On October 30th 1974, the world was treated to a boxing spectacle for the ages in Kinshasa. The legendary ‘Rumble in the Jungle ’ saw Muhammad Ali turn the strengths of the formidable George Foreman back against the reigning champion. You see, Ali leant back into the ropes of the ring to absorb his stronger opponent’s blows to tire him out before going on the offensive himself.
As Ali approached the moment in which he delivered the coup de grâce, he whispered in Foreman’s ear ‘That all you got, George?’. Foreman later attested that those words, as he was running on empty, had a massive psychological impact on him in the closing rounds of the match. He had given all he had and it just wasn’t enough.
Ali’s crafty approach is one of the most famous examples of the ‘rope-a-dope’ strategy. As with all the best strategies, it isn’t limited strictly to boxing either. Cast your eyes, if you will, to the Strait of Hormuz where Donald Trump and the United States remain locked in a stagnating war with the Islamic Republic of Iran to see the rope-a-dope in full flow.
The parallels seem to write themselves, no? The United States stands in for Foreman in this metaphor, a big, massive powerhouse whose doctrine of victory in warfare is overwhelming power delivered as rapidly as possible to crush the enemy. And I guess that would make Iran the Muhammad Ali of this situation, the underdog opponent forced to intelligently plan their response.
The reason I am making the comparison is that I don’t think any one of us expected to be here, over six months after the United States declared war on Iran. Given the state the Iranian regime was in following the January protests and the degradation of the state’s military forces as a result of the Twelve-Day-War, the odds seemed to be in the United States’ favour. If there was ever a moment TO attack, late February was it.
Of course, that presumes that attacking was a good idea. As the past six months have shown, it was probably the stupidest decision Donald Trump has ever made…and this is the man who effectively ceded the green energy revolution to the United States’ greatest geopolitical competitor because he has a personal aversion to windmills so it had some stiff competition.
I have already written about my perspective on how Trump arrived at that decision in a previous post. My original plan was to return to this topic once an outcome had been settled upon which, at the time, seemed faintly plausible given the memorandum of understanding that had been reached. But while that deal has come unstuck it did not lead to the restarting of the shooting war. Instead the two nations have become locked into a holding pattern. The possibility has thus emerged, as with Gaza, that there IS going to be no dramatic resolution to this conflict and that what we are witnessing is the emergence of a new, highly unstable status quo that could endure for years or fracture tomorrow.
To try and break the deadlock the United States has reimposed its blockade on Iranian shipments of oil and it has announced an ‘economic D-Day’ against Iran to be known as Operation Economic Outcast. This is intended to crush the increasingly fragile Iranian economy (which really is in dire straits if you will pardon the phrasing).
In other words, rather than firing missiles, the US administration has returned to the well-worn tool of imposing sanctions on an enemy state to compel a change in that country’s behavior.
It really is hard to know where to start with this given just how flawed an approach it is.
Let’s call this what it plainly is. It is a desperation move. Trump is using sanctions because kinetic warfare has not delivered him the quick victory he clearly thought was in the offing and this is a manifestation of his frustration. And the President is most definitely frustrated; there are reports in multiple outlets, such as ‘the New Republic’ where he was ‘overheard roaring and cursing inside the Oval Office, “unleashing a series of expletives” while referring to Iran’s leadership as “scumbags” and “lunatics”.
It seems he genuinely didn’t believe it would be this hard and that all it would take to enforce American will was the application of American power. Except Iran has figuratively leant into the ropes and absorbed the punishment America dispensed. The United States may have the world’s mightiest military but even its capacities are not infinite. According to US Secretary of War (an affectation whose performative machismo tells you all you need to know about this administration really) Pete Hegseth, the war has cost the United States some $37.5 billion as of late July 2026. Not only that, the US has exhausted a considerable amount of its munition stockpiles in this conflict as this article from the Council on Foreign Relations makes clear. As that report says…
“Stories that Operation Epic Fury has depleted U.S. weapons stocks have dominated the headlines in recent weeks. Things have gotten so bad that the Pentagon has transferred weapons stored in Asia and Europe to replenish stockpiles in the Middle East. Even then, a shortage of missile interceptors reportedly persuaded President Donald Trump last month to call off plans for a major attack on Iran.”
This has had real world consequences.
The reason we are hearing more about successful Russian ballistic missile strikes in Ukraine leading to mass casualties (including a strike on a warehouse outside Kyiv that has killed at least 37 people that occurred as I was writing this piece)? Because Ukraine has run out of many of the advanced interceptors Washington (begrudgingly) supplied and Washington cannot resupply them because they can’t, too many have been used in the Middle East and Washington needs to husband its remaining stockpiles and spend years replenishing what has been expended.
Or what about the curtailment of the joint US-South Korean military exercises during September? Partly it is down to Trump once again desiring to rebuild his relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un but it is also partly because the US military likely cannot afford to use the munitions required for the exercises. Critical defences have also been moved from East Asia to the Middle East to shore up defence for both American bases and American allies. Both China and Russia have noticed this, and that is deeply worrying given Russia seems to be up something.
And then we had the entire farrago over the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln which spent over 250 days at sea, utterly exhausting the crew and flooding the US with stories of deplorable living standards and mental health crises on board. Trump of course dismissed the reports from the families of those serving, indicating he thought that the vessel hadn’t been deployed ‘not nearly long enough’. That is has finally been rotated out with another carrier taking its place seems to be in response to the anger back in the States, but the President will be loathe to admit fault.
Which is why we come back to Operation Economic Outcast. The reason Trump is returning to sanctions over resuming the war at the tempo he inflicted at the onset of the conflict is because the costs of maintaining that pace are increasingly exceeding the United States’ ability to sustain it. He has, Foreman-like, exhausted himself and his country against an opponent willing to absorb the damage. Sanctions are therefore used, not because they are likely to cause the Iranian regime to capitulate, but because they are the most attractive tool he has left in the box.
The problem is as a coercive tool sanctions don’t work in producing quick outcomes. As this report from the Hoover institution (written all the way back in 1998) makes clear …
When governments impose sanctions, the officials implementing the policy want to harm the dictator or bad guy heading the other country’s government. That’s the goal. What they do to achieve it is intentionally harm many innocent people in those countries by cutting them off… They are yanking innocent people’s tails so that those people…will lash out at whoever’s face is right in front of them. They want those people to see their own government as the enemy and to try to overthrow it… Although governments in embargoed countries like Iran, Iraq, and Cuba strictly control what newspapers, radio, and television report, one piece of information that is sure not to be censored is the role of outside governments in the country’s economic distress.
Sanctions rarely work as a coercive tool because that is not what their purpose is. Sanctions are best employed to degrade the economy of states that threaten their neighbours and to contain those states until such times as internal events produce changes that leave the regimes so sanctioned more amenable to compromise. THIS is the purpose of the comprehensive sanctions that Iran is already under that were enacted by previous American administrations.
Hoping they will produce a quick win in a foolish war of choice is wilful naivety unworthy of the office of the Presidency, whose occupant SHOULD know better. They are for the long game, a game of containment and strategic patience and a tool Trump demonstrated absolute contempt for in the past precisely because they don’t produce the quick wins he craves.
Iran meanwhile is playing its cards well. They are adapting to the Drone Age of Warfare in ways their American opponents are not. This is driven by necessity given the overall weakness of the Iranian military vis-à-vis its American counterparts. Pivoting to cheap drones in which they are now global experts…with their Shahed models seemingly doing for drones what the AK-47 did for assault rifles…they have managed to wreak havoc on American assets within the Middle East. Remember the basis of rope-a-dope, make an enemy expend enormous amounts of effort whilst you absorb it and efficiently strike back as you can. The economic effectiveness of using inexpensive drones against expensive American counter-measures and destroying even more expensive assets is likely to force an evolution in defensive warfare to identify an appropriate counter-measure but at the moment the imbalance is producing meaningful results for the Iranians.
Barry McCaffrey, a retired US General and journalist, tweeted on X that…
In my judgement, the US Armed Forces have probably permanently lost access to 15 Persian Gulf bases. Iran now poised to control access the Gulf States. US will have to negotiate new access in western Saudi Arabia, Israel, southern Europe.
Whether McCaffrey is accurate or not is almost beside the point; immense damage that was not expected has been suffered to vital American military infrastructure in the Middle East.
Trump’s incompetence and the economic impact of the war are providing ample fodder for his critics back in the States in the run-up to the mid-term elections. Should Trump and the Republican party receive the ‘shellacking’ the polls are indicating, the empowered Democrats can be expected to interfere in the conduct of the war. The Iranian regime, keenly aware of these dynamics, is in no rush to let Trump out of the corner he has trapped himself as the election date moves forward. They are happy to help inflict whatever political damage they can on him.
This is not to say Iran is emerging unscathed of course. In this article I have referenced the Islamic Republic ‘absorbing the damage’ as a metaphor, but in practical terms that has meant the destruction of military and economic assets that has badly degraded the regime’s forces and many thousands of deaths, both civilian and experienced military and governmental personnel.
And Operation Economic Outcast as well as the blockade on one of their primary sources of revenue cannot just be laughed off with bravado. Whatever the US does manage to cut off, the people of Iran will most definitely feel the impact. They may not rage at their government for that suffering, but suffer they will.
Even the trump card they gained in this war, their control of the Strait of Hormuz, is recognised as a ‘wasting asset’ in that the reason the waterway has such value is because the countries that used it treat it as having such value. The more Iran strangles the waterway, the less value it has as those countries seek to find ways around it including building new pipelines and using other methods of getting oil to the global market. It may take years for those new methods to come online, but it means that the moment of maximum Iranian leverage is right here and right now. After a time, that leverage will degrade.
Ultimately, we don’t know where this will go. To return to my boxing metaphor we have to recall that Foreman wasn’t inflicting NO pain on Ali during the Rumble in the Jungle. Ali surely felt every blow that landed on him.
It was a race. Would Foreman be drained by Ali’s tactics before Ali himself crumbled under the assault? In 1974, Ali triumphed as he called it right that he could outlast the champion’s assault. The Iranian regime is making a similar bet, that they can exhaust the mighty United States using the same principles.
Can they accomplish that in spite of the massive tactical losses they have suffered, the very real pain inflicted upon them? The US may have badly miscalculated but they still maintain a considerable amount of resources to wage this war, and if they chose to do it they can escalate to levels Iran is unprepared for.
Iran is making the bet that the US won’t because to bring forces to bear against the Islamic Republic, they would leave themselves dangerously exposed in other areas, particularly East Asia.
They are also betting that Trump after the Mid-Terms will be Trump chastened when it is hypothetically possible that with no other election to ever concern him again, it could be Trump unleashed.
Instead, Iran thinks they have the rope with the Strait of Hormuz. And I am sorry to say the United States has presented the dope in the form of their unfit President, all too eager to keep walking into the jabs.
I’m a firm believer in Irish unity and I live in the border regions of Tyrone.
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