Iran Warns Gulf States Against Joining Trump’s Economic War, or Else

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Iran’s new hard-line national security adviser, Mohsen Rezaei, vowed to prevent “a single drop of oil” from leaving the region.

Screenshot taken from this NYT article. | Mohsen Rezaei, Iran’s new security chief, last month in Tehran. Though hostilities have largely ceased, the United States and Iran are locked in an economic standoff. Credit: Mohammed Salem/Reuters
President Trump has warned that “Economic D-Day” is coming for Iran. This weekend, Tehran promised to fight back, threatening any nation that helps the United States.

Iran’s new security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, on Saturday vowed to strike the interests of oil-rich neighbors if they joined U.S. efforts to further isolate Iran, whose economy is already in free fall. He warned that Tehran would seek to prevent “even a single drop of oil” from leaving the region.

“Any country that becomes a partner in creating economic restrictions against us will be regarded by us as an enemy,” he said in an interview with Iran’s state broadcaster.

Mr. Razaei is a political hard-liner and former head of the Revolutionary Guards. The interview offered his first extensive comments since taking up his new post two weeks ago — and struck an aggressive tone in line with Iran’s increasingly uncompromising regional strategy. At one point, he asked whether Iran should pursue building a nuclear bomb, which Tehran has previously insisted it has no intention of doing. » | Erika Solomon | Sunday, August 23, 2026

Professor Marandi: Iran Will Outweigh the United States

Aug 21, 2026 | On Thursday's episode of The Grand Standoff: Iran and the World, Professor Mohammad Marandi warned that Western economic warfare against Iranian civilians will yield direct consequences for regional regimes aligning with the United States.

Marandi emphasizes that if Western sanctions seek to choke off Iranian commerce, Tehran will apply reciprocal pressure to US assets and host nations across the region. Marandi further questioned the long-term viability of regimes that have sacrificed their stability to enable American policy, asserting that Iran possesses the endurance and strategic depth to outlast Washington’s siege tactics.

Mohammad Marandi on US Ground Invasion Plans in Iran

Mar 31, 2026 | Professor Mohammad Marandi breaks down why a US ground assault on Iran is likely to fail, how Tehran and its allies could retaliate, and the devastating long-term consequences for the global economy.

How the Gulf Countries Are Responding to the Iran War Energy Shock

Mar 21, 2026 | As energy prices rise, the US is increasingly looking for ways to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping.

So what are the workarounds? And can any of them stave off an energy crisis?

Inside Story - What Will Happen When the Gulf Countries' Oil Runs Out?

The International Monetary Fund has some advice for countries in the Gulf: Diversify, and diversify fast. The oil, that’s made many Gulf countries extremely wealthy, is not going to last forever. And the IMF’s 2017 report is predicting the worst growth rate for the region since the global financial collapse several years ago.

Economies in the region have been suffering since oil prices fell dramatically in 2014. Attempts to curb oil production have only slightly raised revenue. And the Gulf Cooperation Council diplomatic crisis that began in June has only made the situation worse.

The IMF says Qatar and its blockading neighbours could have trouble finding investors if the crisis continues. So what are the alternatives?

Presenter: Jane Dutton | Guests: Jane Kinninmont, Deputy Head and Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House; Cornelia Meyer, oil-and-gas specialist; Khaled Al Khater, Specialist in Monetary Policy and Political Economy

Gulf States to Start Taxing People to Make Up for Oil Revenue Losses

People in the oil-rich Gulf monarchies have enjoyed lavish welfare and near-zero taxes for decades. But with the collapse of oil prices, governments no longer seem able to afford that.

Gulf Petro-powers to Launch Currency in Latest Threat to Dollar Hegemony
THE TELEGRAPH: The Arab states of the Gulf region have agreed to launch a single currency modelled on the euro, hoping to blaze a trail towards a pan-Arab monetary union swelling to the ancient borders of the Ummayad Caliphate.

“The Gulf monetary union pact has come into effect,” said Kuwait’s finance minister, Mustafa al-Shamali, speaking at a Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) summit in Kuwait.

The move will give the hyper-rich club of oil exporters a petro-currency of their own, greatly increasing their influence in the global exchange and capital markets and potentially displacing the US dollar as the pricing currency for oil contracts. Between them they amount to regional superpower with a GDP of $1.2 trillion (£739bn), some 40pc of the world’s proven oil reserves, and financial clout equal to that of China.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar are to launch the first phase next year, creating a Gulf Monetary Council that will evolve quickly into a full-fledged central bank.

The Emirates are staying out for now – irked that the bank will be located in Riyadh at the insistence of Saudi King Abdullah rather than in Abu Dhabi. They are expected join later, along with Oman.

The Gulf states remain divided over the wisdom of anchoring their economies to the US dollar. The Gulf currency – dubbed “Gulfo” – is likely to track a global exchange basket and may ultimately float as a regional reserve currency in its own right. “The US dollar has failed. We need to delink,” said Nahed Taher, chief executive of Bahrain’s Gulf One Investment Bank.

The project is inspired by Europe’s monetary union, seen as a huge success in the Arab world. But there are concerns that the region is trying to run before it can walk. >>> Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | Tuesday, December 2009

Melanie Phillips: Selling Us All to Saudi Arabia
THE SPECTATOR: The Islamisation of the west is proceeding according to plan, as the Times reports:

Gordon Brown claimed success yesterday in his attempt to persuade Saudi Arabia to help stricken economies by pumping more money into the International Monetary Fund... Lord Mandelson, who was also at the dinner at the Royal Palace, said Mr Brown wanted to ensure that the Saudi King was ‘on the same page’ over the causes of the financial problems and the solutions. ‘We are seeking “buy-in” from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to the necessary response that we all need to make to the turmoil of the international financial system. If we don’t get that money we will fail,’ Lord Mandelson said...

Lord Mandelson said that the Saudis and other Gulf states would now expect a bigger role in global institutions in return for their investment.

You bet they will. Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson are delivering Britain and the west into dhimmitude.*

* Definition of ‘dhimmi’ from the Dhimmi Watch site:
Dhimmis, ‘protected people,’ are free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur’an’s command that they ‘feel themselves subdued’ (Sura 9:29). This denial of equality of rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, is part of the law that global jihadists are laboring to impose everywhere, ultimately on the entire human race.

The dhimmi attitude of chastened subservience has entered into Western academic study of Islam, and from there into journalism, textbooks, and the popular discourse. One must not point out the depredations of jihad and dhimmitude; to do so would offend the multiculturalist ethos that prevails everywhere today. [Source: The Spectator] Melanie Philips | November 3, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>

Incompetence at the Fed, or What? Dollar Could Come Under Even More Pressure if Gulf States Unpeg Their Currencies
TIMESONLINE: Foreign exchange markets are on alert this week for the embattled dollar to face a further, severe sell-off after key talks between the Middle East’s Gulf states that could lead to them scrapping their currencies’ pegs to the greenback.

Rulers of the six nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) meet today and tomorrow in the Qatari capital of Doha amid significant pressures to sever their currency ties to the falling dollar, which is fuelling record inflation in their countries.

Officially, the GCC states have insisted that the key currency issue is not on the agenda for the rulers’ summit talks. However, there is intense speculation that mounting economic and social strains inflicted by the currency pegs could see them scrapped, or the Gulf currencies revalued, either at the meetings or within weeks of them.

Any move by five of the six GCC countries to follow a lead set by Kuwait in May and abandon their long-standing dollar pegs would add to already severe stress on the American currency, whose overall value on its broad trade-weighted index has plunged by nearly 12 per cent over the past two years, raising inflationary anxieties for the United States. Dollar faces new sell-off if Gulf states end greenback pegs >>> By Gary Duncan

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