PNN – More than a billion barrels of oil have been wiped off the global market, and traffic has fallen by 96 percent; and this is the result of the confrontation between Iran and the United States in the “game of mutual pain” that began with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, deepened by the US blockade, and now affects the entire world economy. Which side will win this game? Tehran is inflicting more pain or America? The latest assessment of the New York Times is this: The war has made Donald Trump “hostage to Iran.”
According to the report of Pakistan News Network; More than a billion barrels of oil have been wiped off the global market, and traffic has fallen by 96 percent; and this is the result of the confrontation between Iran and the United States in the “game of mutual pain” that began with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, deepened by the US blockade, and now affects the entire global economy. Which side will win in this game? Tehran is inflicting more pain or America? The latest assessment by the New York Times is this: The war has made Donald Trump “hostage to Iran.” “Only five ships pass through on average every day,” is the summary of the current state of the Strait of Hormuz, where the average daily traffic before the war was 140 ships, but now the global economy is losing about 13 million barrels of oil a day. According to Energy Intelligence calculations, the total cumulative loss of oil from the six Arab countries bordering the Persian Gulf will exceed one billion barrels by the first week of May 2026, that is, in three days. In the “game of mutual pain” that Iran and the United States have launched against each other, who has the bigger chest?!
Since October 1987, when the US military attacked Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf during the Iraq War, Tehran has shown that inflicting economic pain cannot determine the outcome of a confrontation with Iran. On April 15, the day after ordering the blockade of Iran, Donald Trump said in a television interview that the blockade was “absolutely extraordinary” and “stronger than expected,” and then on April 22, he wrote on the social media platform Truth Social that the US Sixth Fleet “has complete control of the Strait of Hormuz.” Two days later, the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush joined the three ships in the area, and as CENTCOM said, since April 13, the US Navy has ordered the return of 38 Iranian-linked ships; but Lloyd’s List data shows that during the same period, at least 34 ships from Iran’s “shadow fleet” have broken the blockade.
10% pressure: High but bearable
Iran is still known as an oil-rich country, but the truth is that US sanctions, which began in the mid-1990s and have intensified over the past two decades, have forced Iranian authorities to reduce their reliance on oil. According to the latest report from the Iranian Statistical Center, the oil and gas sector’s share of GDP in 1403 was 24.7 percent, or about a quarter. However, the US blockade does not mean that Iran will lose a quarter of its revenues. Rosemary Kalanick, director of the Middle East program at the Washington-based Center for Defense Priorities, believes that even if oil exports were completely cut off, the damage would be limited to a maximum of 10 percent of Iran’s GDP. “Even if the blockade cuts off all oil trade, which it won’t, the maximum damage could be 10 percent of GDP,” says Kalanick. “That’s a big loss for peacetime, but not too bad considering Iran is at war.” Kalanick believes Ukraine has lost 20 percent of its GDP after a full-scale Russian attack in 2022. “If Iran is hurt, the damage to the southern Gulf countries will definitely be greater,” says economic analyst Saeed Lailaz. “The economies of Kuwait and Qatar are 80 to 90 percent dependent on oil, but Iran has been preparing for this day for years.”
Getting around with the “Shadow Fleet” and terrestrial geography
Over the past decade, Iran has built up a “Shadow Fleet” of tankers that do not use Western insurance or certification. Now those vessels are sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, while its rivals are blocked from the vital waterway. According to Middle East Eye, Iran has managed to export an average of 1.02 million barrels of oil per day since the war began. Tankers with names like the Nikki, which sailed through the strait on April 24 under an Iranian flag and without a destination, are emblematic of this situation. Tactics such as disabling transmitters, spoofing, and shifting cargo at sea have made it difficult for even the most modern American ships to detect.
Geopolitics may be even more important in this battle. Iran, with 8,000 kilometers of shared borders with its neighbors, has an annual border trade of $50 billion. According to the Times of India, Iran is activating a network of north-south corridors from the Caspian Sea to the Chinese railway, connecting to Central Asia and China through Pakistan’s Gwadar port. It was recently announced that the 117-kilometer Mahirud to Farah route in Afghanistan, which remained unfinished for years due to lack of credit and security issues, is on the verge of completion with 93 percent progress and an injection of 3.5 million euros in the 14th government, which shows Iran’s capacity to neutralize Trump’s naval blockade.
“Toolbox” of adaptation in difficult circumstances
The United States began imposing economic sanctions on Iran in the late 1970s, intensified them in the 1990s, and, starting around 2010, Barack Obama escalated them. Those like Miad Maliki, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former senior sanctions strategist at the U.S. Treasury Department, argue that the blockade, currency crisis, and damage to key export sectors have squeezed Iran faster than its adversaries. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), asks: The real question is: which country, America or Iran, has the capacity to tolerate more pain?
It is undeniable that Iran is paying a heavy price for its economy, but after 39 days of unprecedented war with the US and Israel, many experts are convinced that Iran is more resilient than its rivals. Researchers Consin and Parksley of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) have described the current situation as “a war of endurance, not firepower,” saying that Iran is using the Strait of Hormuz to increase global costs and is betting that it can outpace the political will of the US.
Richard Haas, a foreign policy adviser to George W. Bush, believes: “Iran was much more resilient and inventive than he (Trump) was prepared for. Almost every assumption the administration made has been wrong.” Hadi Kohlzadeh, a research fellow at the Center for Global Development and Sustainability at Brandeis University, explained that Iran has built up a “sanctions compliance toolbox” over recent decades, especially after 2010: Diversification of the economy, reduction of dependence on imports of strategic raw materials, non-dollar financial channels (the Star System, etc.), and the shadow fleet. All of these have come to Iran’s aid in the current situation. Salvatore Mercogliano, a professor of maritime history at Campbell University in North Carolina, says: Sieges are usually just one of the tools of the mechanism used in a conflict. They can be important. But it is only one element; and I do not think it will be enough to convince the Iranians. Andreas Craig of King’s College London writes in The Independent that Iran can withstand this kind of pressure more than most outsiders are willing to admit, and that it will strengthen the Iranian leadership.