Trump just gave Iran a way to inflict 'economic pain' for the foreseeable future: expert

President Donald Trump appears to have given Iran a way to inflict economic pain across the globe for years to come, according to one expert.

Josh Lipsky, senior director of The Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center, argued during a new CNN interview on Saturday that Iran has learned it can cause significant economic damage by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, and that the regime could leverage that for the foreseeable future. Lipsky noted that Iran learned this lesson after Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started bombing Iran in late February.

The Trump administration's recent decision to relax sanctions on roughly 140,000,000 barrels of Iranian oil at sea only reinforces that point, Lipsky noted.

"The message Iran has received over the past three weeks and has shown through their actions, is that they realize they have what I would call asymmetric economic leverage over the rest of the world, and that's through the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint," Lipsky said.

They can't really compete with the U.S. and Israel