There’s a pretty good piece in Foreign Affairs this week called “Why America Can’t Strangle Iran.” It’s by Columbia-educated Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, who teaches international studies in Johns Hopkins’s European program.

An expert of sorts on sanctions and a scholar of Iranian political economy, Batmanghelidj argues that by focusing on macroeconomic indicators like GDP, inflation rates and the collapsing value of the rial, successive US administrations blinded themselves to the micro-level dynamics that’ve allowed the regime to weather a very long storm.

Macro indicators, Batmanghelidj wrote, provide “a financial view of the economy” when what’s needed in this instance is “a functional view” that assesses the situation “at the firm and household level.” That functional view, he said, makes clear why deteriorating growth and soaring inflation haven’t “led to Iran’s capitulation.”

In the piece, Batmanghelidj notes that the regime simply “offload[ed] much of the economic pain onto ordinary Iranians,” which in turn means US economic pressure campaigns end up “immiserat[ing] most of the country’s people, but [not] strangl[ing] the Islamic Republic itself.”

Local firms, which long ago learned to hold inventories covering as much as 200 days as a cushion against disruptions and inflation, raised prices to consumers in the face of higher costs. As the war continued, those price hikes “led to demand destruction [as] Iranian households, embattled by years of persistent inflation, began to consume less,” Batmanghelidj wrote.

Although the likes of Bagher Ghalibaf and Masoud Pezeshkian have expressed sympathy with the plight of everyday Iranians, the regime “has thus far failed to intervene to control rising prices,” Batmanghelidj said, in the same piece, noting that the government’s even debated the idea of “eliminati[ng] cash transfers and energy subsidies for large portions of the population.”

Demand destruction, Batmanghelidj went on, has thus “acted as a form of rationing, providing a structured way for Iranian political and economic elites to push the costs of the war and sanctions onto ordinary people.”

There are of course limits to that approach, but according to Batmanghelidj, Iran’s nowhere close to hitting them. Monthly inflation, for example, is “just” 10%. That’d be enough to bring out the torches and pitchforks in America (particularly if it applied to Little Debbie cakes and Mountain Dew), but it’s “a long way from the kind of hyperinflation that will make the government’s strategy untenable” in Iran, Batmanghelidj suggested.

Consider that some useful context for what, so far anyway, is yet another failed attempt on the part of the US to throttle the IRGC. Nearly three weeks on from Scott Bessent’s “economic D-Day” announcement, the Guards are taking pot shots at US warships, quite possibly with targeting assistance from Moscow and Beijing.

Following the destruction of the “regular” Iranian army, the Guards shouldn’t be able to “see” those vessels. The fact that they can is a problem. They haven’t hit anything yet, but there were some “close calls” in recent days, according to sources who spoke to the American media.

The Pentagon responded this week with a series of strikes on Iranian oil tankers. Four such vessels were blown up late Tuesday, three in the Gulf of Oman and one near Kharg Island.

Brent topped $100 on Wednesday amid the fire and brimstone. The situation’s all the more tense in light of escalating tensions in Yemen, where Saudi-backed government forces are attempting to retake strategic cities from the Houthis, including the capital, Sanaa.

This whole thing by now is dumber than a bag of hammers. Trump should’ve taken the win after the original four-week bombing campaign with Israel. They killed the leadership and wiped out Iran’s conventional military capabilities. Israel wasn’t ever going to let it go at that, but Trump could’ve and should’ve. I said as much repeatedly.

Instead, the US is fighting a war of attrition with Ali Khamenei’s Praetorian Guard, which doesn’t give a goddamn about everyday Iranians. And the clock’s ticking down to the mid-terms.

Can Trump (and Bessent) starve the regime out? Sure. Maybe. Eventually. But it’ll take forever. I initially assumed, like a lot of other observers, that once you physically cut off the oil revenue by blockading Kharg and forcing well shut-ins, the likes of Ahmad Vahidi would listen to reason, particularly given that the voice of that reason was (and still is) Ghalibaf, an IRGC lifer in his own right and a man whose hardline credentials are unimpeachable.

But I was wrong. Neither the “active-duty,” if you will, IRGC high command nor other critical powerbrokers, like Ali Jafari and Mohsen Rezaei, are trying to hear it.

Late Tuesday, an exasperated Trump blamed the Iranian people. “I’m not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table. I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement,” he said. “I like our position now much better. [T]heir economy [is] totally collapsing. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?”

Somewhere, Khamenei the elder laughed.