The article argues that President Donald Trump made the same strategic mistake twice in quick succession by underestimating how quickly markets and societies adapt to major disruption. First, it says, his advisers told him Iran would collapse economically within a few months if the Strait of Hormuz were blocked, but the author says that estimate ignored Iran’s experience with sanctions, a population used to hardship, and a regime unwilling to yield. In reality, the piece says, such pressure would likely have taken at least six months, and perhaps nine or ten months, to bring Iran to collapse.
Because Trump expected a faster result, the article says he blinked first מול an opponent that was weaker, battered, and already on a path to failure, only the route was longer than he wanted to admit. It says that instead of learning from that error, he repeated it when he accepted warnings of an economic apocalypse, including claims of a Great Depression-scale crisis if the Hormuz closure continued.
The article says those warnings were exaggerated because the U.S. and its Gulf partners had already adapted in various ways, mainly by moving oil through pipelines and escorting ships, cutting the effect of the Iranian blockade by at least 50%. It adds that markets in the East were also adjusting, including partial shifts in India and likely China toward coal and wood for cooking and heating, which would further weaken the blockade over time.
The piece says forecasts of catastrophe, including from Paul Krugman and Goldman Sachs, did not materialize because economic models often fail to account for future adaptation. Trump, it concludes, traded away much of the war’s gains against Iran, along with U.S. deterrence and Washington’s ability to project power globally, in what the author calls a historic missed opportunity.
