Six months on, Iran is still standing, but survival is becoming more costly

Six months after the United States and Israel launched a coordinated military campaign against Iran on February 28, Tehran still refuses to collapse, but the country’s survival is increasingly measured in economic terms rather than battlefield victories. The new pressure has shifted to the parts of Iran that have historically been weakest: the economy, the civilian population, and the political leadership’s cohesion.

The war’s most visible change is the absence of the Supreme Leader. After the opening strike killed Ali Khamenei, his son Mojtaba was named successor on March 6, a move the regime used to signal continuity. Six months later, Mojtaba has yet to make a public appearance, and his condition remains uncertain. His portrait is displayed in public squares and at mourning ceremonies, while decrees continue to be issued in his name. The state’s reliance on a figure who is largely invisible has exposed a fragility that the leadership has never before had to confront.

The military command structure has also been rebuilt amid ongoing conflict. The strike also killed key commanders, including IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour and armed forces chief of staff Abdolrahim Mousavi. On August 10, new appointments were announced: Ahmad Vahidi became IRGC chief and Ali Abdollahi was named chief of staff. The appointments were framed as a commitment to loyalty and continuity, but they also underscore that the regime is still consolidating power rather than projecting strength.

The United States has intensified its economic campaign since early August, after suspending strikes. Treasury officials branded the effort “Economic Fury” and, on August 24, launched Operation Economic Outcast, an expanded initiative designed to sever Iran’s remaining financial links with the outside world. The operation employs secondary sanctions on those moving Iranian oil, targets the “shadow fleet” and financial networks, and increases enforcement of existing sanctions. Iran’s oil exports, which were close to 1.8 million barrels a day before the war, have fallen to less than 500,000 barrels a day. Inflation is approaching 90 percent, and food prices have more than doubled compared to a year ago.

The siege also extends to maritime routes. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz on February 28 in retaliation and has not reopened it six months later. The naval blockade that followed has merged with the closure into a single chokehold on Iran’s trade, further straining the economy.

These economic pressures have exposed a long‑standing split within Iran’s leadership. President Ebrahim Pezeshkian, who signed a memorandum with Washington in June, has spoken candidly about the widening economic crisis, noting that revenue has fallen and that the country’s difficulties have “multiplied several times over.” He has suggested that ending the war while Iran remains strong would be preferable, even as his government prepares the public for higher fuel prices. Parliament speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has warned that without economic circulation, growth, or national production, the country will not endure, yet he remains tied to the security establishment’s logic that diplomacy must be backed by military readiness.

The divide between a president urging a negotiated settlement and a security establishment determined to outlast the conflict is now public. It has not resolved the question of responsibility for the crisis, but it has raised the stakes. Iran’s leadership still frames the war in terms of survival: the system has not fallen, and everything else can be recovered. However, the pressure now lies on households and markets, where resistance is harder to sustain.

The closed strait and blockade have become the focal point for any potential negotiation. Reopening the strait and lifting the blockade are the levers each side holds over the other and the most plausible path to ending the conflict. Iran faces a difficult choice: negotiate on terms that Washington would accept, risking an internal fracture that hardliners fear, or hold out, risking a bleeding economy and a winter that will test the state’s capacity to provide. The war has also reinforced the belief among parts of the leadership that only a nuclear capability could have deterred the initial attack, making any lasting settlement harder to reach.

Beneath these immediate pressures lies a deeper pattern: the confrontation between Washington and Tehran has always been shaped by the beliefs of each country’s political elites about the other and about the risks of engagement. On the Iranian side, U.S. hostility has repeatedly deepened internal divisions, and the current economic siege is a clear manifestation of those divisions in the face of an ongoing war.