In June I wrote that the strategy behind the American naval blockade was to provoke Iran’s implosion, and I doubted the instrument could deliver it. Six days ago I showed that no blockade in the past century has ever produced a surrender. I retract neither argument.

The demand for capitulation belongs to a category of endings that economic pressure has never produced, and hunger has never broken the will of a regime built on a theology of martyrdom. What is changing is smaller and more consequential: the grade I give the instrument.

Against the goal Trump announced, the blockade keeps failing. Against Iran itself, it is doing more damage, faster, than I believed four months ago, even with the pause that followed the June memorandum of understanding.

Tehran has organized its survival around a single date. Every message out of the Islamic Republic since spring points to the American midterm elections in November: endure until then, let the voters punish Trump, then negotiate with a weakened president. The bet is public, repeated, and wrong.

Congress already tried to stop this war. On June 3 the House adopted a war powers resolution by 215 votes to 208, and on June 23 the Senate followed, 50 to 48, marking the first time in the conflict that both chambers demanded a halt. The resolution was concurrent, meaning nonbinding, and Trump dismissed it within hours as “poorly timed and meaningless”.

The blockade survived the attempt. Even when the Islamabad Memorandum briefly paused naval interdictions in June, the reprieve proved temporary; once the deal collapsed in July, the fleet returned to its stations. A binding legislative stop would need his signature or a two-thirds override in both chambers, margins no realistic November result can produce.

Voters can hand the opposition the House and the Senate, only for new members sworn in come January 2027 to discover that their sole remaining tool is the........

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