After President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran in mid-June, administration officials fanned out to build support for an agreement they hoped would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and start winding down the war.
Their efforts include giving the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps more control of the country’s regular army, appointing hardened veterans of the war with Iraq and past internal crackdowns to key posts, expanding domestic counterintelligence operations and ramping up production of missiles and drones. The leadership quickly seized the initiative, attacking ships to tighten Iran’s grip on Hormuz and expanding the battlefield to the Red Sea, which Saudi Arabia has used to get around Iran’s chokehold on the Persian Gulf.
“What we have seen so far is increasingly interpreted through the lens of ‘salami-slicing’ tactics—limited, incremental escalation designed to weaken capabilities before a larger confrontation. Iran’s proclamations include plenty of bravado. The country’s military and economic base have been battered by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. More pragmatic members of the leadership including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian have repeatedly warned Iran needs to negotiate a deal to end the war that brings sanctions relief or face the collapse of its economy. “Iran will remain on a wartime footing, preparing for a subsequent attack. “There’s something wrong with them. In fact Iran was pursuing a two-track policy. Iranian leader Mojtaba Khamenei was taking steps to prepare the security apparatus for an expanded confrontation that may be initiated by Tehran itself While his diplomats pursued a peace deal with the U.S..
“There is also a widespread view in Iran that the main war has not yet begun,” said Mohammad Hassan Sangtarash, a Tehran-based defense analyst close to the Iranian government. For the regime, “the baseline is war,” said Alan Eyre, a former senior U.S. diplomat and nuclear negotiator with Iran. “The very dangerous people from Iran, they’re sick,” said Trump, who also called Iran’s leaders scum. The Revolutionary Guard used the calm created by the memorandum of understanding to lay the groundwork with allied militias around the region to step up attacks if needed, sending advisers to Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon to discuss the plans, the officials familiar with recent Arab intelligence findings said.
