President Trump has taken the victory rhetoric from the battlefield to the balance sheet, six months into a war that was supposed to be short. During an interview on New York radio station 77 WABC, which was widely shared on social media, the president said that Iran had been "controlling" and "soon" will be “controlling” the straits, and that all of Iran's navy, air force and military leadership had been killed. It's a message he's been delivering in different ways for months, but it now came packaged around a second, perhaps even larger, message: an economic attack dubbed "Economic D-Day.

The important thing about the moment is the admission, which is not new to us. Trump admitted that the assassination of high-ranking Iranian officials has muddied the waters in Tehran's command structure, and no one in the U.S. is really sure of who is really talking on Iran's behalf. Well, this is no small detail. Wars break down when somebody signs something and if the president of Washington doesn't know who can do that in Tehran, the road to any settlement becomes very foggy, whatever infrastructure has been brought to rubble.

The economic aspect of the offensive is what is substantial. Trump, on the other hand, issued a warning on Wednesday on his Truth Social account that economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale await any nation that extends a lifeline to Iran, and to Iran's banks, business, airports or government bodies. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been preparing for this for days, telling CNBC secondary sanctions are being set "Operation Economic Fury" has been underway since April, targeting companies and countries trading with Iran for its crude oil or with Tehran banks.

The awkward maths of it is that the two biggest oil consumers via the Strait of Hormuz are, historically, India and China, and neither is obviously looking to pull out. That waterway transports about a fifth of the world's seaborne oil and nearly a fifth of its liquefied natural gas, while China has imported more than five million barrels a day from the route in recent years, with India, South Korea and Japan not far behind. In India, nearly 2/3rd of crude imports and around 50% of LNG imports go through the chokepoint of the narrow passage of the Hormuz Sea, and not only in Washington or Tehran.

Weeks of market trading have already been based on this uncertainty. The price of Brent crude rose to just over $92 a barrel on Thursday as it extended its rally to bring the price to within about 16 percent of pre-war levels. Shipments information bears witness: weekly shipments through Hormuz dropped to 73 last week from 91 the previous week, down from the more or less 130 transits a week that would have been considered typical prior to the war in late February, according to Lloyd's List Intelligence. Still some operators are continuing to ship through, but most of world trade has just bypassed the danger.

In Tehran's response, the framing has been rejected altogether. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected the D-Day announcement as a diversion from America's own growing debt and spiraling borrowing costs and said Washington is committing "economic terrorism" against the global economy, not Iran. Oddly enough, it's the same day the national debt reached $40 trillion as this week's sanctions blitz began that critics in the U.S. have noticed, too: Trump unveiled his sanctions blitz on the very day the national debt hit $40 trillion, and that timing is no coincidence that hasn't eluded the notice of critics wondering whether the country doing the economic warring is solvent at home. Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, meanwhile is making a 14-point memorandum of understanding with the United States before Hormuz can be reopened, including the release of Iran's assets in foreign countries and the lifting of oil sanctions.

This isn't happening in isolation of politics. A war that polls now increasingly reject at home, climbing gas prices, and a Republican Party worried about holding Congress, are all plaguing Trump as he enters midterm elections. The shift from a seemingly dull and inconclusive military campaign to a grand-sounding financial offensive allows the administration to take the high ground without having to bring in more troops or drag out a six-months-long conflict beyond the original six-months timeframe. But will the sanctions regime actually bring Tehran back to the table, or will it merely drive them toward Beijing and Moscow, and push Asian consumers and consumers at home into the arms of Iran's rivals? Iran has already coped with almost five decades of US sanctions. It's a bet of that kind that assumes this must be it, which, to the best of my understanding, is a dangerous assumption that can only be considered a wager.