Both sides, in good faith

The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.

The case for

Supporters of the US campaign argue that intense economic pressure is a legitimate, lower-cost alternative to military confrontation, using financial leverage rather than force to compel Tehran back to serious negotiations over its nuclear and regional activities. They see rewarding nations that cut ties with Iran, through improved access to capital markets, as a sensible incentive structure that isolates a government they view as destabilising, without risking soldiers' lives. From this perspective, a currency collapse and rising inflation are the predictable and justified cost of years of defiance, and firm resolve now may avert a larger conflict later.

The case against

Critics, including those sympathetic to ordinary Iranians rather than the regime itself, argue that such sweeping sanctions chiefly punish civilians through currency collapse, inflation and shortages, while doing little to change the calculations of entrenched decision-makers insulated from economic hardship. They worry that branding the effort an economic D-Day and threatening third countries with consequences amounts to coercive overreach that infringes on other nations' sovereign trade choices, and that framing this in maximalist, triumphalist terms raises the risk of miscalculation, including confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz, rather than genuinely opening a path to diplomacy.