Is Trump going to war with Iran?

Since taking office, Trump has articulated a tough stance on Iran, repeatedly criticizing the “horrible” nuclear deal and depicting the country as the wellspring of the radicalism and violence that has wracked the Middle East and precipitated American interventions. And although Trump’s national-security staff has experienced unprecedented turnover, senior administration officials have shared at least one common trait: a determination to turn up the heat on Iran.

The White House’s fixation on Iran culminated with Trump’s announcement two months ago about walking away from the nuclear agreement and beginning to reimpose the severe financial and trade sanctions that had been suspended in accordance with the deal. Despite vehement opposition from much of the world, including the other parties of the nuclear deal, the U.S. measures are already casting a dark shadow by effectively forcing firms and banks around the world to choose between the Iranian and the American markets. U.S. officials have already announced that they will try to cut off all Iranian oil exports by November.

All of this is playing out at a particularly precarious moment in Iran, brought about largely by its sluggish recovery from a generation of economic mismanagement and the devastating toll of the sanctions that helped bring about the nuclear deal. Public expressions of dissatisfaction with the ruling system have grown increasingly bold and volatile, and given the age of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, jockeying for a crucial leadership-succession process has already begun in earnest.

From the vantage of Iran’s theocrats, the Trump administration’s efforts to squeeze its economy has little to do with any legitimate concern about its nuclear ambitions, its interventions across the Arab world, or its mistreatment of its own people. Rather, the campaign represents a predictable new iteration of the perennial American effort to destabilize the postrevolutionary state and oust its leadership. Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri warned that the economic offensive is only a prelude to the real goal of the White House: a military attack.

This ingrained paranoia has shaped the way that the Islamic Republic is managing the fallout from the intense American pushback. In the remarks that apparently prompted Trump’s late-night tweet, Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president, argued that Washington’s strategy has lured Iran into precipitating its own destruction, boasting that its restraint has enabled its empowerment.

So far, in forging a strategy for handling this uncertain moment, Rouhani’s characteristic prudence seems to have won out. Even as economic pressure from America hits home, Tehran has held up its end of the nuclear deal, with perfunctory appeals for Europe to offset American sanctions with measures to protect and increase trade and investment that all sides tacitly recognize will not be forthcoming. Iran’s leaders have issued a barrage of thinly veiled threats aimed at Persian Gulf transit routes, but as Trump himself boasted, even here there is evidence of newfound restraint by the IRGC naval forces.