DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Thewar with Iran, for all its complexity andglobal effects, boils down to a single question: Who can take the pain the longest?
A surge in oil prices points to what may be Iran’s most effective weapon and the United States’ biggest vulnerability in continuing the campaign:damaging the world economy. A sharp rise in gas prices hasrattled consumersand financial markets, and international travel and shipping have been severely disrupted.
U.S. President Donald Trump appears aware of the danger. As oil jumped to nearly $120 a barrel on Monday, the highest since 2022, he suggestedthe war would be “short-term.”That helped reassure markets and the price eased to around $90 — even as Trump, nearly in the same breath, vowed to keep up the war and the punishment on Iran.
On the other side, Iran has to endure a near-constant stream of American and Israeli airstrikes it can’t defend against. So far, the Islamic Republic is still in control, withleadership passingfrom the ayatollah slain in the war’s opening strikes to his son. Although its military has been hit extensively, it continues to launch missiles and drones across the region.
The Iranian public, which already rose up against its theocracy in nationwide protests in January, stillboils in angerbut have stayed home as they try to survive the heavy bombardment. Security forces have been on the street every day to ensure no anti-government demonstrations form.
The pressure is on U.S. allies as well. Gulf Arab states, while still not combatants in the war, face seemingly unending and occasionally fatal Iranian fire targeting oil fields, cities and critical water works. And Israel, while boasting of inflicting heavy damage on Iran’s missile program and other military targets, continues to be targeted by sophisticated Iranian missiles that send a buckshot-like spray of high explosives on its cities. Frequent air-raid sirens have disrupted daily life, closed schools and workplaces and created a tense atmosphere across the region.
There’s no immediate end to the war in sight — nor in the rhetoric coming from both America and Iran, whose bad blood extends back decades to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis.
“We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough,” Trump said in a speech Monday in Doral, Florida. “We go forward, more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long running danger once and for all.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry official Kazem Gharibabadi offered a mirror image comment from Tehran, boasting that the Islamic Republic had rejected contacts about a ceasefire that he said had come from China, France, Russia and others.
“At the moment, we hold the upper hand,” Gharibabadi told Iranian state television late Monday night. “Just look at the state of the global economy and energy markets — it has been very painful for them.”
Source: Drudge Report
