Trump Returns to Sanctions on Iran as American Weapons Stockpiles Thin

President Donald Trump is returning to economic pressure as his other options for ending the war with Iran become less effective. The Hindu reported that United States stockpiles of key munitions have been drawn down and that intermittent negotiations have stalled again, while Trump maintains that sustained pressure can still produce a settlement.

Moscow's reading is that escalation on the ground would be costly. Mikhail Margelov, vice-president of the Russian International Affairs Council, told TASS that Iran could inflict very heavy American casualties if Washington decided to launch a ground operation, an argument Russian commentators have used to explain why the campaign has stayed aerial and naval.

Domestic support is a constraint of its own. Iran's state agency IRNA reported an Economist and YouGov poll showing only one in three Americans approve of Trump's performance, the lowest level recorded for him in that series. Iranian state media has an obvious interest in that number, and the underlying poll is a standard weekly survey.

A military campaign that runs on precision munitions has an industrial limit, and sanctions are the tool governments turn to when that limit is reached before the political objective is achieved.