Dr Sania Faisal El-Husseini Middle East Monitor
On 24 August, the Trump administration launched an operation called “Economic Outcast”, describing it as the largest economic offensive ever undertaken against Iran’s financial links around the world, aimed at cutting off every potential source of revenue that funds the country, and as more forceful than any such campaign the United States has previously launched against its adversaries. This operation threatens any party dealing with the Iranian regime with direct confrontation with the United States. Washington is returning to the use of an economic blockade against Iran after failing to achieve the outcomes it sought from the war it launched against the country. The blockade was tested during Donald Trump’s first term and inflicted damage on Iran, but failed to achieve its intended objectives. This American approach reflects another failure for the United States resulting from the war, after the terms of the agreement Washington reached with Iran several months ago reflected a defeat for Washington, from which it subsequently withdrew. Nor is this operation expected to succeed. China and Qatar, immediately after Washington announced the blockade, declared that they had no intention of complying with illegal, unilateral sanctions. The question, then, is whether the United States can today determine the outcome of the war by economically blockading Iran, in a regional and international environment more complex than the one that prevailed during Trump’s first term.
Although ceasefires have been put into effect more than once through Pakistani mediation, most recently through a memorandum of understanding concluded last June, this has not brought an end to the tensions and confrontation between the two sides in the war initially launched by the US and Israel against Iran. Six months into the war, despite Trump’s statement at its outset that it would last no more than four or five weeks at most, and despite the United States’ military superiority, the war has failed to resolve the issues surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme, the development of its ballistic missile system, and Iran’s regional footprint. Instead, the war has added a new issue: the Strait of Hormuz. The United States has recently turned to the economic blockade against Iran, having previously resorted to this option following Washington’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement in 2018. The US sanctions, imposed as part of the maximum pressure campaign, inflicted damage on Iran, but failed to destroy the Iranian economy or reduce its oil exports to zero, and did not achieve the objectives for which they had been imposed. The international and regional environment at the time helped Trump implement that sanctions campaign, but that environment has changed today. Over time, those sanctions also helped Iran develop an extensive system for circumventing them, relying on intermediaries in a number of countries and on complex, interconnected financial, commercial and oil networks.
Iran has therefore become highly experienced in containing sanctions. China represents a key factor in limiting the effectiveness of any sanctions regime against Iran, as it is the largest buyer of Iranian oil. Taken together, these factors point to the difficulty of this campaign succeeding today.
During Trump’s first term, the region was deeply divided. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed relations with Qatar, while Kuwait and Oman maintained theirs. The list of demands presented to Qatar reflected the extent to which the crisis within the regional order at the time extended to Türkiye and Iran, as it included reducing relations with Iran and closing the Turkish military base in Qatar. The divisions also extended to other parts of the region. Ankara and Doha supported Libya’s internationally recognised Government of National Accord, while Egypt and the UAE backed Khalifa Haftar’s forces. By contrast, the current war has unfolded in a different regional environment. Since 2021, the region has witnessed a reduction in polarisation between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the emergence of broader areas of regional understanding. The Israeli attack on Doha on 9 September 2025 reinforced concerns among regional states about the widening scope of Israeli threats and the fact that they were no longer confined to traditional arenas of conflict. These concerns were further heightened by the unjustified US-Israeli attack on Iran, which was not condoned by the countries of the region. At the same time, Saudi Arabia has maintained its explicit rejection of normalisation with Israel in the absence of a political horizon leading to a Palestinian state.
The region entered the 2026 war with greater convergence among its principal powers, less willingness to participate in Washington and Israel’s strategy against Iran, and a stronger inclination to safeguard the independence of its regional decision-making and its international relations. These shifts reduce Washington’s ability to recreate the regional environment that accompanied the maximum pressure campaign during Trump’s first term.
Compared with Trump’s first term, the regional environment is not the only factor suggesting that his current campaign to impose an economic blockade on Iran may not succeed. Shifts in China’s and Russia’s positions towards both Iran and the United States may also be among the factors influencing the effectiveness of that blockade, given the importance of the two countries’ geographical proximity to Iran and their international standing.
During Trump’s first term, following the implementation of his “maximum pressure” campaign, China opposed the policy and argued that the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear agreement was the real cause of the tensions. Nevertheless, major Chinese state-owned companies reduced their dealings with Iran. The China National Petroleum Corporation withdrew from a major Iranian gas development project known as the South Pars project, China’s official imports of Iranian oil declined, and some banking transactions were restricted. A substantial proportion of oil purchases and refining shifted instead to small, independent and unofficial refineries and companies. In other words, China maintained a careful balance at the time: it opposed Trump’s maximum pressure policy against Iran and simultaneously preserved its relationship with Tehran, but did not enter into an economic confrontation with Washington. Trump’s current punitive campaign against Iran comes amid changes in China’s relations with Iran on the one hand, and with the United States on the other. Trump’s confrontational policy towards China during his first term, which continued under Joe Biden and reached its peak during Trump’s current term, has produced a firmer and more resolute Chinese position towards Washington.
Against this backdrop, Chinese-Iranian relations developed further in 2021, when China and Iran signed a 25-year comprehensive cooperation plan. China’s purchases of Iranian oil expanded to the point that China has today become its principal buyer, as well as an important source of technology and economic networks that openly help Iran mitigate the impact of Western sanctions.
The two countries also have gained experience in informal dealings through small Chinese refineries and extensive, informal transport networks involving commercial intermediaries and financial channels operating outside the Western banking and financial system. When the 2026 war broke out, China did not limit itself to criticising it, but also supported Iran’s position politically at the United Nations, described Iran as a “reliable strategic partner”, and called for Middle Eastern countries to take their destiny into their own hands within a shared regional political and security framework, and to pursue genuine strategic autonomy for the countries of the region. Today, US sanctions against Iran are being imposed in the context of deeper and more complex commercial, economic and financial networks, as well as a more confrontational and contentious US-China relationship. For this reason, a number of American experts consider China’s cooperation crucial to the success of Trump’s current economic punitive campaign against Iran.
Russia, like China, also criticised the United States’ withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018 and had been a party to the nuclear negotiations, but it did not obstruct the Western sanctions imposed on Iran through the UN Security Council before the Russia-Ukraine war. That war marked the real turning point in relations between the two countries and their transition to the level of a strategic alliance, although Russian-Iranian cooperation has a much longer history. Since August 2022, Iran has supplied Russia with armed drones, in return for military and technical support provided by Russia to Iran. Amid cooperation aimed at confronting US hostility and the Western isolation of both countries, this cooperation expanded to include the joint production of drones, military technology, and the linking of economic and financial networks that help both countries withstand sanctions. This culminated in the signing of a strategic partnership treaty between the two countries in 2025. The 2026 war reflected a firm Russian position against the US-Israeli attack on Iran, expressed through clear political and diplomatic positions at the United Nations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also spoke of an initiative to establish a collective security architecture in the Gulf, similar to the proposal put forward by China.
Photo by reyhaneh ahmadi on Unsplash
The first maximum pressure campaign targeted Iran at a time when Russia still maintained some room for cooperation and negotiation with the West. Today’s campaign, by contrast, comes after years of war in Ukraine and amid increasingly extensive and deep economic, political and security ties between Russia and Iran.
It is difficult to interpret the United States’ use of economic sanctions today except as part of an attempt to circumvent the consequences of its failure to achieve its goals in Iran, and this approach may produce further negative consequences for Washington. Does the United States still possess the international leverage it once had to turn its sanctions on Iran into genuine international isolation? Could Washington’s renewed attempt to isolate Iran unintentionally create stronger incentives for regional powers to expand arrangements that move beyond exclusive reliance on the United States? And do these developments represent early signs of an emerging international order moving away from a unipolar political system?
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Sania Faisal El-Husseini is a Professor of International Relations at the Arab-American University in Palestine, and a writer and researcher who has published numerous political articles and research papers. El-Husseini worked with the Palestinian National Authority for more than two decades in information and diplomatic roles. She has worked as a lecturer in several universities in Palestine since 2008, such as Birzeit University and Al-Quds University. She was invited as an academic visitor by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies in 2013-2014, and Georgetown University in 2017-2018. Recently El-Husseini became a faculty member of the Department of Conflict Resolutions and Department of Diplomatic and International Law at the Arab-American University.
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