The New York Times: Ο Κόσμος: Μια νέα προσπάθεια τιμωρίας του Ιράν – Η Ρωσία προειδοποιεί τη Βρετανία για τη βοήθεια προς την Ουκρανία – Μεγάλες ελπίδες για την πετρελαϊκή άνθηση της Αργεντινής – Ένα νέο συναρπαστικό μυθιστόρημα από τη Ρέιτσελ Κάσκ – Οι ΗΠΑ προσπαθούν να ασκήσουν οικονομική πίεση στο Ιράν — ξανά – Κατά τη διάρκεια επίσκεψης στο Κίεβο, ο πρωθυπουργός της Βρετανίας, Άντι Μπέρναμ, προσφέρθηκε να μοιραστεί λεπτομέρειες σχετικά με την παραγωγή πυραύλων μεγάλου βεληνεκούς στην Ουκρανία. Η Ρωσία προειδοποίησε για συνέπειες εάν συνεχιστεί η βοήθεια – Η Αργεντινή ελπίζει ότι ένα κοίτασμα πετρελαίου και φυσικού αερίου γνωστό ως Vaca Muerta, ή Νεκρή Αγελάδα, σε μια απομακρυσμένη περιοχή της Παταγονίας, μπορεί να αλλάξει την οικονομική της τύχη – Ένα ανθρωποειδές ρομπότ έσπασε το ρεκόρ 100 μέτρων του Γιουσέιν Μπολτ στους Παγκόσμιους Αγώνες Ανθρωποειδών Ρομπότ στο Πεκίνο – Πολλοί γαμπροί, καμία νύφη – Καθώς ο αριθμός των Καθολικών μοναχών στις ΗΠΑ μειώνεται, οι μεγαλύτερες αδελφές των οποίων τα μοναστήρια έχουν κλείσει βρίσκουν νέα κοινότητα σε μια μονάδα υποβοηθούμενης διαβίωσης στην πολιτεία της Νέας Υόρκης – Η υψηλή λογοτεχνία συναντά τα κουτσομπολιά των διασημοτήτων – Το σπανακόρυζο είναι ένα αγαπημένο ελληνικό πιάτο, με ένα όνομα που αντικατοπτρίζει τον συνδυασμό δύο βασικών συστατικών: σπανάκι και ρύζι

August 25, 2026	By Alicia P.Q. WittmeyerI’m the editor of The World.

Good morning, world. The Trump administration is trying to raise the pressure on Iran’s already-sputtering economy — part of the long and somewhat tortured U.S. attempt to find a resolution to the war and pressure Iran into reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

World leaders need to “make a decision” between “America and Iran,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said yesterday, calling the effort “Operation Economic Outcast,” though just what the operation would entail wasn’t clear.

Today’s newsletter looks at how these new sanction threats could play out.

Also:

A bazaar in Tehran last month.  Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

The U.S. tries economic pressure on Iran — again

By all accounts, Iran’s economy is in truly terrible shape.

In June, my colleague Farnaz Fassihi wrote about the pervasive economic hopelessness across the country.

She spoke with a manager of a plastic bottle factory, who said production was shut down and all employees had been furloughed because the factory lacked the raw materials it needed to function.

A doctor told her that pharmacies were rationing medicine, and that the Health Ministry had advised doctors to prescribe only essential medications because of shortages.

She spoke to a government employee who had recently bought groceries on loan from a neighborhood shop (his paycheck runs out by the middle of the month). When he returned to pay, “the bill had doubled because the prices of everything had gone up,” he said.

That was two and a half months ago; things haven’t improved much since.

There is not a lot of room left for the U.S. to impose broad sanctions on Iran itself, which has been under heavy sanctions for years, except for a brief reprieve after the 2015 nuclear deal.

With Operation Economic Outcast, the U.S. aims to put more pressure on Iran’s trading partners, though the specific measures it plans to take aren’t yet clear; Bessent promised more announcements in the coming weeks. One question hanging over the new effort is whether the U.S. really plans to enforce any secondary sanctions on China, the largest consumer of Iranian oil.

The Trump administration is not wrong to think that Iran’s economic situation is dire. But it’s counting on Iranian authorities responding to more pressure by negotiating. They might well respond by escalating the conflict.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. aimed to “sever every economic lifeline” for Iran. Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

A mixed record

The world has been putting economic pressure on Iran for decades. It has succeeded in devastating Iran’s economy, but it has a decidedly mixed record when it comes to altering Iran’s behavior. To understand why, I wanted to talk to my colleague Yeganeh Torbati, whose book “Stolen Revolution” is in part about why the economic promises of the 1979 revolution went unfulfilled.

This is just not a regime that has prioritized economic growth, Yeganeh told me.

During the revolution to overthrow the shah, Ruhollah Khomeini, who would become Iran’s first supreme leader, and other revolutionaries made gestures at the idea of improving people’s material lives. They talked about free electricity for the poor and more housing; they used Marxism-inflected language, talking about the oppressors and the oppressed.

Then the revolution succeeded and, as early as September of 1979, Khomeini made his true priorities clear:

“No wise person can imagine that we sacrificed our blood so that melons would become cheap! [That] we gave our youth so that housing would become affordable … It is for Islam that a person can give up his life. Our saints also gave up their lives for Islam, not for economics. Economics is not worthy of this.”

This is a regime that cares about ideology, Yeganeh said. For all that’s changed since Khomeini, it still retains that in its DNA.

Occasionally, the regime is forced to face the reality that things have gotten so dire its survival is at stake. That’s what brought them to the table to negotiate a nuclear deal in 2015, and the economy is worse today, she said.

The protests that brought thousands into the streets in January were driven by economics. That’s partly why there is a faction within Iran that does want to reach a deal with the U.S.

But there’s another faction that remains convinced that, in the current standoff, the U.S. will blink first.

A billboard of Ayatollah Khamenei in Tehran last month. Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

A leverage problem

One problem with the fact that the Trump administration wants to step up the economic war against Iran? It sends a signal that the U.S. doesn’t particularly want to go back to actually fighting Iran, as my colleague Anton Troianovski, a global affairs correspondent, has pointed out.

Trump’s reluctance to go back to war won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has watched the conflict and seen the president issue dire warnings on several occasions about the destruction he’s about to unleash — only to walk them back.

Trump has a leverage problem. The war is unpopular, the U.S. has elections coming up and he doesn’t want the war to be central to the campaign. Iran knows this, and wants to use it.

Over the weekend, Iran’s security chief issued a warning that any country that joined U.S. efforts to isolate Iran would be “regarded by us as an enemy.” Should the economic pressure ramp up, one analyst told Anton, Iran is likely to look for a way to put fresh military pressure on the U.S. or its Gulf allies.

But it also might not have to. Bessent’s announcement followed a familiar pattern. He’d spent days promising an “economic D-Day,” the sanctions equivalent of storming the beaches of Normandy. But when the announcement finally came, as one of our reporters put it, it was more like a warning shot.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham in Kyiv, Ukraine, yesterday. Pool photo by Henry Nicholls

Click to watch. The New York Times

WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING

Click to watch. The New York Times

TOP OF THE WORLD

The most clicked link in your newsletter yesterday was about the Canada-U.S. trade war.

Mark Carney chose suffering, but he did what Canadians elected him to do, Stephen Marche writes.

Trump needs to face reality and let Iran control the Strait of Hormuz, Rosemary Kelanic, a Middle East analyst, argues.

China is winning the industries of the future. How should the world respond? Ezra Klein discusses with the economist Brad Setser.

A mass marriage ceremony in New Delhi, in March. Arun Sharma/PTI, via Associated Press

Plenty of grooms, zero brides

About 40 grooms from several villages in India showed up at a mass wedding, having paid for brides they had selected by photograph but never met. They waited all day for their brides before realizing they had been duped. The case is an extreme example of a scam in a marriage industry notoriously prone to them.

Roshni Khatri for The New York Times

As the number of Catholic nuns in the U.S. declines, older sisters whose convents have closed are finding new community at an assisted living facility in New York State.

To spend time with them is to see a promising vision of old age: collective, purposeful, grounded in service to others and accepting of change. Read more about how they’re embracing their final chapter — and happy hour.

We’ve made this link free for you.

Ed Alcock/MYOP, via Redux; Francois G. Durand/WireImage, via Getty Images

Highbrow fiction meets celebrity gossip

Rachel Cusk’s new novel, “Life of M,” comes out this week in the U.S. and Britain, but it has already caused a frenzy.

The book is about an author who writes about a famous actress, “M,” who closely resembles the actress Natalie Portman. When advance copies began circulating this summer, the similarities set off a cascade of rumors about whether Cusk had carried out a “literary assassination” of Portman, depicting her as an empty vessel who lacks an identity beyond her film roles.

Is “Life of M” a perverse form of fan fiction? Or is it just Cusk’s latest provocative and polarizing experiment? Find out Cusk’s own take in our interview with her, and read our review.

Cope: Priya Parker, a conflict resolution facilitator and the author of “The Art of Fighting,” shares advice on how to deal with workplace and family conflicts.

Pick: Which apartment in Portugal would you choose for $400,000?

Collect: These four dresses are all you need in your wardrobe.

Travel: Spend 36 hours in the Cotswolds, England.

Christopher Testani for The New York Times

Spanakorizo is a beloved Greek dish, with a name that reflects its combination of two key ingredients: spinach and rice. This version is fairly traditional but includes some flourishes, like jammy eggs for more protein.