The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: How Trump’s “Anaconda Plan” Is Squeezing Iran

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Iran is facing an increasingly severe economic and military squeeze as sanctions, financial isolation, trade restrictions, and attacks on its military infrastructure cut the country off from the global economy. The strategy resembles an economic “Anaconda Plan,” gradually depriving Iran of oil revenue, foreign currency, industrial parts, weapons, fuel, and access to international markets while negotiations and military action continue. Iran is betting that it can withstand the pressure long enough for the approaching U.S. midterm elections to constrain the Trump administration, but the country is losing hundreds of millions of dollars in economic output and revenue each day while its military capabilities continue to deteriorate. The Strait of Hormuz may also become less valuable as Gulf states expand pipelines and alternative export routes through the Gulf of Oman, Red Sea, and potentially the Mediterranean. As Iran's economy weakens, its military shrinks, and alternative oil routes reduce its leverage over global shipping, time may increasingly favor the United States rather than Tehran. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take. Their military is shrinking as we speak. It doesn't have parts. It can't get fuel. And it doesn't have an Air Force to provide air cover. Anytime almost any of the Gulf states or the United States wants to take out facilities in Iran, they can do so. And they have done so. And they've done so to such a degree that it doesn't. really have a maritime component in their military. Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hansson for the Daily Signal. What's going on with Iran, or rather, what's next with Iran?

We've gone through six or seven iterations of we're at war, we're negotiating, we're at war, we're negotiating, we're at war. So about 75% of the so-called war that began on February 28th of this year has been negotiations. About 25% have actually been kinetic action. And I think that's obscured a little bit what we're doing in Iran. We're not passive when we're negotiating. What Trump is doing right now, the Trump administration, is very similar to what the North did as it started the Civil War. They were not sure how to deal with the South because they'd

have to invade it and was the size of Europe. So Winfield Scott came up with the idea of an anaconda plan named after the snake, python-like snake of Latin America that would squeeze the South. In other words, they would occupy the Mississippi River and cut off their western approaches to trade and commerce. The battlefront in the north would cut them off from the industrial cities of the north, and then they would blockade Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, and they would not be able to export cotton nor import manufactured goods, especially weaponry. Now, it was very slow because in those days there was not an international banking system that you could freeze accounts or you could isolate an whole area region economically, or I should say financially. But it did work.

And one of the reasons that Sherman was successful in 1864 in the March through Georgia and Grant was successful in his siege of Richmond, although he never took the city, was that the South had run out. of weapons that were commiserate with the northern armories and they did not have the industrial capacity that the north did and they couldn't import sophisticated weaponry from Europe especially Britain so what we're doing right now as we talk fight talk fight is we're in a battle of wills Iran thinks they have the cards because Donald Trump is down to less than 80 days before the midterms that the war is on popular. They expect, as they have now explicitly said,

that the Democrats will take power and maybe cut off funding for the war, or they can wait out until they have a Democratic presidency. Donald Trump, though, has the cards Iran doesn't. What do I mean by that? We are witnessing really the most successful blockade, embargo, freeze, sanctioning, and debunking. banking of any modern nation. I can't think of any other examples, with the exception maybe of

North Korea during some periods of hostilities, but Iran cannot export oil. It cannot import through rail or by sea, and increasingly not through the air, material goods, industrial parts, replacement weaponry from abroad. It has no financial access to the world's economy or to the world's currency. It can't convert its domestic currency into dollars or euros and buy things on the open market. You can't get out of Iran and travel. You can't have your bank accounts and Bank of America or Citibank open for check riding. You can't bring in any foreign currency. So it's estimated they're losing four or five hundred million a half a billion dollars a day in economic output revenue.

And this is in addition to the enormous half-century one half-trillion dollar military industrial nuclear complex they've lost. So they are being squeezed in an anaconda-like plan that we've never seen before. And so when we talk about who's going to win this war of nerves, the Iranians is the mid-term midterms come closer, they're going to force Trump to let up so he can keep the house or us who are going to make Iran bankrupt. It doesn't really matter because if Trump loses the house, they are not going to cut off aid to, they won't have enough votes to cut off aid to the American military, nor would they do that. If Trump would to win the midterms,

he would still be as free as he would be to lose them. If he loses the midterms, if he wins them, it doesn't matter after the midterms are over. He can do whatever he wants. But he feels he does not want to harm the infrastructure and the livelihood of the Iranian people. So he's squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, and making them almost irrelevant.

Now, a final thought is they believe long-term the future is theirs because they keep bragging that they're going to control the strait of Hormuz. They don't really control it now. Ships are going in and out against their will. They're not getting ships in to import goods, nor are they exporting oil out of it. But they feel they've achieved such a level of harassment and mine laying that you can't fully use it. But here's the problem with that.

Their military is shrinking as we speak. It doesn't have parts. It can't get fuel. and it doesn't have an air force to provide air cover. Anytime almost any of the Gulf states or the United States wants to take out facilities in Iran, they can do so. And they have done so. And they've done so to such a degree that it doesn't really have a maritime component in their military. But more importantly, Donald Trump announced he would like to internationalize or even claim the Straits of Ramos as U.S. territory.

I don't think that the American people want that. I don't think he wants it. I think he's trolling the Iranians because very soon the Straits of Hormuz are not going to be relevant to the global economy. Of its 20-some million barrels of exported oil that leave the strait, already somewhere between 6 and 8 million barrels, have bypassed it through pipelines to the Gulf of Oman outside the strait or to the Red Sea where ships can come. through the Suez Canal or up through the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea and get oil without Iran having any ability to intercede or to stop that. And now we're hearing that both the Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea pipelines will be increased, either with a parallel line or they will be enhanced. And in addition to that, there may be Mediterranean exporting ports of Gulf oil, particularly Saudi oil, that will go across Jordan into Israel and maybe at a port somewhere near or at Haifa, and then on the Syrian coasts vis-a-vis Turkey. So what I'm saying is that rather than ships, forget about the war,

whether than ships have to go through that narrow strait all the way into the Gulf, depending on their location, a much more ideal system to export oil from Middle East countries, does not have tankers go through that narrow strait and go all the way into the Gulf, but simply dock at the Mediterranean, our dock at the Red Sea, our dock at the Gulf of Oman. And that's going to happen. And so they may be lords of a strait that isn't particularly not relevant to the world economy in general and to their revenue crisis in particular. Bottom line, look what's going on on the ground and not what people are saying, are screaming about, or hysterical about.

Each day that we are engaged, Iran is getting poor and poor and poor. And that is a fact that transcends the importance of the midterm elections or the Gulf of Hormuz. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Hanson for the Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.