Waiting out Iran
by Donald Harvey Marks
Physician scientist and 3rd generation veteran
August 2026
I have often wondered why at this point in the Iran war the USA could not just wait out Iran rather than continue or accelerate hostilities? The best answer I can develop is that while blockades and sanctions inflict severe economic damage, history and strategic reality show they rarely cause a state like Iran to collapse quickly or to capitulate. Waiting for economic collapse fails to address the most urgent threats—such as nuclear advancement—while giving Tehran time to adapt and utilize land routes to import weapons, enforce internal security, and retaliate against the global energy trade.
The Nuclear & Security Timeline
Economic blockades act slowly, over months or years, but nuclear enrichment and military threats operate on much shorter timelines. A state nearing weapons-grade material or advanced missile deployment cannot be stopped by inflation or lost oil revenue alone; direct kinetic strikes target facilities that economic pressure cannot destroy. Russia announced early August that it was moving a team of nuclear experts to Iran to “help” them with their nuclear program.
Internal Resilience & Domestic Activity
Domestic Refining
Iran refines a significant portion of its oil locally to fulfill domestic fuel and energy needs. A export blockade cuts off state revenue, but it does not immediately halt domestic power, transport, or basic heating.
Economic Resistance Architecture
Tehran has spent decades building a "resistance economy" tailored for isolation. It relies on state subsidies, local manufacturing substitutes, and domestic agricultural capacity to sustain basic survival needs.
Geographic Redundancy & Land Connectivity
While maritime ports and key transit points can be heavily patrolled, Iran has extensive land borders with Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Essential food, medicine, and critical industrial supplies continue to flow via overland trucking corridors and direct rail links across Asia, making a total physical seal almost impossible.
Regime Survival and Security Suppression
Economic collapse impacts ordinary citizens long before it weakens the regime's core security apparatus. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) maintains strict internal coercive control. Authoritarian regimes consistently prioritize funding security forces to crush domestic unrest, ensuring state survival even during severe economic contractions.
Asymmetric Escalation & Economic Costs on the West
A prolonged naval blockade is an active operation that carries high costs and risks for the blockading forces. Iran retains asymmetric retaliation tools—such as naval mining, drone/missile strikes on regional oil infrastructure, and targeting commercial shipping. This can spike global oil prices and trigger widespread economic disruption outside Iran, putting political pressure back on foreign powers to resolve the crisis quickly rather than maintain an indefinite siege. There is also the risk, working in the back of my mind, of a massive Iranian assault on an American warship with horrible damage to Americans and the resulting American reaction to that.
Ultimately, it will not be the United States waiting around for its collapse but for Iran to have America lose interest like it did in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and many other places. The midterms are coming and the citizens have already lost interest in Iran. Plus I think that a lot of the push brings back uncomfortable memories of the Iraq wars and the false worries about Saddam Hussein having nuclear weapons. People have lost interest and become skeptical. This waiting game is not, IMO, on America's side.
The author is a physician, scientist and 3rd generation veteran. He is a graduate of the Air Force Officers Candidate School, Air Command and Staff College (Non-Resident Program) and the Biological Warfare Course, Ft. Detrick, MD.
Most of his related articles are found at www.dhmarks.com
