Iran goes to economic war!

Iran has announced it is at war with the US. Economic war. Actually it's the US which is imposing an economic war on Iran. There's not much the ayatollahs can do about it except suffer the consequences of riling Donald Trump. Tehran's great plan was to evade the full impact of new American sanctions by doing underhand deals with European governments, relying on them to continue to do trade and oil deals with them to save their economy from going under. But although Europe decided to stay loyal to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and lift sanctions, European governments' rebellion against Washington will amount to little, because individual businesses have learned that screwing up relations with the US is definitely not a good idea. So, as Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, rather smugly pointed out, European businessmen are already withdrawing from contracts signed with Iran and Europe's governments can go hang. Well, he didn't say the last bit because Pompeo is America's top diplomat. But that's what he implied. It's a tough one for Iran. They cannot be seen to back down from their nefarious meddling in the Middle East without losing face and they certainly don't want to buckle under Washington's orders. But if they don't turn 180 degrees, as Pompeo put it, and start behaving like good international citizens, the hefty sanctions will remain for as long as Trump is in charge. How long will the Iranian economy survive under such pressure? Pompeo, Trump and co will be hoping that there will be another revolution, a massed protest by families and the younger generation across the nation. Of course Tehran could turn to the one option that will exercise Washington the most, start accelerating their nuclear weapons programme and threaten the US with Armageddon. But that would be a catastrophic mistake. There's no way Trump would hesitate to act if they did that. Obama might have dithered but not Trump, and if Jim Mattis doesn't like the prospect of going to war with Iran, Trump will find someone else to be his defence secretary who does. So Iran has months and months ahead of a spiralling economy and unless they can find other countries to do business with them there will come a breaking point. The UK government has said it will increase trade with Iran but I doubt that somewhat pointless foot-stamping will last for long. In the meantime there is a huge risk of miscalculation by Tehran, or particularly by the Iranian Republican Guard, hitting out at Washington in the only way they know, by some violent act in the Gulf or in Syria or Lebanon or somewhere unexpected. Any confrontation in the Gulf waterway involving US warships could lead to shots being fired and no one dares predict what that might lead to.