Nearly eight weeks after Donald Trump launched his assault on Iran, the White House has shifted from a strategy of shock-and-awe bombardments and leadership decapitation to a plan of sustained economic pressure as it tests the will of a regime practiced over decades at wars of attrition.
But as the Guardian's global affairs correspondent, Andrew Roth, writes, US allies are worried that the White House is running out of ideas. At the same time, Washington has signalled it will punish its Nato allies for failing to support it more openly – while they suffer the worst economic consequences from the closure of the vital waterway.
“We don’t see a clear strategy – and we don’t think that there is one,” said a senior European diplomat in Washington. “And we are worried we will be left with the fallout.”
