From Classical Confrontation to Geoeconomic Deadlock; Dissecting the Second Phase of the Iran-U.S. War

Iran’s Naval Blockade in the Strait of Hormuz: From Economic Pressure to Global Crisis Contagion

The naval blockade against Iran—which has effectively already begun—can, at the tactical level, swiftly target the main flow of Tehran’s foreign currency revenues, given that over 90% of its foreign trade and the bulk of its oil exports pass through the Persian Gulf. Disruption along this route could generate daily losses of up to roughly $435 million and, in the short term, even lead to a halt in oil production due to limited storage capacity. However, at the strategic level, the core issue is not the “initial effectiveness” but rather the “sustainability and management of consequences”—since this blockade is being imposed at a global chokepoint through which about 20% of the world’s energy flow transits. Any disruption there would directly translate into higher energy prices, global inflation, and pressure on energy-importing economies, particularly in Asia.

This interdependence transforms the blockade from a unilateral leverage tool into a “crisis contagion mechanism,” whose costs are transferred to third parties and gradually generate reverse political pressure on Washington. On the other hand, effective implementation of the blockade demands a continuous and extensive naval presence, preparedness to intercept non-Iranian vessels, and acceptance of the risk of confrontation with major powers such as China—a fact which, as analyses explicitly state, turns this operation into an open-ended military commitment that is, in the medium term, “unsustainable.” Furthermore, legal constraints arising from the transit passage regime in the Strait of Hormuz effectively rule out the possibility of complete closure, and any effort to extend the blockade to third-party ships would raise the threshold of conflict from a bilateral to a multilateral level. Consequently, in the current situation, the naval blockade should be analyzed not as a definitive solution, but rather as a pressure instrument with short-term functionality and long-term uncontrollable repercussions—one that, while capable of severely pressuring Iran’s economy in its initial phase, will in all likelihood, over a longer horizon, lead to the erosion of America’s strategic capacity and credibility due to the networked nature of the energy economy and operational limitations. In any case, the issue of the naval blockade of Iran and its feasibility in strategic terms is analyzed as follows:

Attrition in the “Endless” Mission: Pentagon experts warn that a full blockade of Iran’s ports and coastlines would constitute a massive military operation with no time ceiling. America’s geographic distance and the need for a permanent naval presence render this mission “unsustainable” logistically in the medium and long term, to the point that the U.S. military would effectively lack the capability to fully cover all trade exchanges across such a vast geographical area.

The Industrial Self-Sanction Trap: Contrary to initial assumptions, this blockade targets the U.S. defense industry even more than Iran. The obstruction of sea lanes halts the trade of critical mineral commodities such as sulfur, which is essential for copper and cobalt extraction. This crisis severely diminishes America’s ability to “repair battle-damaged equipment” and “produce jet engines and drones,” while driving up input prices by as much as 165%.

Economic Deadlock and Shifting Objectives: A daily cost of $2 billion, with a projected total expenditure of up to $1 trillion, coupled with the inability to eliminate Iran’s underground military capabilities, is pushing Washington toward a strategy of “graceful exit.” In practice, America’s geographic distance and the vulnerability of allied supply chains have minimized Washington’s resilience in the face of a war of attrition.

Return to Direct Clash between Iran and the United States: From Tactical Pause to the Likelihood of a War of Attrition

A return to direct confrontation between Iran and the United States depends less on sheer political will than on the disruption of the fragile balance now established between the costs of continuing the war and the costs of retreating. From the American perspective, the main precondition for resuming hostilities is that the naval blockade, economic pressure, and limited airstrike threats fail to compel Tehran to accept Washington’s preferred arrangements—particularly given that, according to available sources, Iran, despite enduring heavy military blows, has not collapsed; rather, it has emerged from the first phase with more uncompromising leadership, buried reserves of enriched uranium, and greater political cohesion. Conversely, from Iran’s standpoint, the condition for re-entering direct war is that Washington or Israel crosses the line from deterrence and pressure into infrastructure warfare, high-level assassinations, intensified blockade, or attempts to impose “unconditional surrender”—because, based on field data in Tehran, the prevailing assessment is that any ceasefire without credible guarantees would merely be a pause for a renewed attack within a shorter interval. For this reason, Iran’s planning horizon is not focused on a quick end to the war, but on readiness for a months-long, attritional conflict. Under such circumstances, the second phase of the war will most likely manifest not as a large-scale ground invasion, but as a hybrid, escalating form of combat.

The characteristics of this conflict can be outlined as follows: expansion of strikes on Iran’s economic and energy infrastructure by the U.S. and Israel, and in response, reciprocal Iranian attacks on energy facilities, refineries, ports, shipping routes, and American and allied interests in the region—a pattern whose early signs have already been observed in strikes on Assaluyeh, disruptions to Qatar’s LNG capacity, and threats to navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. The decisive point, however, is that the U.S. also faces serious deterrent obstacles to re-entering an unlimited war. In other words, according to some estimates, the cost of war has reached approximately $2 billion per day and could exceed $1 trillion, while the blockade of Hormuz itself places pressure on America’s own defense supply chain, with West Point assessments even describing it as a “pre-logistics crisis” for replenishing equipment and munitions. Hence, the most probable scenario is that, if negotiations fail again, the second phase of the war will not be a lightning offensive, but a multi-level war of attrition, in which the U.S. seeks, without engaging in ground occupation, to incrementally raise the economic and infrastructural costs for Iran, while Iran, relying on the survival of its missile capacity, the Hormuz leverage, and its ability to generate regional insecurity, raises the costs of continued conflict for the U.S., its allies, and the global economy. Thus, the central issue in returning to direct hostilities is not the mere feasibility of initiating war, but each side’s capacity to endure the consequences of its second phase.

Validating NATO’s Confrontation with the U.S.: Genuine Rupture or Structural Dependency?

The claim of “NATO confronting the U.S.” reflects, more than an operational scenario, a transition from a value-based alliance to an asymmetric and “transactional” security order. The 2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy, with its absolute prioritization of homeland defense and deterrence of China in the Indo-Pacific region, has reduced NATO to a secondary instrument, placing the main burden of conventional defense against Russia on European allies. This paradigm shift, combined with Washington’s pressure to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP, has deepened the rifts inherited from the first Trump era to the level of a “crisis of strategic trust,” where analysts at think tanks such as Brookings and the IISS regard unilateral U.S. actions as undermining the foundations of Western deterrence.

The February 2026 war in Iran and the crisis over the proposal to annex Greenland have acted as key accelerators of this operational divergence. The joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, conducted without sufficient consultation with Brussels, triggered a bipolar reaction across Europe. While countries such as Spain, deeming the war illegal, refused to provide their bases (Rota and Morón) or airspace to U.S. forces, Washington threatened to suspend their membership or sever trade relations entirely, thereby challenging NATO’s cohesion. Simultaneously, the U.S. insistence on acquiring Greenland and the threat of imposing 25% tariffs on European goods have been legally interpreted as violations of Article 1 of the Washington Treaty, and for the first time, intelligence services of long-standing allies such as Denmark were compelled to factor the United States in as a “potential security risk” in their calculations. Despite these unprecedented tensions, structural limitations preclude an outright institutional confrontation, since the 1949 treaty lacks a mechanism for expelling or counteracting members, and Article 13 only provides for voluntary withdrawal. As a result, Europe’s reaction is proceeding not through direct confrontation within NATO, but through the “gradual Europeanization of security” and the activation of parallel structures now taking shape. The “Readiness 2030” plan—with its €800 billion budget and the SAFE financial instrument for joint arms procurement prioritizing European industries—alongside the drafting of the EU’s “Article 42.7 Handbook” as a substitute for NATO’s Article 5, signals a serious effort to manage dependency on America and prepare for the scenario of a potential U.S. exit from the alliance. This process, rather than collapse, has given rise to a “realist NATO,” in which raw power and European defense autonomy replace earlier idealism.

With the breakdown of negotiations, the likelihood of NATO’s formal entry into war remains near zero, owing to the firm opposition of countries such as Spain and Italy and the lack of consensus over the legal legitimacy of operations. The economic costs arising from $106 oil and a monthly financial burden of €3 billion for Europe, coupled with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, severely constrain the allies’ financial capacity for a protracted conflict. Militarily, the rapid depletion of U.S. interceptor missile stockpiles (e.g., THAAD and SM-3)—which would take up to six years to replenish—has confronted Washington with a “munitions gap” and weakened NATO’s readiness to defend other fronts. Under these conditions, the most plausible scenario is the continuation of unilateral U.S. intervention with limited support from certain specific allies, alongside the acceleration of European defense independence plans (such as Readiness 2030) to decouple from Washington’s security orbit.

The Bab al-Mandab Strait and Its Impact in the Second Phase of the Conflict

In the second phase of the war, the Bab al-Mandab Strait could function as a “complementary chokepoint” and Iran’s most significant strategic leverage mechanism, since Tehran is capable of transforming a regional crisis into an international geoeconomic blockade by affecting 12% of global trade and 22% of container traffic.

Based on analyses from think tanks such as the Israeli regime’s National Security Studies Institute and Al Jazeera, Iran—through its allied proxy Ansarallah—possesses not only the capability to block alternative energy export routes—such as the East-West pipeline in Saudi Arabia that delivers oil to Yanbu port, which still requires passage through this strait to reach Asia—but also, by forcing vessels to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, it has increased shipping companies’ operational costs by up to $50 million per week and created the risk of oil prices spiking to $150–200 per barrel.