American forces launched fresh strikes against Iran’s southern coastline on Tuesday night local time, according to reports, just days after tit-for-tat attacks across the Persian Gulf over the weekend. Explosions were reported in at least half a dozen cities, stretching from Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman to Bandar Abbas and Qeshm Island on the Persian Gulf side—home to an underground missile base.
The strikes come after Axios reported that President Donald Trump and his national security team were ‘considering waging limited strikes in the Strait of Hormuz to prevent Iran from reconstituting its radar and missile capabilities to attack ships.’ Now, as the reporting suggests, those strikes appear to be underway.
OSINTtechnical, an open-source intelligence account, has been providing updates on the strikes, noting ‘numerous explosions this evening along Iran’s southern coastline, as the US appears to have resumed a strike campaign against Iranian forces.’
For civilians, the latest round of escalation carries familiar economic anxieties. As one observer noted, filling up the gas tank on Saturday already feels like a prescient move. Yet despite six months of on-and-off war and mining in the Gulf, oil prices have remained below $100 a barrel—a far cry from earlier scare stories of $150 or even $200 oil.
Bessent’s ‘Economic D-Day’
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is doubling down on financial pressure. Last week, he unveiled what he called an ‘economic D-Day’ sanctions package against the Islamic Republic, targeting regime enablers—particularly banks in Communist China. On Tuesday, asked about the latest developments in Iran, Bessent told Fox Business: ‘We have zero tolerance. We are going to economically asphyxiate this regime.’
But then he added: ‘My job is to make sure that they want to have a deal, and they will want to have one.’
That juxtaposition—strangle and then negotiate—has drawn skepticism from commentators who wonder how a regime under that kind of pressure can be trusted to make and keep a deal. Bessent has been strikingly effective at collapsing Iran’s currency, the rial. As he reminded Fox Business, the rial stood at 800,000 to the dollar last spring; as of last week, it had fallen to two million.
The economic pain is real. Small protests have erupted outside a petrochemical plant and a sugar cane factory, where workers were laid off without pay for six months. One person was killed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) outside the sugar cane factory, according to a report from Peter Baum. Academic staff at numerous universities are also on strike, having gone months without salaries.
The logic of squeezing Tehran until it can no longer pay the security forces that suppress dissent is clear. But as the writer argues, these are the same theocrats Bessent believes he can make ‘want to have a deal’—and then trust to honor it once the pressure is released.
What might have been a days-long campaign in March has stretched on for months, and the stakes are only rising. As the old adage goes, once you grab somebody by the throat, you’ve got to keep squeezing until the job is done.
Source: pjmedia.com — https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2026/09/01/you-gotta-be-kidding-me-were-still-playing-lets-make-a-deal-with-iran-n4956778
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No deal until after regime change.