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Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Iran’s Leaders Can Afford to Be Patient

 

Iran’s Leaders Can Afford to Be Patient


Women wearing full-length black body coverings stand with a large portrait of Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

By Jennifer Kavanagh

Ms. Kavanagh is director of military analysis at Defense Priorities.

It shouldn’t have been surprising when President Trump announced on April 12that the United States would begin a blockade of Iranian ports to force Tehran to accept a peace deal.

Mr. Trump prides himself on being unpredictable. But he is a creature of habit, and blockades have quickly emerged as one of his preferred military tactics since his return to the White House. He has already used them against Venezuela and Cuba. Now his administration has expanded the Iran embargo, and started to seize Iran-linked ships on the high seas.

Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz was not the reason the United States started this war. Before the conflict, traffic passed freely through the narrow waterway. But Tehran’s effective closure of the strait since the United States and Israel attacked two months ago has emerged as the war’s most bedeviling problem and one Mr. Trump is desperate to fix. He hopes that by instituting a blockade of his own, he can choke Iran’s economy and force the country’s leaders to reopen the strait and accept Washington’s terms of surrender.

This is unlikely to work for the same reasons the United States finds itself facing strategic defeat by a weaker adversary: a mismatch of stakes and time horizons. While Iran has gained the upper hand in this conflict by extending and surviving what it considers an existential war, Mr. Trump wants a fast and decisive victory, something a blockade cannot deliver. A blockade may impose costs on Iran’s economy and population, but it will not deal the quick knockout blow the Trump administration seeks.

Blockades are designed to work slowly, with pressure accumulating over time. At the beginning of the American Civil War, for example, President Abraham Lincoln ordered a blockade of ports across the Confederacy, targeting some 3,500 miles of coastline. It had the desired effect, eventually cutting Southern cotton exports by as much as 90 percent and severely damaging the Southern economy. But it did not result in a rapid end to the war: Fighting between North and South continued for four years.

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A similar story played out during the British naval blockade of Germany in World War I. Instituted almost immediately after the war began in 1914, it aimed to limit Germany’s access to essentials like food and medicine and matériel that might support the war effort. The blockade imposed severe hardship on the German people, contributing to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, and hampered military operations. But Germany did not immediately surrender. The war endured until the end of 1918.

That blockades often fail to quickly change an adversary’s behavior is something Mr. Trump and his advisers should know. Earlier this year, the United States started interdicting oil shipments to Cuba in an effort to force Havana to make political and economic concessions. The island is now on the brink of humanitarian collapse, but the Cuban regime has yet to yield. The U.S. blockade of Venezuela’s oil exports was similarly ineffective: Mr. Trump announced it in December 2025, part of a monthslong pressure campaign to force President Nicolás Maduro to step down. When a few weeks of blockadefailed to elicit any compromise, Mr. Trump had to escalate further, seizing Mr. Maduro and his wife in a dangerous military raid.

Iran may prove even more resilient. The blockade has reduced the country’s oil revenues to a fraction of their prewar levels, but it is likely to be some time before the consequences become untenable for Iran’s regime. In the near term, Tehran will continue to receive oil revenue from shipments that left its ports weeks ago, and at least 34 tankers with links to Iran appear to have slipped through the blockade. These and any future successful exports can be sold at higher prices, which may continue to rise as the war drags on.

To prevent this, the administration has said the U.S. military will pursue any ship helping Iran, anywhere in the world, a move that is of ambiguous legality under international law. To meet the legal standard, any blockade must be deemed “effective,” meaning it is carried out with enough military power to be consistently and impartially enforced; have clearly defined geographic limits; and include provisions for humanitarian relief. The expanded U.S. blockade meets none of these requirements. It has no geographic boundaries or humanitarian provisions, and the U.S. Navy’s limited capacity to interdict container ships and tankers means it will have to choose which cargoes to intercept or focus on specific regions. It cannot, therefore, be “effective.” In the end, most Iranian oil shipments that are already at sea will almost certainly make it to their destinations.

At home, Iran has other ways to mitigate the effects of the blockade. Recent estimates suggest Iran has about 90 million barrels of available oil storage capacity, enough for at least two months of production, before it must make production cuts that risk permanent damage to its oil infrastructure. Tehran also has reserves of food and other essentials, and land-based trade routes that it can fall back on if needed for imports of some commodities and even some oil exports. Iran can likely endure the U.S. blockade for months without facing economic collapse. Even then, its leaders might choose to fight on rather than agree to American terms they perceive as a compromise of Iranian sovereignty.

For Mr. Trump, this timeline is likely to be unacceptable. His impatience with the war is evident in his increasingly erratic Truth Social posts and near-constant assertions that the war is already over.

His sense of urgency is understandable. Not only is the war deeply unpopular in the United States, but its effects on the American and global economies are real — and likely to grow. The longer the impasse lasts, the more severe fuel and fertilizer shortages will become across East Asia and Europe, and the more Gulf state oil exporters will suffer. A prolonged blockade will also push global oil prices higher, increasing U.S. inflation and torpedoing Mr. Trump’s affordability pitch in the upcoming midterm elections.

Instead of stripping Iran of its most important source of leverage — control of the Strait of Hormuz — Mr. Trump’s blockade may play into the Islamic republic’s hands. The blockade harms Iran’s economic future, but may lead to a longer, costlier war for the United States, severe and lasting damage to U.S. and global markets and further domestic political damage for Mr. Trump.

In a test of wills, Tehran has the advantage and a higher pain tolerance. With their survival on the line, Iran’s leaders can afford to be patient.“

Donald Trump’s Triumphal Arch and the Architecture of Autocracy

 

Donald Trump’s Triumphal Arch and the Architecture of Autocracy

“When asked by a reporter whom the arch would be for, Trump said, “Me.”

An illustration of Donald Trump inside the shape of a ornate arch.

The latest in the Trumpite series of proposed oversized buildings—the previous one being a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House once stood, a project that a federal judge temporarily halted last Thursday, until an appeals court put his preliminary injunction on hold on Friday—is a so-called triumphal arch, though exactly what triumph so needs an arch is unclear. Standing at two hundred and fifty feet high, presumably for the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it would be more than twice as tall as the Lincoln Memorial, views of which it would block from its proposed site, near Arlington National Cemetery—where it would also overwhelm the simple graves of the fallen soldiers.

The plans for the arch were preliminarily approved last week by the Commission of Fine Arts, which is now completely inhabited by Donald Trump’s appointees, the previous members having stepped down or been fired for the crime of competence last year. The arch, designed by Nicolas Charbonneau, who leads Harrison Design’s Sacred Architecture Studio, in Washington, D.C., will feature a Las Vegas-style overload of gilded iconography, including a winged Lady Liberty, eagles, and, unusually for an American monument, lions. (Why not Siegfried and Roy’s tigers?)“

To Iran, Trump Blinked First by Extending the Cease-Fire

 

To Iran, Trump Blinked First by Extending the Cease-Fire

“President Trump announced an indefinite cease-fire with Iran, allowing time for Iran to respond to American demands. Iran believes it can withstand the economic impact of the U.S. blockade longer than Trump can tolerate the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. While Iran’s leadership may endure the standoff, the prolonged conflict is causing significant economic hardship for its people.

Iran’s leaders believe that they can withstand an enduring standoff longer than President Trump. The strategy could be economically devastating for average Iranians.

People on a street in Tehran.
An Iran expert said the major impediment to negotiations restarting was the same as it was before talks — both countries see themselves as having the advantage.Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

In the days before proposed talks aimed at ending the war between them, President Trump and Iran’s leaders exchanged a barrage of threats and insults that played out like a high-stakes game of chicken.

In the end — at least, from Iran’s perspective — Mr. Trump blinked first.

Late on Tuesday, with neither Iranian nor American mediators having traveled to Pakistan for a second round of peace talks, Mr. Trump announced an indefinite cease-fire with Iran. He said it was to give Iran’s leadership time to submit a response to American demands and would last until “discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”

For Iranian leaders, that result will most likely validate their conviction that their readiness to endure the pain of the war is higher than Mr. Trump’s.

Despite the vast destruction caused by U.S.-Israeli strikes on their country, they believe that they can withstand the increasingly costly U.S. blockade of Iranian ports longer than Mr. Trump is willing to countenance Iran’s effective closure of the vital Strait of Hormuz.

“The Iranians measure the timeline in months for themselves, and in weeks for the Trump administration and the global economy,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group. “They think Trump can’t tolerate the strait remaining closed for another three weeks.”

Since the war began, Iran has been blocking most of the shipping traffic that previously moved about one-fifth of the world’s oil and a substantial amount of natural gas supplies through the strait. The impact was felt around the world, not just in rising oil prices, but in fertilizer and gas shortages. Rising gas prices in the United States also create a domestic problem for Mr. Trump in a crucial midterm election year.

After a first round of talks between Iranian and American negotiators in Islamabad, Pakistan, ended without results, Mr. Trump imposed a retaliatory U.S. naval blockade to try to prevent vessels heading to or from Iran, blocking Tehran’s ability to continue the oil exports that underpin its economy.

The reasons for the collapse of the talks remain unclear. Mr. Trump has blamed it on a “seriously fractured” Iranian leadership, unable to agree on its position before negotiations. Iranian officials argue that it is because Mr. Trump had refused to lift the U.S. blockade before talks, with American forces also seizing an Iranian-flagged ship over the weekend.

“Blockading Iranian ports is an act of war and thus a violation of the ceasefire,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote on social media late on Tuesday, as it became apparent that no one was heading to Islamabad. “Striking a commercial vessel and taking its crew hostage is an even greater violation,” he continued. “Iran knows how to neutralize restrictions, how to defend its interests and how to resist bullying.”

Throughout the war, Iran has used mocking memes and videos to try to convey superiority and indifference in the face of Mr. Trump’s threats. Early on Wednesday in Iran, after Mr. Trump said the cease-fire would be extended, many Iranian semiofficial news sites posted the same mock video of an angry Mr. Trump, threatening to bomb Iran, and of his American mediators sitting in an empty negotiating room. The Iranian counterparts, who never arrive, instead deliver a piece of paper that reads: “Trump, shut up.”

Abdolrasool Divsallar, an Iran expert at the Catholic University of Milan, said the major impediment to negotiations restarting was the same as it was before talks began — both countries see themselves as having the advantage and being able to dictate terms.

“The Iran side views their ability to prevent the U.S. operation from achieving its objectives as a victory,” he said. “They assume the Trump administration may not have any other good alternatives and that time will favor them if they hold on in this status quo.”

While Iran’s leadership may be able to survive the standoff with Washington, its economy may not, analysts warn. Iran’s economy was already in deep crisis before the war, causing suffering that set off a huge nationwide protest movement in January that was crushed in a deadly crackdown.

Even if Iran’s leaders can push through the economic pain, it will come at a huge cost to its people. On social media, Iranians post daily about immense job layoffs, and about fears over medicine and plastic shortages after U.S.-Israeli strikes hit critical infrastructure.

“The Iranian regime only cares about its survival, not about its people suffering, and it does still see this as an existential battle with the United States,” said Mr. Vaez of the International Crisis Group. “And that’s why it’s not going to blink, regardless of how much the Iranian people suffer.”

Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting“

(DNA Reveals The Gullah Geechee People Were Never Who We Thought — It Changes Black History Forever - YouTube

"Yes, unambiguously so. Clarence Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia, and his family were descendants of enslaved people who spoke the creole language Gullah as a first language.

Pin Point was settled in 1896 by former slaves from Ossabaw, Green, and Skidaway Islands — a self-sustaining community that created their own school and church and ran coastal industries including shrimping, crabbing, and oyster harvesting. Pin Point was home to many from the Gullah-Geechee community, including Thomas.

Thomas himself has spoken about this identity. In his own words: "When I was 16, I was sitting as the only black kid in my class, and I had grown up speaking a kind of a dialect. It's called Geechee. Some people call it Gullah now, and people praise it now. But they used to make fun of us back then... I would correct myself midsentence. I was trying to speak standard English."

The Gullah-Geechee trace their roots to the rice-growing regions of West Africa — brought as captives from Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia to the Atlantic coast, where they worked the indigo, rice, and cotton fields.

There's an interesting cultural and political footnote here: Marquetta Goodwine, known as Queen Quet among the Gullah-Geechee people, has expressed disappointment that Thomas hasn't used his platform to champion his native culture more openly, feeling he remains somewhat ashamed of it.

It's a remarkable and often overlooked biographical fact — the longest-serving current Supreme Court Justice grew up in one of the most culturally distinct and historically isolated African-descended communities in the United States, one that preserved West African language and traditions across centuries largely because of their geographic isolation along the Sea Islands and coastal lowcountry." --- Claude

DNA Reveals The Gullah Geechee People Were Never Who We Thought — It Changes Black History Forever - YouTube

What DNA Revealed About Angela Davis's TRUE Ancestry Contradicts Everything She Stood For - YouTube