Secretary of State Marco Rubio told his Group of Seven counterparts meeting in Paris on Tuesday that the American naval blockade of Iran, along with stringent sanctions and disruptions at its overland borders, could continue with no clear endpoint in sight, according to United States media reports.
Mr. Rubio later said that Iran’s economy “continues to collapse” and predicted worsening conditions over the next one to three months. Tehran, for its part, is planning as if the pressure will not let up: the government of President Masoud Pezeshkian is drafting a budget built around the possibility of selling no oil at all.
The turn to gradual economic pressure follows months in which the Trump administration swung between new rounds of fighting with Iran and bouts of negotiation, Al Jazeera reported from Tehran. The government there has struck a defiant pose even as ordinary Iranians face a poorer future, the broadcaster’s correspondent wrote.
In a budget directive issued on Nov. 3, Mr. Pezeshkian’s administration set out two scenarios for the coming year. One assumes the sanctions and the maritime blockade stay in force. The other assumes restrictions ease, including a substantial or complete removal of the blockade.
The United States military first imposed a naval blockade on Iran’s southern ports on April 13, and a second blockade has been in place since July 14, as Iran and the United States contest control of the Strait of Hormuz. The chokepoint is already close to idle: fewer than 20 commodity vessels transited the strait over the weekend, shipping data showed on Monday, according to a Reuters report.
Washington is preparing still more. The Trump administration plans to announce new sanctions on Iran, which Tehran has condemned, and Mr. Pezeshkian has called for a diplomatic solution. Pakistan’s army chief visited Tehran on Monday for mediation talks ahead of the announcement. At the Paris talks, Mr. Rubio told diplomats that the United States would keep imposing what he called devastating costs on Iran, The Detroit News reported; the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Rubio’s one-to-three-month forecast puts the hardest stretch of the squeeze squarely in the period when Iran’s budget planners must decide which of their two scenarios to bank on — with oil revenue, the state’s traditional lifeline, already near zero.