US Bid to Close Iran’s Land Border Crossings Falls Flat

The failure exposes the limits of a pressure campaign that has already moved from sea to air: the land routes are now the remaining channel, and they sit in the hands of neighbors whose trade and regional ties give them little incentive to enforce a closure. That matters most for Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan, which are being asked to absorb economic costs for a policy they did not design. Whether Washington can offer enough to change those calculations, or whether the crossings simply become the new front in the enforcement effort, is the open question.