Those inside the Iranian regime who still fear their people have ample reason to fear a prolonged naval siege of their country.
According to the Western press, time is on the Iranian regime’s side. The Iranians themselves may not agree.
U.S. officials called the volley of ballistic missiles Iran fired at an American base in Jordan yesterday a “surprise attack.” It was Iran’s first direct exchange of fire with the U.S. since a bombardment of the Islamic Republic that had gone on for two weeks was halted by President Trump last Friday.
Trump put a halt to the attacks on Iran to “give peace talks a chance,” as the Wall Street Journal put it. But the Islamic Republic is no longer speaking with one voice, if it ever did. On Tuesday, the remnants of the Iranian regime rejected an Omani compromise plan that would have provided Iran with some, but not total, control over the strait. And according to two U.S. officials who spoke with the Journal, the attack on Jordan may be devised by elements within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to derail negotiations aimed at reopening that contested waterway.
The United States is, therefore, probably just one audience for whom the strikes on Jordan were intended. The others are the Iranian people and the regime’s agents who are increasingly desperate for a compromise that ends the blockade.
Earlier this month, Iran’s parliamentary speaker and its lead negotiator, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, identified the paradox at the heart of Iran’s strategy. Control of the Strait of Hormuz is a commodity that diminishes in value every day that Iran throttles traffic through it. “We must not turn the Strait against ourselves,” he warned. The strait “is valuable only when traffic through it grows day by day.”
Ghalibaf was only acknowledging reality. “Across the Middle East, governments and energy companies are accelerating pipelines, ports and transportation corridors designed to move oil, gas and goods around Hormuz rather than through it,” wrote longtime Middle East envoy Brett McGurk in his analysis. “The energy map of the Middle East is being redrawn specifically to reduce Iran’s leverage over this chokepoint.”
Those inside the Iranian regime who still fear their people have ample reason to fear a prolonged naval siege of their country.
A confidential survey produced for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in May, first reported by IranWire earlier this month, found that the Iranian people’s anger over their conditions was worse than it was in December of last year, when thousands took to Iran’s streets in protest and were subsequently gunned down. A plurality supported “the ceasefire and continued negotiations,” while nearly one in five Iranians said they’d back “the acceptance of all U.S. conditions” to end the war. Only about 16 percent said they want to see preemptive Iranian attacks on U.S. or Israeli targets — the very course of action the IRGC chose on Tuesday night.
Even at the risk of further immiserating their people and driving a larger wedge between the Iranian political class and the praetorian guardsmen now in control of the country, the IRGC chose more war. But perhaps they feel they have no choice. With the Hormuz chit losing value by the day, and given Trump’s impassivity as well as the increased participation in the attacks on Iran-linked targets by Gulf states, the IRGC may feel it has no choice but to provoke more hostilities if only to upend an undesirable status quo.