Seven months into a conflict that has disturbed international energy flows and disrupted the security landscape in the Middle East, Donald Trump has again set the starkest possible framing for the table. In Thursday phone interviews with Axios and Channel 12, the American president explained that he was “on the precipice of an existential decision.” I have a big choice to make," he continued, "either I am going to come in and destroy them or I am not going to come in and destroy them. “It is a large decision – anything may occur with me.”

It's the kind of line that sounds like talk until you recall Trump has already ordered one campaign of large-scale strikes this year in February and the war it ignited hasn't been put down, but turned cold in some areas and hot in others. The comment came days before Trump will meet with the leaders or top envoys of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next week, an event both Washington and the Gulf capitals are calling a real fork in the road.

That was how Trump put it, he wants to "find out where they're at and how they're doing" prior to his move. This isn't idle diplomacy. Saudi and Qatari concerns that Tehran would strike back against their oil and gas facilities already deterred Trump from relaunching a major offensive this year, it was reported in early August. If history repeats, it will be decided by what those governments tell him in New York.

All of this is set against an economic backdrop as well as a military one. The conflict that started on Feb. 28 claimed to have the objectives of undermining Iran's nuclear and missile development, ousting its government and cutting its regional militia network. Iran's response was to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz, where some 10% of the world's oil and 10% of the planet's liquefied natural gas used to flow. For the past few months, energy experts have bickered about just what the consequences might be.

A failure to resolve the situation and the strait remaining closed could result in the biggest energy supply shock in decades, with more than 11 million barrels a day of Gulf output affected and around a fifth of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply lost, according to Wood Mackenzie's economics team. Consultancy FGE NexantECA has offered similar figures, forecasting about 100 million b/d are removed from the market each week as the near-closure continues, and predicting that if the situation doesn't improve within 6-8 weeks, then prices could reach $150-$200 a barrel, regardless of what President Trump says.

Trump, on the other hand, has made the blockade a success, not a cost, telling Ravid that not a single tanker has reached Iran since the US tightened the noose on the ships and that any ships that tried were destroyed, a claim that is at odds with Tehran's continued claims that it still has control of traffic in its own waters, as illustrated by a reported strike this week on a Togo-flagged tanker attempting to pass near Qeshm Island.

A harder-edged accounting issue lurks over any resurgence of offense. A United Nations fact-finding mission has found reasonable grounds to believe that at least 178 civilians, including 120 children, were killed in February in the United States' strikes on a school in Minab and a residential complex in Lamerd, a war crime that was caused by a narrowing by top U.S. officials of the priority to minimize civilian harm, the mission has determined. The discovery does not seem to have changed the administration's calculations publicly, but would add to the political and legal landscape any new wave of strikes would have to navigate, especially in Europe and in the Gulf lands where Washington still must rely on cooperation.

Then there's the electoral clock, which appears to be as much on the minds of both sides in this standoff as the oil ticker. Trump has suggested the conflict may wrap up "immediately after" November's midterm elections, saying Tehran is unable to continue the conflict for much longer, but refusing to say if he will act before or after voters in the U.S. elect their congressional representatives. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has quietly set it's troops in the area on a course for maintaining the status quo until the end of this year, placing the military option on hold without actually deploying it. The strategic dilemma was succinctly put by one American official to Ravid: At some point, you have to figure out what the end game really is.

A diplomatic twist to the standoff is that a smaller Iranian delegation, which includes the country's president, will also be allowed to travel and spend money in New York next week for the UN General Assembly while the State Department simultaneously denied a Palestinian Authority delegation led by PA President Mahmoud Abbas the same permission to enter the U.S. for the gathering in New York. The Treasury Department also sanctioned a crypto exchange for Iran's financier Babak Zanjani, alleging that he used the exchange to launder hundreds of millions of dollars for the Revolutionary Guard and keep ships safely moving through Hormuz, part of a broader campaign dubbed Operation Economic Outcast to squeeze Iran's last financial lifelines.

What comes out of all this is a war which has not ended but merely paused, with the calculations of both Tehran and the United States in play economic attrition and time playing in Tehran's favor, whereas the United States is banking on sanctions and a blockade, and the threat of annihilation, will eventually bring capitulation.