More than six months into the conflict between the U.S. and Iran, it's become a high-stakes game of endurance.

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LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Washington insists its economic blockade on Iran is working. President Trump is signaling a willingness to let current conditions drag on through the November midterms. Earlier this month, he said the administration is not looking for a deal anymore. NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi reports on Iran's strategic response.

HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, BYLINE: More than six months into the military conflict between the U.S. and Iran, the strategic balance has settled into a high-stakes game of endurance. Washington's main calculation relies on economic suffocation, hoping its naval blockade will cut off oil exports to starve Tehran into bending to its will. Vali Nasr is an Iran expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University.

VALI NASR: Not only prevents Iran from selling oil, exporting oil, but more importantly, it prevents Iran from importing what it needs, from commodities to manufactured goods to food.

AL-SHALCHI: Nasr says Trump assumes that the U.S. holds all the leverage.

NASR: He's fairly comfortable with where gas prices stand. So the way in which the conversation around Iran began to take shape is that Iran is losing - that America now has the upper hand and the pressure is on Iran to surrender.

AL-SHALCHI: Iran's approach, he says, however, is built on intense escalation to make Trump uncomfortable.

NASR: To be far more aggressive, to retaliate in a disproportionate way and to actually appear to the United States to be unrestrained.

AL-SHALCHI: In the latest bout of fighting, Iran has intensified its strikes on oil tankers and U.S. bases in the Gulf and Jordan. Alex Vatanka is director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute. He says Iran's continued blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and its support of the Yemeni Houthi rebels in their advances on an alternative shipping route in the Red Sea is driving up global oil prices, which is a key part of the Iran plan.

ALEX VATANKA: That suddenly makes Iran's case for economic warfare against the West that much easier to pull off.

AL-SHALCHI: Nasr says the Iranians have their eye on November.

NASR: Get the president out of the comfort zone he may be feeling vis-a-vis the elections to get him more worried about the outcome of the elections. And then they're hoping that translates to him being more amenable to cutting a deal.

AL-SHALCHI: Iranian leaders want to go back to a memorandum of understanding reached with the U.S. in June that quickly fell apart. The MOU granted Iran temporary relief from the U.S. naval blockade, immediate sanctions waivers for crude-oil exports and the release of frozen assets, while giving the U.S. a promise not to seek nuclear weapons and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But as both countries strong-arm each other, the current state of the conflict is unsustainable, says Ali Vaez. He's deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at International Crisis Group.

ALI VAEZ: We would probably go from one ad hoc truce to another cycle of tit-for-tat escalation to another ad hoc truce.

AL-SHALCHI: While Trump has said the war will end after the midterms, Vaez says it may go on until the end of the Trump administration.

VAEZ: That is a formula for forever war, but it is a formula for a low-simmer forever war.

AL-SHALCHI: And as the war simmers, one thing seems to be true - it's become a test of who will blink first.

Hadeel Al-Shalchi, NPR News, Istanbul.

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