Bombs can flatten a missile factory. They cannot stop a government from building another one if it still has the cash. That is the core of an argument Dr. Mike Evans made in an opinion column in The Jerusalem Post on August 23, urging Washington to treat money, not munitions, as the main front against Iran.
Evans cites a figure of roughly $270 billion in war damage, about 57% of Iran’s GDP. He writes that each additional month of fighting could set the Iranian economy back by more than five years, given the loss of infrastructure, capital and productivity. Iran, he notes, went into the war already weakened by decades of sanctions, corruption, inflation and a collapsing currency.
Ordinary Iranians are feeling it. Prices are rising, the currency is sliding and wages buy less. “It is the daily reality of families struggling to afford basic necessities,” Evans writes. He separates the population from its rulers: “The Persian people are not our enemy. The mullahs are.”
Operation Economic Fury
With peace talks deadlocked, Evans writes, President Trump has stepped up financial pressure under the name Operation Economic Fury. Trump called it an “Economic D-Day” and warned of severe secondary sanctions on the financial institutions, businesses, airports or governments of any country that helps Iran trade.
Evans wants that threat carried out. He says Tehran has long worked around sanctions through front companies, shadow banking, exchange houses and oil smuggling, and argues that a bank that knowingly moves Iranian money should face consequences. A company that launders oil revenue, in his view, should lose access to the American financial system.
His case rests on what the money pays for. The Iranian government needs it, he says, to pay the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, build missiles and drones, and support Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.
No relief without conditions
Evans expects pressure to ease sanctions or release frozen assets, and he opposes it. In his view Tehran should get no economic relief without “concrete, verifiable, and irreversible concessions”, and any easing should follow real compliance, not promises.
“Bombs destroy what Iran has today,” he writes. “Economic warfare can destroy Iran’s ability to rebuild tomorrow.”
Evans is the founder of Churches United with Israel and the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem. His column closes with a line that sums up his position: the war may be decided not by the last missile fired but by the last dollar Tehran can spend.
