The phrase came from the Treasury Secretary ahead of a Monday news conference detailing new measures against Tehran. The President had already promised a crushing economic operation. New sanctions landed on Hezbollah last week, with the group formally designated an Iranian proxy.

The economic phase of this war has been running for months. What is new is the willingness to name it.

Start with the waterway, because the leverage runs through it. Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz is at about twenty percent of its pre-war average by one analysis of British maritime figures. Not closed. Not open. Iran has been granting selective passage, most recently to a set of Iraqi tankers, and selective is the operative word. A closed strait unites every customer against you and invites the military response you are trying to avoid. A strait that runs at one-fifth capacity, with the passenger list decided in Tehran, converts a chokepoint into a patronage system. Each permission granted is a favor owed. Each denial is a punishment that costs nothing to administer.

Speaking twice in Tehran on Sunday, Iran’s president said the country cannot continue with war indefinitely and that a decision must eventually be made to end the condition of neither war nor peace. He defended the memorandum of understanding reached with Washington in June, saying that everyone directly involved in the negotiations believed it was the best available route.

He said this despite reported misgivings from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. That clause is doing more work than anything else in the statement.