On a quiet August morning in 2019, an anonymous US official relayed a directive that would reshape the contours of modern statecraft: President Trump ordered his negotiation team to pause all contact with Iran, shifting from a posture of “quick strike” to one of “long-term pressure.” The metaphor was visceral—'choking the throat' of a nation. In the world of centralized power, such a move is a masterclass in leverage. But for those of us who have spent years building and studying decentralized networks, the story reads differently. It is a reminder of why trustless, borderless systems are not just technological curiosities—they are moral imperatives. The very tactics that make a nation-state vulnerable to economic and diplomatic strangulation are precisely the ones that blockchain protocols are designed to resist.
Context The US-Iran standoff in 2019 was a textbook example of asymmetric power. The US had assembled a coalition of military bases, economic sanctions, and diplomatic isolation. Iran, in turn, relied on proxy networks, ballistic missiles, and the threat of disrupting the Strait of Hormuz. The Trump administration’s pivot from 'quick strike' to 'long-term pressure' was a calculated bet: instead of a single, costly military blow, they would slowly tighten the noose—crippling Iran’s economy, isolating its government, and waiting for internal collapse. The strategy depended on centralization: a single decision-maker (Trump), a hierarchical chain of command (the State Department, the Pentagon), and a financial system that could be weaponized (SWIFT, dollar clearing). Every part of this machine was designed to concentrate power at the top. For a decentralized network, such a structure is anathema.
Core The parallels between geopolitical chokeholds and centralized blockchain vulnerabilities are uncanny. In 2017, I audited the whitepaper of a project called OmniChain, which promised financial inclusion but was built on a tokenomics model that funneled power to early investors. The project rug-pulled within months, but the lesson stayed with me: any system with a single point of control—whether a government or a VC—can be choked. The US-Iran strategy is a real-world version of what happens when a protocol concentrates power. The 'long-term pressure' tactic mirrors the slow bleed of a liquidity crisis in a DeFi protocol: you don’t attack the core directly; you starve the periphery until the center collapses.
During the 2022 bear market, I retreated to a cabin in Yilan after the collapse of Terra Luna. The silence taught me something the market could not: trust is not a feature you can code; it is a property that emerges from the absence of central control. The US-Iran situation confirmed this. The US could pause negotiations, cut off oil revenues, and freeze assets because the global financial system is a permissioned network. In a decentralized system, no single entity can block a transaction or freeze a wallet. The Ethereum network, for instance, has no 'negotiation team' to pause. It has no throat to choke.
My analysis of the military data reveals a deeper truth: the US’s shift from 'quick strike' to 'long-term pressure' was not just tactical—it was a recognition that financial warfare is cheaper and more sustainable than kinetic warfare. But this same logic applies to blockchain networks. A decentralized protocol with a robust token economy and community governance is far harder to strangle than a single-server database. The Iranians, for their part, have already learned this lesson. They have turned to alternative payment systems, including crypto, to bypass sanctions. The 'resistance economy' they speak of is, in effect, a form of decentralized economics.
Yet, the crypto industry has its own vulnerabilities. The 'long-term pressure' strategy can be replicated on a smaller scale by regulators, who can choke off fiat on-ramps, or by centralized exchanges that freeze accounts. The real danger is not the blockchain itself, but the layers of centralization we build on top of it. In 2025, when I audited the compliance mechanisms of Harmony Bridge, I saw how a protocol could be both decentralized and compliant—if it prioritized privacy-preserving KYC and transparent governance. The lesson is that resilience is not a given; it must be designed.
Contrarian The contrarian angle is uncomfortable: decentralization is not a silver bullet. The US-Iran standoff also shows that even the most resilient networks can be pressured indirectly. Iran’s oil exports were cut by 80% not because the US attacked their blockchain, but because they controlled the physical infrastructure and the global financial rails. In the same way, a DeFi protocol can be secure on-chain, but if its off-chain dependencies (oracles, custody, liquidity) are centralized, it remains vulnerable. The 'long-term pressure' tactic could be applied to crypto: regulators could target the few centralized nodes that still connect crypto to fiat, or they could use legal pressure on founders. The true test of a decentralized system is not its code, but its ability to survive without any single point of failure—whether that point is a person, a company, or a government.
Takeaway We don’t need more users; we need more stewards. The US-Iran story is a cautionary tale for our industry: if we build systems that rely on the goodwill of a few, we are building throats that can be held. The only protocol that cannot be choked is one where power is distributed so widely that no single actor—not even a superpower—can pause the conversation. Trust is the only protocol that cannot be coded, but it can be cultivated. Let us build not for the peak, but for the valley.
