American strategy in the Middle East, although poorly reported, poorly understood, and savaged at every turn by President Trump’s political enemies, is showing a clear appreciation of something academic scholars and strategists have been saying for decades, that there are four key elements of national power: diplomacy, information, military, and economics, which gave us the catchy acronym “DIME.” When first articulated, the concept was used to expand the horizons of up-and-coming military leaders, helping them think outside the box of purely military capabilities and military solutions. If your only weapon is a hammer, every problem will look like a nail. 

The DIME, however, has been criticized as an over-correction. In the same way that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is a restraint on would-be tyrants that protects the rest of the Bill of Rights, so military power underpins the rest of the DIME. If an adversary believes it can achieve its objectives by military force, why would it engage in diplomacy? Why would information or economics matter? The military factor is vital, and against Iran we have mastered that factor to the extent possible without a land war that we are unwilling to conduct and do not need.

Many Americans now complain that it’s time to “finish” the war with Iran, as though some magical amount of explosives delivered by air will break the will of the Islamist factions in charge there. Never mind that we tried that, at enormous expense, against Germany from 1942 to 1944, without decisive effect. The national will of a united people is a powerful force, which is both an argument against the simplistic ‘bomb them into the stone age’ approach, and a key to ultimate success. National will can fall more easily to information and economics than it can to explosives. 

In 1940, the population of Germany was about 70 million. By the time we entered the war a year later, German conquests had placed another 20 million under their control, but not all those Austrians, Czechs and Poles were happy soldiers of the Reich. The population of Iran today alone equals or exceeds that of Nazi-occupied Europe in 1940; this is not just another neo-colonial adventure against a small Third World nation, an important reminder to those who grew up knowing war as only never-ending counterinsurgencies. The Iranian population, and the economic potential of a civilized nation and government on their soil, is key.

At the end of World War II, Germany was finally defeated not by aerial bombardment but by Allied armies driving across Germany. Japan faced actual starvation in the cold and dark by naval blockade, or the inevitable death of millions in a looming Allied invasion; even without the atomic bombs, 50 million Japanese were at their breaking point. Both the German and Japanese populations were mostly still united in support of their totalitarian regimes until the end of hostilities. Iranians are not united but cannot prevail against their regime without support.

Behind the distortions and untruths of western media parroting Iranian propaganda, the truth is that crude oil price per barrel has now fallen to $85 a barrel — only a bit above its prewar cost — and tankers are passing through the Strait of Hormuz at a rate approaching the prewar period. Therewith goes the last leverage the Iranian regime had over the rest of the world. 

What matters now — given the unique ideological blindness and fanaticism of the ruling clique in Tehran — is not diplomacy (because they will not negotiate in good faith, and the world cannot tolerate their continuance in power), and not military (because we’ll never kill or disarm the last of them). What is pushing this conflict toward an end is the economic element. Less satisfying to the screen junkies who want to watch fireworks — columns of smoke by day and pillars of fire by night — is the remorseless economics of naval blockade and — even more — a global offensive against the regime’s economy. In that fight, to date, no one has died. 

Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury, is wielding more irresistible force than the entire Department of War, against adversaries that welcome martyrdom but still have to eat and feed their families. When the regime’s leaders can no longer subsidize their murderous proxies in Gaza, Yemen and Lebanon; when they can no longer pay their soldiers and Revolutionary Guards, and the Basij militias enforcing the reign of terror in the streets; when they can no longer pay their government functionaries and the shrinking fraction of the population that supports them, or keep the lights on and the water flowing, they will face the final test — and either flee to some external sanctuary if they can find one, or swing from lamp posts when tens of millions of Iranians rise up against them, with guns we supply, under air cover we can guarantee. 

Military pressure has made this possible and must be maintained right up to the end, backstopping and supporting the main effort. Economic dominance, assisted by accurate information and informed analysis, is what will end this.