatizations" ever reached genuine private hands (also regime's own number). The largest transaction in Tehran exchange history (TCI, September 2009) went to an IRGC/Setad-linked consortium after the only real private bidder was disqualified a day before. CISADA did not yet exist, so don't even go there. 3. The remittance claim is false as a matter of law. Personal remittances to Iran are authorized (31 C.F.R. §560.550); food and medicine are exempt. Banks avoid Iran because the regime chose the FATF blacklist (next to North Korea) rather than stop financing Hizballah and Hamas (not too much to ask). I watched it from inside Treasury across three administrations: the regime showed no interest in the humanitarian channels that exist. Instead, its central bank ran oil-network payments through a pharmaceutical company (Tadbir Kish - in a scheme Treasury found moved hundreds of millions to Hizballah and Hamas). Want to blame the death of Iranian internet commerce on sanctions too? 83% of Iran's online businesses ran on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram — the regime banned all three. $1.5 billion a week. The post-2022 Instagram ban bled another $1.6 billion; this January's shutdown; $37 million a day. And the slaughter? blame the sanctions? Thousands executed in the 1988 prison massacres, 1,500 shot in the dark of the 2019 blackout, hundreds in 2022, thousands more in this year's crackdown. 100s of thousands across four decades.

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj @yarbatman

a week ago

You know what's normal? Corruption and mismanagement. So many countries around the world are led by governments, frequently authoritarian, which have persistently mismanaged their economies. Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, Argentina, South Africa, Turkey, India etc. are all

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A 16-year-old Iranian girl who reportedly lost an eye during recent protests contacted Ghazal Ranjkesh, who lost an eye during the 2022 protests, asking her to teach her how to apply makeup because she can no longer see, human rights activist Motahare Goonei said in a post on X on Friday. “Ghazal Ranjkesh, a woman who lost an eye after being shot with pellets by Iranian security forces in 1401, says in a new post that a 16-year-old girl who lost her eye in Dey 1404 messaged her and asked her to teach her how to apply makeup because she can no longer see... There is no doubt that this is one of the most horrific eras that humanity will ever write about in its history,” she said.

Diplomacy with #Iran's regime won't offer the kinds of concessions GCC states are looking for--especially given the regime refuses to negotiate over its missile and drone programs and support for proxies. It won't bring peace. That's a fantasy--no matter who is managing the diplomacy from the U.S. side. As long as the Iranian regime is in power, there will be instability. But the U.S. is also self-deterring militarily. That results in the current limbo which breeds uncertainty and frustration. washingtonpost.com/world/2026/08/…

The "Islamic" Republic in Iran has caused pain for every U.S. president, the Iranian people, and Iran's neighbors since 1979. Only President Trump has made it feel real pain in return. It waited out every pressure phase before this one; but it is not built to survive zero. The only way out for the regime is Washington's impatience. Don't give it. Hold the line.