Peloni: Zeneb Riboua makes the case that the failures of Iran’s regime over the past several months has fashioned an IRGC sized casket in the form of Economic D-Day.
More than Isolation
Zineb Riboua | Aug 24, 2026
reasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced today the launch of Operation Economic Outcast, the next phase of the Trump administration’s campaign against Iran following Operation Epic Fury (the military dimension) and Economic Fury (Iran’s shadow-banking system and the commercial pipeline connecting Iranian oil to China, which is mainly constituted by shell companies and shadow-fleet vessels to independent teapot refineries).
For those who have been following my writings on the war, I wrote back in May that Iran’s economy is already collapsing. Read here.
What is different now, I think, is that the economic pressure is approaching a point of no return, in the sense that it is ultimately going to lead to a power struggle within the IRGC. In fact, for all the IRGC’s rhetoric of “survival,” repeated by its propagandists with memes, and too often amplified by outlets invested in portraying the United States as losing, the scale of the damage can no longer be concealed with AI videos. The numbers speak for themselves: the rial has fallen to a record low, inflation is approaching 70 percent, and the economy is contracting by 5.4 percent this year.
More importantly, figures at the top of the political system are now acknowledging the economic cost of the war. President Masoud Pezeshkian and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf are openly arguing that Iran must find a way out of the war and turn its attention back to the economy. Pezeshkian was pretty much blunt about it: “It would be better to end the war today, when we have power and dignity, and with the whole world acknowledging our victory.” But as long as the IRGC maintains its aggressive posture, Trump has little reason to ease the pressure.
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