Iran's Strategy: Endure Until the White House Changes Hands

Iran is planning to withstand US attacks until January 2029 at the latest, when President Donald Trump leaves office. That is one of the scenarios reportedly being weighed inside the White House.

Senior administration officials, among them Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have been privately preparing the president for the possibility that Tehran could withstand US military and economic pressure, advisers told The Wall Street Journal.

That timeline stretches well beyond November's congressional midterms, held every two years. Americans will not vote for the White House again until the first week of November 2028, a date the United States Code fixes as the "first Tuesday after the first Monday" in the month. A transition period of almost three months then follows, ending with the inauguration on 20 January 2029, precisely the date until which Tehran is expected to grit its teeth and hold out.

None of this is new, however. Iran's armed forces, both the regular army and the Revolutionary Guards, have refused even to engage in negotiations with the United States since at least mid-August, as Mohammad Reza Naghdi, a senior adviser to the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, publicly acknowledged in an interview with the American broadcaster PBS.

"One way is to prolong this war until we get to the next term of the presidency and cause attrition, so that if anyone else wants to attack Iran, they will know there is a cost", the general said on the PBS NewsHour program on 12 August.

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In mid-July, following the collapse of a memorandum of understanding, the US Navy reimposed a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and most Iranian ports. This is contributing to the deterioration of Iran's economic performance, according to a report in the Journal.

A Currency in Crisis, an Economy Under Strain

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also touched on the rial's devaluation and soaring food-price inflation, speaking at a July conference in support of illegal settlements. At the time, the Iranian currency was trading at 1.9 million rials to the dollar. By the end of August, it had breached the two-million-rial mark.

Al Jazeera reported that the war did not create Iran’s economic troubles but has magnified them, layering fresh strain from war damage, disrupted production and the naval blockade onto problems rooted in decades of US and European sanctions. It traced the rial’s latest plunge specifically to Washington’s newest wave of sanctions.

Euronews put the currency's slide in context: having stood at 1.45 million rials per dollar in March, it had fallen to approximately 2.34 million by Thursday. The rial thus lost more than 63% of its value against the dollar between March and September. Iranians interviewed by Euronews rejected the theocratic government's claims about external factors, pointing instead to systemic corruption as the main driver of the collapse.

Hassan Ghashghavi, spokesperson for the Iranian Parliament's Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy, acknowledged that mismanagement lies at the heart of the crisis. "Regarding the economy, we must look inward. Injustice – especially in distribution and the concentration of wealth within a tiny elite compared to the vast majority – alongside widespread financial corruption and factional self-interest, impacts our economy far more than the US does", he said.

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China as a Strategic Trading Partner

This is a scenario Tehran can hardly afford: enduring years more of war and sanctions pressure until 2029. Yet officially neutral China could help make exactly that possible. As one of Iran's most important trading partners, buying hundreds of thousands of barrels of its oil, Beijing has, since the early days of the blockade, been granted the right to transport crude through the Strait of Hormuz despite Iran's closure of the waterway, and is reportedly now helping the Shiite government sidestep most sanctions and embargoes.

Two anonymous Iranian officials admitted to Reuters that trade between Tehran and Beijing takes the form of barter: oil exported from the Persian Gulf is exchanged directly for goods, including military equipment, worth "billions of dollars".

Three other officials, contacted separately by Reuters, confirmed the existence of the system on condition of anonymity. They explained that it helps Iran cushion US and European economic pressure while, since no cash changes hands, shielding Chinese banks from secondary sanctions and international scrutiny.

The Americans, however, are also blockading the Strait of Hormuz, and it remains unclear whether the barter system is still functioning. Iran has yet to connect to China's Central Asian pipeline network, despite plans for such a link dating back to the start of the war. Beijing nonetheless continues to buy roughly 80% of its smaller partner's oil exports.

Beyond military hardware, Iranians have also purchased medicines and vehicles from manufacturers with no direct trade ties to the Islamic Republic, ensuring that no sanctioned sales appear on the books. Sources at the British news agency confirmed that the mechanism was used at least once in the past year to buy Chinese air defense systems worth millions of dollars.

The Chinese foreign ministry said it was "not familiar with the situation you describe", while maintaining that Beijing rejects sanctions imposed unilaterally without UN Security Council backing, a reference to the "snapback" sanctions reimposed last September.

Iran's missions to the UN in New York and Geneva did not respond to requests for comment. The White House, for its part, told Reuters that the US is working with the European Union and other partners to "deprive Iran of the material means to pursue its nuclear ambitions". It declined to comment on the barter deal itself, which may suggest Washington was unaware of it.

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A Financial Web Built to Dodge Sanctions

According to three sources, Iran's state oil company set up a trading division in Hong Kong that received payments from a previously unknown financial institution known as ChuXin. Zhuhai Zhenrong, the Chinese state-owned company that trades oil on the government's behalf, funneled hundreds of millions of dollars a month into the mechanism.

Reuters reported that ChuXin then forwarded the funds to Chinese exporters and companies building infrastructure in Iran, likely via other Chinese financial institutions, with roughly 70% of the oil proceeds channeled toward construction projects.

The remainder flows into a special purpose vehicle (SPV), which pays companies supplying goods to Iran. The SPV's funds are jointly managed by a firm acting on behalf of China's ministry of commerce and a company linked to Iran's central bank.

Sources close to the Iranian government said that a company linked to Iran notifies its Chinese counterpart whenever Iran's central bank grants importers access to the SPV's funds, clearing the way for payments to suppliers.

This elaborate financial architecture has allowed Iran to keep rebuilding its infrastructure and military capabilities despite sustained US attacks. And although it remains unclear whether the system is still operational today, it stands as a model for other self-styled "anti-imperialist" states seeking to circumvent US sanctions.

Thanks to transfers of millions of dollars through a chain of shell companies, Tehran may simply need to wait until January 2029, when, weakened and impoverished but not defeated, it can resume negotiations with the Americans.