Iran has decided to shift its policy from defensive to "fully offensive" because talks with the United States have deadlocked over a permanent end to the war, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday. The same official said Iranian entities must be ready to escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and the wider region, and said Tehran would carry out a "timely and precise" military attack to break the US naval blockade if diplomacy failed. Ordinary people, as usual, get the bill while the states argue over who gets to control the choke point.
The State Monopoly at the Strait
Monday marked the deadline by which Iran and the United States were expected to reach a final deal under a memorandum of understanding signed on June 17 and intended to end the war. The MoU set a 60-day timeframe, extendable by mutual consent, for Washington and Tehran to reach an agreement on broader issues including the fate of Iran's nuclear program. It declared the immediate and permanent cessation of military operations on all fronts, but it quickly unraveled over control of the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran said point 5 of the MoU gave it the right to manage the waterway, while Washington rejected that reading. Hostilities resumed as Tehran began firing on vessels it said were trying to sail through the waterway on an unapproved route.
US President Donald Trump said on July 7 that the pact was "over." Tehran has repeatedly accused Washington of consistently violating its commitments. The Iranian official said, "Within the short period of a few weeks set by Iran, all the agreement's provisions must be implemented by the US. This is a precondition for further negotiations with the US," and said mediators would share Tehran's deadline with Washington and regional states. The mediators, naturally, get to shuttle deadlines around while the armed parties keep the monopoly on force.
Trump warned Americans in a speech at a rally on Friday to prepare for continued high fuel prices as a result of the war, while also saying that "after we finish defeating Iran ... pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States." Earlier on Monday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: "The number one Goal is, and always will be, that Iran cannot have, in any way, shape, or form, a Nuclear Weapon," repeating one of his stated rationales for the war. The language is blunt. The logic is older than the platform.
Preparing for the Next Round
Iran is taking advantage of the cease-fire to prepare for a larger confrontation with the United States and Israel, The Wall Street Journal reported late on Sunday, citing Iranian and Arab sources. The report said Tehran has given the IRGC expanded control of the country's military, while expanding its counterintelligence efforts within Iran and increasing domestic production of missiles and drones. That is what state survival looks like from the inside: more centralized force, more surveillance, more weapons.
Iran is also working with Oman on a plan to manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Iran has reached an agreement with Oman over a plan for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz, and that the two sides are working to finalize details for a joint statement. He said, "an understanding has been reached regarding the map of the transit route." Baghaei said details that have previously emerged suggest the deal would reopen the strait with ships entering through a route close to Iran and exiting through a route close to Oman, and that ships would transit without paying fees or tolls during an interim period. He said the talks with Oman have gone slowly, "but we had planned, and still plan, to finalize the understanding in the form of a package: the map plus a joint statement."
Iran effectively closed the strait, through which roughly one-fifth of the world's traded oil supplies passed before the war, after Israel and the United States attacked the country on Feb. 28. The Associated Press reported that fully reopening the waterway has been a key US demand. Oil, shipping, military pressure, and diplomatic theater. The people below those abstractions don't get a vote.
Gaza, Iraq, and the Same Machinery
The AP also reported that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and Mideast negotiator, met on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the day after he had a rare, two-hour meeting with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt on disarmament of the Palestinian militant group. Netanyahu last week rejected a 15-point, US-backed road map to move the ceasefire deal forward in Gaza. Hamas says it has agreed to the road map, which includes disarmament, and is urging mediators and the US-created Board of Peace to "compel" Israel to sign on. Israel says Hamas must fully disarm before any Israeli withdrawal, and Israeli troops occupy about 60% of the strip. Netanyahu has previously threatened to advance further.
The structure is familiar. One armed authority demands disarmament from another while holding most of the territory, and a US-created board is supposed to make the whole thing look civilized. It doesn't.
The AP also reported that Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed they attacked a ship and four military boats on Monday in the Red Sea off the Yemeni city of Mokha, near the strategic Bab el-Mandab Strait. Yahya Saree, a military spokesman for the Houthis, said in a statement that the rebels fired a number of ballistic missiles at the vessels, resulting in the capsizing and burning of the boats. The rebels claimed the vessels belonged to Saudi Arabia, without providing evidence. There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia, and The Associated Press could not independently verify the Houthi claim. Saree also said the rebels launched a drone attack on government forces in the central province of Marib.
The AP further reported that two officials in northern Iraq were targeted in drone attacks that the regional counterterrorism service said were launched from the border with Iran. One was fired at the office of Masrour Barzani, prime minister of Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, and the other targeted the home of a top regional intelligence official. There were no casualties and no immediate claim of responsibility. Since the beginning of the US-Iran war, Iran and Iranian-backed Iraqi militant groups have launched regular attacks on US military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq and on bases of exiled Iranian Kurdish dissident groups, but Monday’s direct attack on regional government buildings was unusual. Barzani called the attack "a dangerous escalation and a direct threat to the security and stability of the Kurdistan Region." US forces currently stationed in the Kurdish region of Iraq have begun withdrawing ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline agreed upon between Washington and Baghdad to end the US military presence in Iraq.
The same pattern keeps repeating: states and armed factions negotiate over routes, deadlines, withdrawals, and disarmament while civilians live under fuel shocks, blockade threats, drone attacks, and the permanent possibility that somebody's next statement will become somebody else's ruin.