Iran proved it can hold Trump hostage without a nuke: expert

With the war in Iran escalating to new heights, the foreign power has discovered they have true leverage over the United States, Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group wrote for The New York Times — and it's not the threat of developing a nuclear weapon.

"American and Israeli forces have been dominant from the air, able to penetrate the Islamic republic’s porous defenses almost at will," wrote Vaez. "They have degraded not only Tehran’s military capabilities, but also the industrial base producing its missile and drone fleets. The attacks have also once more exposed Iran’s substantial intelligence vulnerabilities, allowing the targeting and killing of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, among other senior military and political leaders, at the campaign’s outset. But the central question in this war was never whether Iran could be hurt. It was whether pain would translate into submission. So far, it has not."

The bigger problem remains the Strait of Hormuz, which is effectively shut down by Iranian military activity, suspending 20 percent of the world's oil shipping with it. And Trump hasn't figured out any way to defuse that situation.

"Mr. Trump now has three options," wrote Vaez. "He can escalate, thus the talk of sending American forces onto Iranian territory or seizing strategic positions to reopen shipping lanes. Ground intervention would not represent a simple intensification of the current war. It would transform it entirely. Iran most likely would mine waterways, target U.S. troops more directly, strike Gulf infrastructure more aggressively and draw additional regional actors into the fire."

In other words, he continued, "The conflict would cease to be merely about Iran’s nuclear ambitions or even its regime. It would become a struggle over commercial arteries — a war whose consequences would radiate far beyond the battlefield."

Trump, for his part, has made clear he doesn't see reopening the Strait as a responsibility for the United States, even as gas prices spike rapidly at home.