Why Iran Believes It Has the Upper Hand

What It Covers

Ezra Klein interviews Brookings Institution Iran expert Suzanne Maloney about the U.S.-Iran war, examining why Iran believes it holds strategic leverage despite absorbing over 10,000 strikes, how Strait of Hormuz closure threatens the global economy, and why neither regime collapse nor a negotiated victory appears achievable for the Trump administration.

Key Questions Answered

• •Strait of Hormuz leverage: Iran reduced daily tanker traffic through the strait from 130-140 vessels to a handful, disrupting roughly 20% of global oil and gas exports. This weapon grows more powerful over time, not less — as shortages shift from futures-priced fears to material present-day scarcity, Iran's negotiating position strengthens while U.S. political pressure to end the conflict intensifies.
• •Economic cascade timeline: Markets have not fully priced in a prolonged strait closure. Asia is already experiencing severe price increases closer to the supply source. Within weeks, the U.S. faces $6-plus gasoline, food price spikes, fertilizer shortages, and chip supply disruptions from helium scarcity — a supply chain shock Prime Minister Modi compared directly to COVID-19's global economic disruption.
• •Regime survival as strategic victory: Iran's leadership concluded the regime survived the war's primary objective of forced collapse. Despite Khamenei's death on day one and thousands of strikes, no popular uprising materialized — January 2025 protesters had been massacred weeks earlier, and the regime sent explicit warnings via text message to suppress any opportunistic dissent during the military campaign.
• •Nuclear program status post-strikes: Iran retains the technical expertise, enrichment knowledge, and stockpiles of highly enriched uranium — possibly buried at Isfahan or dispersed sites — needed to reconstitute a weapons program. The supreme leader who historically constrained weaponization decisions is now dead, and his replacement is more closely aligned with the Revolutionary Guard and less likely to maintain that restraint.
• •Iran's five-point counter-proposal: Rather than accepting U.S. demands to end enrichment, dismantle ballistic missiles, and cut proxy support, Iran seeks reparations, retention of Strait of Hormuz control, and the ability to monetize passage rights. Critically, several Iranian objectives — toll collection on strait traffic and increased oil export revenue from sanctions relief — are already partially materializing without requiring U.S. agreement.
• •Lessons Iran is internalizing: Iran is studying this war the way it studied the Iran-Iraq conflict — through systematic institutional analysis. Key conclusions forming within leadership: time asymmetry favors Iran over the U.S., strait control provides escalating leverage, negotiations with Washington cannot be trusted across administrations, and the only durable deterrent is the capacity to impose catastrophic economic pain on the global system.