Thinking like Iranians, latching on the strategy 

Mar 13, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

---

(Kaieteur News) – I’m getting a better handle on Iran, now cornered and trapped in a war that pummels it from all sides. Air and sea; and with tanks massed at its border for the first steps in a potential ground offensive.

American technological power unleashed from many angles, with the Israelis demonstrating that they are no slouches in the deadly game of war and destruction.  What could be Iran’s strategy?  What to gain as hammer blows rain from the outside, while it must keep an eye on threats from the inside?  Think like an Iranian is my advice; how I proceed to answer those questions.

It is obvious that the Iranians are in a war that they cannot win.  Not a snowball’s chance in a wildfire.  They know that, their enemies know that, and the world knows that, too.  But it has a crucial weapon in hand.  A cluster bomb for the profusion of crippling effects that it can inflict.  Oil, it is.  Iran doesn’t have to withhold supplies from its oil stocks that it can’t sell as freely, as wished.  Sanctions neutralised, damaged.  But this country that is embattled from all sides works doggedly to make others think deeply, twice, about their oil, and the threats to getting refineries functioning at full capacity, and tankers reaching their destinations.  Instead of the sophisticated armaments of war, which it either lacks the knowhow to produce, or is running low on what it had, Iran’s strategy seems to focus on the economics of war.

Iran holds on against the odds, absorbs rolling barrages of pain, and readily sheds the blood of its sons and daughters.  But it makes others feel their pain in different ways.  Oil supplies under distress.  Oil prices soaring to new heights, striking dependent national economies, and hitting others that need oil to lubricate their progress.  I see sharing of physical and psychological and infrastructural pain felt by Iran, with the objective of making oil-flush neighbours, and others dotted around the map, cry out in agony.  Iran bends its mind to take its blows, grimace with teeth-locked from its dripping, scars, as long as it can.  It’s a different form of martyrdom, a kind that is in keeping with the Iranian national and spiritual psyche.

From my perspective, the strategy of Iranian thinkers and planners is two-pronged.  The decadent West is known for being soft, not quite up to taking much punishment.  Whatever form, and it doesn’t have to be too intense, the ripple of resentment against an unwanted, unsanctioned war grows in strength.  Score an advantage for the Persians.  Teheran is also aware that there are countries whose economies are tender to the touch, could be held hostage by oil, and any prolonged disruption of oil supplies, and blasting through price resistance levels, can be fatal to their calculations.  Or, at least, hurry those countries into a coma.  Pain at the pump.  Pain at the pot.  No one should forget that thick, viscous crude oil has over 6,000 derivatives.  Oil develops a cough, and most, if not, all of those products get bashed by the equivalent of a severe attack of coronavirus.  Economic stringencies soon become the buzzwords that make an impression, dig deeper, and make worldwide nuisances of themselves.

The bottom line is that Iran has been lashed, and will continue to get battered into a dumpsite.  Smashed silly, yes; but smashed out of existence is out of the question.  From current indications, it doesn’t appear that Iran is going to yield.  Because the greater and longer that Iran gets broadsided and bulldozed, the more others beyond its borders are made to hop from one foot to the other, and reduced to a delicate, dangerous balancing act.  Recall the economics of war.  A new one is now introduced.  Think of the economics of time.  Iran is on its way to being reduced to a scrapheap.  But, let there be the clear-headedness to discern that the economies of vulnerable countries could be limping towards a pile of ashes.  It would be a pyrrhic victory for Iran, but what nonetheless counts as a victory, in the eyes of its leaders.  Wanna mess with Tehran, come prepared with an armor-plated economy.

Hormuz is locked.  Producers cannot produce.  Shippers circle around.  Prices takeoff.  Economies stumble.  War! Bring it on.  Pain! Have anesthetic ready.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

---

• GHK Lall, ground offensive, Iranians, Israelis, war strategy

---