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strikeJun 8, 2026

After new attacks, Israelis lament a ‘never-ending loop of war.’

Summary

Tehran5:55 p.m. June 8 Tel Aviv5:25 p.m. June 8 Live Updates: Iran and Israel Move to De-Escalate After Cease-Fire Breaks Down Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps signaled that it had concluded its latest military operation against Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled back from preparations for another attack after pushback from President Trump, two Israeli military officials said. Latest Iran and Israel signaled on Monday that they were ready to wind down a military escalation that briefly shattered a fragile two-month cease-fire and brought the Middle East back to the precipice of full-blown war. In remarks carried by Iranian state television on Monday afternoon, Iran’s military said that it was ceasing its attacks for now. But it warned that if Israel resumed its own strikes, including in southern Lebanon, “much harsher and more forceful actions than before will follow.” Israel also appeared to be moving to de-escalate. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after pushback from President Trump, instructed the military to halt preparations for another attack on Iran on Monday, according to two Israeli military officials with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The Israeli leader had yet to make any public remarks nearly a day into the crisis, in which Israel and Iran traded attacks for hours. Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel on Sunday night in retaliation for an Israeli strike near the Lebanese capital, Beirut, against its ally Hezbollah. The Israeli military said on Monday morning that it had launched two waves of airstrikes across Iran, including against the country’s largest petrochemical complex, prompting further Iranian missile attacks on central Israel. Mr. Trump on Monday called on both countries to “immediately stop” the attacks. He also promised that a final deal to end the war in the Middle East was on the way, although the president’s predictions of an agreement with Iran have frequently failed to materialize. Here’s what else to know: Energy markets: The price of oil jumped after Israel and Iran exchanged strikes, but pared back much of those gains. Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, was almost 2 percent higher to about $95 a barrel, and West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. marker, was up around 2 percent to around $92 a barrel. Read more › Yemen: The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen fired a ballistic missile at central Israel on Monday and announced a naval blockade against Israel in the Red Sea, although it was unclear what that threat would mean in practice. Earlier Houthi attacks in the Red Sea snarled global shipping and prompted a U.S.-led bombing campaign. Casualties: The attacks caused no casualties in Israel, according to the local authorities. Iran’s emergency services said that the strikes had injured 15 people, one of whom remained hospitalized, without providing details, according to a statement carried by state media. Israeli politics: For Mr. Netanyahu, a resumption of fighting with Iran may offer some short-term advantages at home, though it could also further inflame regional tensions. Read more › Syria and Iraq fully reopened their airspaces to commercial air traffic on Monday, according to both countries’ state news agencies. Syria partially closed its airspace on Sunday and Iraq imposed a total closure, after Iran launched missiles at Israel. The Iranian regulator said on Monday that its airspace would be closed indefinitely. Reporting from London Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan, whose country has been mediating between Iran and the United States, said that the latest violence underscored the fragility of the truce and the need for a lasting cease-fire. “Especially when the final objective is just about to be achieved, we sincerely urge all sides to exercise restraint and give peace a little more chance,” he wrote on social media. Two days of strikes in the Middle East LEBANON On Sunday, Israel struck the outskirts of Beirut after it said Hezbollah attacked Israel. IRAN Iran retaliated to the Beirut strikes by launching missiles on Israel. Attacks IRAQ ISRAEL On Monday, Israel said it struck military sites and a petrochemical complex in Iran. QATAR U.A.E. EGYPT SAUDI ARABIA OMAN SUDAN YEMEN The Israeli military said the Houthis fired a missile at Israel on Monday. ETHIOPIA LEBANON On Sunday, Israel struck the outskirts of Beirut after it said Hezbollah attacked Israel. TURKEY Attacks SYRIA IRAN Iran retaliated to the Beirut strikes by launching missiles on Israel. IRAQ ISRAEL On Monday, Israel said it struck military sites and a petrochemical complex in Iran. QATAR EGYPT RED SEA U.A.E. SAUDI ARABIA OMAN SUDAN YEMEN The Israeli military said the Houthis fired a missile at Israel on Monday. ETHIOPIA LEBANON On Sunday, Israel struck the outskirts of Beirut after it said Hezbollah attacked Israel. TURKEY Attacks SYRIA IRAN Iran retaliated to the Beirut strikes by launching missiles on Israel. IRAQ ISRAEL On Monday, Israel said it struck military sites and a petrochemical complex in Iran. QATAR EGYPT U.A.E. SAUDI ARABIA OMAN YEMEN The Israeli military said the Houthis fired a missile at Israel on Monday. SUDAN ETHIOPIA The Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen said on Monday that it would stop Israeli ships from operating in the Red Sea and had fired missiles at Israel, threatening to widen the Iran war and impede navigation through a crucial global trade route. The Houthis have largely sat out the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, despite frequently warning that they could join the fighting. But the group’s threat on Monday appeared to signal a shift that could further disrupt shipping and energy markets roiled by Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which much of the world’s oil and gas is shipped. Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesman, said in a statement on social media that the partial naval blockade would take effect immediately. Iran and Israel traded waves of attacks on Monday as a two-month truce between the countries broke down. Mr. Saree also said that the Houthis had launched a “salvo of missiles” against Israel in response to “aggression” against Iran, Lebanon, the Palestinians and other targets. “We will meet escalation with escalation,” he said. It was unclear what the Houthi threat to Israeli ships would mean in practice. The territory controlled by the Houthis in Yemen sits alongside Bab al-Mandab, a narrow waterway that enters the southern end of the Red Sea. Cargo ships that cannot pass through the area must sail around the southern tip of Africa to transit between Asia and markets in Europe and the Americas, significantly lengthening travel times. Many shipping groups had already been avoiding the area. During Israel’s war in Gaza, the Houthis regularly attacked ships in the Red Sea in what they described as an effort to try to force Israel to end its bombardment of the Palestinian enclave. Since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February, the Red Sea has become a key outlet for Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, to reach international markets by avoiding the Strait of Hormuz. Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi political official, said that the group would target only vessels linked to Israel, but he cautioned other states, such as Saudi Arabia, not to intervene. “Any state that becomes involved will be targeted,” he said in a phone interview. It would not take much for the Houthis to hinder shipping by increasing the risks for vessels transiting the Red Sea, a move that would also raise insurance premiums for shipping companies, said Farea Al-Muslimi, a research fellow focused on Yemen at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. “They can just send a signal and only one attack has to happen — and that will send a shock across insurance companies,” Mr. Al-Muslimi said. “I won’t be surprised now if you have a joint lockdown of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab.” Rashid al-Haddad, an economic analyst based in Yemen, said that if the U.S. military or other countries’ armed forces were deployed to the Red Sea to counter the Houthis, it could turn the entire waterway “into a theater of military confrontation.” “This would also drive up maritime insurance costs and divert a significant portion of global trade,” he said. “If hostilities escalate, the Houthis will resort to a complete closure of the Bab al-Mandab strait.” The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the country’s primary humanitarian relief organization, said Israel had attacked 12 locations across Iran but the strikes had not caused any casualties or deaths. Dashing back and forth to bomb shelters. Classes canceled. Businesses closed. It was an all-too-familiar cycle on Monday for Israelis whose nation has been at war for most of the past three years. After Israel and Iran traded attacks for the first time since an April cease-fire, some said the only way out is to choose new leaders in a national election planned for the autumn. While a number of Israelis expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of military force against Iran, others said they hoped the renewed attacks would loosen Iran’s leaders’ grip on power. “We’re in a never-ending loop of war,” said Eugene Koval, 47, who works in hospitality in the port city of Jaffa. “The only way out is through a political deal, but this government is incapable of getting on board with one.” Such an agreement, he said, would only come after Israelis vote in a “sane” government, which understands the limits of force and the value of diplomacy. The latest conflagration began on Sunday after the Israeli military said that Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in neighboring Lebanon, had fired rockets into Israel. Israel responded with strikes on a Hezbollah stronghold, the Dahiya neighborhood on the southern outskirts of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Iran retaliated by firing waves of ballistic missiles at Israel late on Sunday, and Israel conducted airstrikes on Iran hours later. Adam Or, 75, a resident of the Haifa area in northern Israel, said he hoped Israel would continue fighting Iran until the Tehran government can no longer function. “I don’t care if it takes six months or a year,” said Mr. Or, who sailed on oil tankers from Israel to Iran in the 1970s, an era when the two countries maintained relations. “We can’t keep shutting down the country every time,” he added. “We need to do whatever it takes, including targeting their energy infrastructure.” Under international law, intentionally targeting a country’s civilian infrastructure could constitute a war crime. But under certain circumstances, such facilities could lose their legal protection. Power grids, for example, are civilian facilities by default, but experts say they can become lawful targets if they make an effective contribution to military action and offer definite military advantage. Sarah Athias, 66, a therapist, said she was growing tired of living in a state of emergency. “Khalas,” she said, using a slang term in Arabic meaning “enough.” “Our bodies have become used to all the movements — running to the shelter in the middle of the night — but it’s not normal,” she said. Like Mr. Koval, she said the only solution was a political agreement. Or Shalom, her 67-year-old partner, strongly disagreed. “You can’t have a deal with such a terrible regime,” he said. “The sole option is to strike until it’s on its knees.” Before the U.S.-Iran cease-fire in early April, Israel and the United States fought a 40-day war against Iran. Israeli leaders had expressed hope that the joint assault would create the conditions for overthrowing the Iranian government, but it failed to achieve that goal. Guy Edelstein, 25, a student of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, said he did not trust the Israeli government. “The problem is there’s no plan or policy to stop what’s happening,” he said. “There’s no hope with this government, only with a new one.” Reporting from London Video verified by the New York Times shows a large cloud of smoke rising near the Mahshahr petrochemical complex in Iran. The footage began circulating on social media on Monday after Israeli said it had targeted the sprawling complex in southern Iran. It is unclear in the footage what the origin of the smoke is. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel appeared to be moving to de-escalate after pushback from President Trump. Mr Netanyahu instructed the Israeli military to halt preparations for another attack on Iran on Monday, according to two Israeli military officials with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The jump in oil prices has moderated somewhat, with Brent Crude, the global benchmark, up about 1 percent, to just over $94 per barrel. Prices had surged much higher earlier in the day, after Israel and Iran traded strikes. The reversal was accompanied by a rise in futures for the S&P 500 index. When stock markets reopen in New York, they appear poised to regain some of the ground lost in a steep, tech-led decline at the end of last week. At first glance, Tehran’s retaliation for Israeli attacks in Lebanon might seem like a reckless act that risks rekindling a devastating regional war. For Iran, that is a risk worth taking, one critical to fighting back against what it sees as Israel’s efforts to shift the regional balance of power, while Iran and Washington try to negotiate a deal to end the conflict. “Failure to respond would signal weakness,” said Ali Vaez, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group. For weeks, Iranian officials had criticized but largely tolerated Israeli strikes on its most important ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, warning that the fellow Shiite Muslim force should be included in the regional cease-fire it agreed upon with Washington in April. As long as Israel’s attacks were contained to southern Lebanon, Iran had complained but not responded. Iran had warned that calculus would change if Israel expanded those strikes to the southern outskirts of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, where Hezbollah is dominant. “Iran’s attack in defense of Lebanon was not merely a military response; it was the formal declaration of a strategic doctrine, said Sadegh Larijani, the chairman of Iran’s powerful Expediency Council, which advises Iran’s supreme leader. “If any component of the Axis of Resistance is attacked, the response will extend beyond geographical borders and will alter the regional balance of power,” he said, using Iran’s term for the network of allied militant groups in the region that includes Hezbollah. Iran wants to show it is serious about defending its regional militia allies. That position had been undermined by its former leaders when they refrained from retaliating against Israeli attacks in 2024 that badly degraded Hezbollah and killed its charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Since the U.S.-Israeli war began in February and killed much of Iran’s top former leadership, including its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s new rulers believe their willingness to act more aggressively — from blockading the vital Strait of Hormuz to attacking its Gulf neighbors — has been a major success. To them, analysts say, being more aggressive allowed them to not only survive Washington and Israel’s attacks, but to inflict economic pain and emerge with strategic leverage through control of the strait, a crucial global shipping route for oil and gas. Hard-liners see this as a repudiation of the comparative restraint the previous leadership often showed in military confrontations. In 2020, Tehran pursued only limited retaliatory strikes against Washington after it assassinated one of its most powerful military leaders, Qassem Soleimani. And it limited its retaliation against a U.S. base in Qatar after the 12-day war last June. The result, hard-liners argued, was only more U.S. and Israeli attacks. By contrast, they see Iran’s more aggressive stance as arguably more useful. Last week, President Trump convinced Israel not to strike Beirut. Now, after Israel’s strikes on Beirut’s outskirts and Iran’s retaliation, Mr. Trump called for both sides to step back. “We speak to those who break their commitments in the language of ‘power,’” Mohammad Mokhber, a hard-line political figure in Iran, wrote on social media after the strikes. The defense of Hezbollah is not only posturing. Iran assessed the group’s ability to continue attacking northern Israel during the recent war as critical to giving Iran room to focus its attacks on its oil-rich Gulf neighbors, said Hamidreza Azizi, an Iranian security expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Allowing Israel to weaken Hezbollah further, he said, would therefore be militarily costly for Iran in a future conflict, which it deems inevitable. Iran also saw its retaliation as necessary, he said, because it views Israel’s attacks as part of an apparent U.S.-Israeli strategy to try to quietly erode its strategic gains in the recent conflict even as it tries to negotiate a deal to end the war with Washington. For weeks, U.S. forces have been quietly escorting vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. Many analysts describe this as a U.S. attempt to alleviate pressure on the global economy while it tries to increase the economic pressure on Iran by reinforcing its own blockade of Iranian vessels. Iran worries that Israel’s efforts to weaken Hezbollah are another facet of that strategy. The Iranians see these moves by the United States and Israel as a way to use the cease-fire to “shape the realities on the ground in a way that would erode the leverage Iran has achieved during this war,” Mr. Azizi said. Tehran’s willingness to retaliate so forcefully is also an indication, diplomats in contact with Iranian officials say, of how comfortable it is with the idea of a return to war. They believe it would take a great deal for Mr. Trump, facing a deepening global economic crisis and midterm elections this fall, to rejoin the fray. “They don’t think Trump is going to go to war,” said Farzan Sabet, an Iran analyst at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland. “But even if he does, they’re fairly confident they can manage it.” Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting. Reporting from London Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps signaled that Iranian forces had concluded the latest military operation against Israel, according to a statement issued by one of its top command forces, the Central Headquarters of Khaatam al-Anbiya. The statement, which was issued Monday afternoon and carried by IRIB, Iran’s state broadcaster, described the Iranian operation as a response to Israel’s recent military actions in Lebanon. It threatened to resume attacks “if aggression and hostile acts continue — including in southern Lebanon,” according to the state media report. Israeli schools, which were already closed on Monday, will remain shuttered on Tuesday, and end-of-year matriculation exams set to take place this week will be either canceled or postponed, Yoav Kisch, the Israeli education minister, told reporters in a news briefing. The announcement suggested that the Israeli authorities could be preparing for the possibility that the escalation in fighting may continue for another day or longer. The Israeli military said it attacked Iran’s sprawling Mahshahr petrochemical complex on Monday, its first strike there since a cease-fire was agreed between the countries on April 7. The Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex, as it is formally known, is Iran’s largest such site. It is near the southern city of Mahshahr and Bandar Imam Khomeini, a major industrial port on the Persian Gulf. The facility is made up of more than 50 separate petrochemical plants and produces about 72 million tons of products annually, according to Iran’s oil ministry. One of the installations, the Karun petrochemical plant, was hit twice at around 7:30 a.m., Iranian state media reported. No casualties were reported, a local official told Fars, a separate semiofficial news agency, but the facility was damaged. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps condemned the attack as a “dangerous game,” and threatened to expand how it retaliates against Israel, including by targeting energy-related sites. The Israeli military said in a statement on Monday that it had struck several sites at Mahshahr, which it said were used by Iran’s military to manufacture raw materials for its ballistic missile program. The Mahshahr complex was previously hit in early April, which prompted criticism that Israel was targeting Iran’s civilian economy. At the time, Iranian officials reported that the strikes had effectively shut down all production across the complex by targeting two utility plants that provided basic services. As Iran seeks to diversify its economy away from oil, it has become increasingly dependent on exporting petrochemical products, which account for about a quarter of total exports, according to Iranian media reports. The Mahshahr complex produces a wide range of basic chemicals, polymers and other materials with many uses. Karun, the Iranian petrochemical company that operated the facility targeted on Monday, says on its website that it specializes in the production of isocyanates, a highly reactive class of chemical used in the making of plastic products. Israel has previously maintained that plants at Mahshahr were “dual-use,” meaning that they produced chemical materials that have both civilian and military purposes, and were therefore legitimate targets. Dual-use infrastructure is civilian by default, but it can be lawfully targeted in times of war if it makes an effective contribution to the enemy’s military action and offers a definite military advantage, according to experts in international law. Even if a facility is considered dual-use, however, the Geneva Conventions require armed forces to ensure that any attack against it must be proportionate. news analysis For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, a resumption of fighting with Iran offered clear advantages — at least in the short term. It showed his restive political base that he was willing to stand up to President Trump, who had scolded Israel on Sunday for bombing the outskirts of Beirut and, when Iran fired missiles at Israel in response, argued that Israel should exercise restraint. Resisting Mr. Trump — or at least making a show of doing so, since it was unclear just what the two leaders said when they spoke Sunday night — was vital to Mr. Netanyahu, who is trailing in the polls heading into a difficult re-election fight. Just a week ago, Mr. Trump had humiliated him in an angry, profanity-laced phone call in which, the president later confirmed, he had called Mr. Netanyahu “crazy.” Mr. Netanyahu also fears that the peace deal the Trump administration is pursuing with Iran would prove disastrous for Israel by, among other things, tying its hands in dealing with Hezbollah, the militant group that dominates Lebanon. If an exchange of airstrikes with Iran carries the risk of spiraling into a return to full-blown warfare, it could also make any broader peace agreement more difficult to achieve. Some Israeli analysts suggested that a few days of Israeli attacks could help achieve better terms with Iran in those talks, by inflicting fresh wounds and pain. “Now it depends on what the Iranians do,” said Eyal Hulata, a former Israeli national security adviser who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a group that pushes for a close U.S. partnership with Israel and confrontation with Iran. He said Iran’s boastful posture — that it won the war with the United States and Israel by surviving their onslaught, and by taking control of the Strait of Hormuz — belied the serious damage that it had sustained. “I assume that they wanted to vent, not that they wanted a couple of weeks of Israeli jets all over their skies,” Mr. Hulata said of Iran’s modest missile barrages at Israel. “They appear strong, but that doesn’t mean they are strong.” But others argued that Sunday’s Iranian missile strikes on Israel boded poorly for Israel in the longer term. Israel sees no alternative to hitting back though that appears likely to put it in conflict with Mr. Trump, sooner or later. “There are no good choices here,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a retired Israeli military intelligence officer who specializes in Iran. If Mr. Trump allows Israel to escalate the fighting, Mr. Citrinowicz predicted that Iran would expand its retaliation, and not just through Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, who fired two missiles at Israel Monday and threatened to attack Israeli and Israeli-affiliated shipping from transiting the Red Sea. He suggested that Shiite militias in Iraq could also be drawn in. But if Mr. Trump demands that Israel stand down, Mr. Citrinowicz said, that could cement an equation that Iran has been trying to achieve. It could reinforce a direct linkage between the Iranian and Lebanese theaters, in which Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in and around Beirut can be met with Iranian attacks on Israel. “And the strategic reality will be worse for Israel,” he said. President Trump asserted on social media that “both sides, Israel and Iran” were aiming to achieve “an immediate CEASEFIRE.” He also reiterated his claim that “final negotiations” to reach an agreement with Iran to decisively end the war in the Middle East that began in February were moving ahead. Trump has repeatedly said for weeks that a deal with Iran is just around the corner. Though Trump says that both Israel and Iran are seeking a cease-fire, that’s not entirely clear. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has yet to publicly comment on the escalation with Iran some 18 hours after it began on Sunday night. Reporting from London President Trump has urged both Israel and Iran to immediately end the escalation in fighting. “Israel and Iran must immediately stop ‘shooting,’” he wrote on Monday in a brief message posted to social media. The U.S. and Israeli militaries have been discussing the unfolding regional escalation. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, has spoken twice over the past day with Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads the U.S. military’s Middle East command, an Israeli military official told reporters. They spoke on condition of anonymity to comply with protocol. Iranian state news media reported a fresh wave of Israeli attacks against Tehran around midday local time. According to IRIB, Iran’s state broadcaster, the sound of explosions could be heard in western and southern Tehran, as Iranian defenses intercepted Israeli drones. Residents of Tehran, the capital of Iran, woke up in the early hours of Monday to the sound of massive explosions from Israeli strikes. Large plumes of smoke and red flames billowed in the air. Then came the drill of frantically checking their phones, social media and family WhatsApp groups to piece together what was happening. The pressing question: Was Iran back at war again? “We were just starting to get back to some level of routine and normalcy,” said Keivan, a 46-year-old father of three and a business owner in Tehran. “It’s all up in the air again.” Like others in the city, Sara, a 54-year-old chemist, said she had gone to bed anticipating that Israel would retaliate for Iran’s earlier barrage of ballistic missiles. Tehran was stormy on Sunday evening, and she woke up several times from thunder and lightning, thinking they were under attack. On state television, conservative pundits on morning news shows blamed Israel and the United States for the renewed hostilities, saying the two had worked together, and praised Iran for its proactive strategy of aggression. Tehran’s fire department said two nonresidential locations in the western part of the city had been attacked, according to state television. Isfahan’s deputy governor said on the broadcast that Najafabad — a city close to Isfahan, in central Iran — had been hit, but no casualties had been reported so far. A government official in East Azerbaijan Province said a military facility in Tabriz, the provincial capital, had been struck, also with no casualties reported, state media said. Israel also attacked Iran’s largest petrochemical complex in the city of Mahshahr, located in the south near the Persian Gulf. Officials from Khuzestan province, where Mahshahr is located, told Iranian state media that the strikes had damaged the Karun petrochemical plant. Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported that tens of thousands of workers were being evacuated from the complex. The Israeli military said it had bombarded Iranian military sites in central and western Iran, as well as a major petrochemical factory in southern Iran. Golshan Fathi, a resident of Tehran, wrote on social media that she had prepared an emergency bag, filled up her gas tank and updated the apps on her phone in anticipation of an attack overnight. “Now I’m sitting here, waiting for the war,” Ms. Fathi wrote, adding that it was a “wait born of fear, not courage.” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps threatened to expand its retaliation after Israel struck petrochemical facilities in southern Iran, and said it had fired on a similar Israeli industrial site in the coastal city of Haifa. There was no immediate confirmation from the Israeli authorities. In remarks carried by Iranian state television, the Revolutionary Guards said that the Israeli attack had “initiated a dangerous game whose scope will encompass all energy-related targets in the region.” The Israeli attacks on Iran this morning included a “large-scale strike on strategic defense systems” throughout the country, the Israeli military said. Dozens of Israeli fighter jets attacked Iranian defenses as part of the operation, the military added. In previous operations in the war with Iran that began in February, attacks like these paved the way for broader aerial bombing by suppressing Iranian air defenses. Iran launched another volley of ballistic missiles at central Israel on Monday morning, the Israeli military said, the latest in the tit-for-tat strikes between the two countries. There were no immediate reports of casualties. The Houthis in Yemen on Monday announced a naval blockade against Israel in the Red Sea. The Iran-backed militia has targeted vessels passing near parts of Yemen that are under their control since the war in Gaza began in 2023, including some with no clear connection to Israel. Earlier Houthi attacks in the Red Sea ensnarled global shipping, forcing vessels to sail thousands of additional miles around Africa and prompting a bombing campaign by the United States and its allies against them. It is unclear how the Houthis might carry out their threat this time, but the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has already rattled global markets. Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for oil and gas, has caused energy prices to rise worldwide. Diplomatic contacts were ongoing as concerns about the U.S.-Iran cease-fire mounted. Sheikh Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who is Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, spoke with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi of Iran on Monday, the Qatari foreign ministry said. The two discussed mediation efforts between the United States and Iran, and the developments in Lebanon, according to the statement, which did not mention the latest fighting between Iran and Israel. Iran’s state news agency IRNA said all the workers of Mahshahr’s vast petrochemical complex, which employee tens of thousands of workers, were being evacuated under emergency provisions. Israel attacked a petrochemical plant earlier in the morning. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said it had launched strikes on two Israeli air bases, Nevatim and Tel Nof. The attack was in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Iranian radar sites in three regions, it said in a statement carried by Iran’s state news agency, IRNA. The Israeli military said it had attacked several targets at a petrochemical complex in Mahshahr, southern Iran, on Monday morning. The governor of Khuzestan province, where Mahshahr is located, told Iranian state media that Israel had struck the Karun petrochemical plant. Israel previously targeted the industrial facilities in Mahshahr in April. The area’s vast petrochemical complex is one of Iran’s key oil and gas production centers. The Israeli military said Monday morning that it had detected more missile launches toward Israel from Iran. Israeli defenses were working to intercept the missiles, the military said. Israel’s air defense systems are working to intercept a missile launched from Yemen, the Israeli military said on social media. The Houthis — an Iran-backed militia in Yemen — have launched strikes at Israel since the war in Gaza began in 2023, but those attacks had stopped following the cease-fire between the United States and Iran in April.

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Over the weekend, after exchanges where the US hit bridges and a desalination plant in Iran (reportedly repaired very quickly) and Iran’s response included hitting a much more important desalination and power plant in Kuwait and pounding important US operations in Jordan, the US attacks fell way back one night and CENTCOM and even Trump were quiet.

Some speculated that more Gulf states were denying the US the use of their airspace and the US was having to make a major regrouping. However, the US resumed strikes last night, with the pretext that the US had suffered two more military deaths on top of two just reported.

1 Trump had promised intensified strikes beginning more or less today if Iran did not return to negotiations, as in capitulate. And as many noted, the US had escalated last week, albeit not to the level of attacks during the initial phase of the war, not just with the number of strikes but also the targeting: the aforementioned desalination plant, bridges, too close for comfort to the Bushehr nuclear plant2 and to a nuclear site under development at Darkhovin.

Many have argued that the latest round of strikes look like shaping attacks in preparation for a ground operation, which pretty much everyone with even a modicum of military knowledge sees as insane.3 Daniel Davis has also mentioned in passing that despite all the noise about using ground forces and other signs of a buildup, such as more refueling tankers flying to Jordan, that Trump was shaken by the near-disaster at Isfahan, where a supposed rescue of a downed pilot resulted in the loss of more air assets than in any single engagement since Vietnam.

Many experts have contended that that was an actual operation, a botched attempt to remove some of Iran’s “nuclear dust.” However, Scott Ritter may have squared that circle. See his brief clip starting at 11:55: From a lightly-edited machine transcript: Jawaid: Scott Ritter thinks that Israeli lap dog Trump will soon launch a ground invasion of Iran, but he will fail miserably.

Also, this is something Iran has been wanting Trump to commit to for a long time. Ritter: There’s a a mission called a raid. Um, and I, you know, we already had US troops fighting on the ground. We did a raid to rescue a pilot. We were in limited ground combat operations there.

I think there’s a high potential that the US will conduct a raid here and there because that’s a that’s a a very specific task. A raid is is the only military mission where we plan to retreat. You know, every other military mission there’s no plan. You commit and you go, but a raid is in and out.

So maybe we can do a raid, but the idea that we’re going to land in seize territory, there’s zero chance that will happen because there’s zero chance of success. Now admittedly, if pilot rescue came about as the result of the botched operation in Isfahan, that would be debatable as a raid.

Even though the intent again was to retreat, the US would have had to stage equipment for the removal and transport of nuclear material, so there would be a short-lived occupation of terrain and not just a fast snatch and grab, as with Maduro. Nevertheless, the US military may not be totally suicidal, so the plan may be for a fast landing to inflict some sort of concrete form of damage that cannot be well inflicted from the air and then to decamp.

This segment also includes a very informative explanation of how important the operations in Jordan are to the US, and how the Iran intend is destroy bases so that the US has to retreat to Israel and then Iran will proceed forcefully against the remaining assets there.

We’ll soon turn to updates, but to start with some bigger picture considerations: it is disconcerting to see how many commentators resort to the trope that neither side can prevail on the battlefield, that they will in the end negotiate an outcome. As we pointed out, a study of modern wars found that more than half did not.

The distrust between the two sides, which has now reached the level of mutual loathing as a result of the fast breakdown of the already likely to fail Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), means any “deal” is vanishingly unlikely. Iran knew even before it entered into talks that the US and Israel intended to execute a “mowing the lawn” strategy, of keeping crippling sanctions in place and beating up on Iran every so often to weaken it and hopefully create severe internal divisions that would trigger an overthrow or balkanization.

Even if Iran’s 47 year record of taking severe punishment and surviving says this plot would probably fail, Iran had been preparing since the Iraq War for the US and Israel to launch a major campaign. After the illegal launch, the assassination of a major part of Iran’s leadership, as well as war crimes exemplified by the massacre of school children in Minab, the nation is highly unified around inflicting a decisive defeat on the US, so that it won’t even think about military action against Iran for at least a decade.

We were far from alone in making that case early in the war and Iran’s resolve has only stiffened as it can see how it has weakened the US while Iran has learned from combat and claims to have even bigger inventories of key weapons than it had at the start of the war.

Critically, Iranian leaders have said, bluntly, that negotiating with the US is not just pointless but also demeaning. Consider the germane parts of a recent statement by the Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei,4 as summarized at PressTV: - Leader said the United States had once again violated the memorandum of understanding signed between the presidents of Iran and the US, proving that the signature of the American president is worthless and unreliable.

- He said bullying, hegemonic ambition, and savagery are inseparable characteristics of the United States and that Washington had once again revealed its true, unmasked face to the world. - He described the latest developments – US attacks against southern Iran, mainly targeting the civilian infrastructure – as further evidence of America’s deceitfulness, irrationality, unreliability, and wickedness.

- Leader said the United States is seeking to ignite further war despite facing heavier costs and greater disgrace. - He warned that the Iranian nation and the Resistance Front have unforgettable lessons for the United States, adding that the bravery of Islamic resistance fighters and the courageous people of southern Iran have already demonstrated examples of those lessons.

However, Araghchi subsequently gave an interview which can be read as pushing back against the Supreme Leader:5 Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says that negotiations with the U.S. should be pursued even if the chances of success are only 10 percent, further highlighting disagreements between Iran’s political and military echelons.

“I am the Foreign Minister for the interests of… pic.twitter.com/uW1DzcfRhG — Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) July 19, 2026 Keep in mind also that China is still bleating about the need to settle the conflict and Pakistan and Qatar (among others) are also pressing for a resumption of the talks, so Araghchi as Foreign Minister has to keep the idea in play, irrespective of whether he privately places much stock in the idea.

6 And there is another way to read Araghchi’s talk: So they wanted to manufacture a clean record of “we exhausted every diplomatic option." Once that record existed, the hardliners with Mojtaba could shut the process down without looking like the ones who refused talks.

Moderates who pushed the channel now own the failure, and… https://t.co/Y63yYJVaEZ — Vonbury Research (@VonburyResearch) July 19, 2026 Kinetic action seems likely to continue to dominate: ADVISOR TO IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER, MOHSEN REZAEI, SAYING: “I declare it is over.

Both negotiation and war are over. If in the next two or three days the Americans continue the war, we will enter a phase of complete offense and destruction.”#Iran #IranWar pic.twitter.com/1M3A1pboH9 — Iran Now – WANA (@WANA_Iran) July 18, 2026 Robert Pape also seems confident that US escalation will continue7.

I found this discussion noteworthy because Andrew Neil strongly resisted the idea that there would be no negotiated ending and also found it inconceivable that Iran could become, as Pape has argued, the fourth world power. In other words, Neil seems to epitomize a set of normally pretty smart people who find it hard to see where the direction of travel is going because those outcomes so conflict with their priors: From a lightly cleaned up machine transcript: Pape: This is not what’s coming in the next few weeks likely.

What’s much more likely is he’s [Trump’s] going to do the close blockade and if he can then use the southern corridor with that close blockade to reopen the Strait, he’ll he’ll be probably satisfied with that. Very unlikely that’s going to work and that’s why you’ve got the 82nd Airborne and the Marines there to push back further.

Now, I’m not saying this is going to work, Andrew…. Neil: So, I’ve got to ask you some questions in this because I’m unclear. Do you think that the of the limited options President Trump now has, that escalation as you describe it is the most likely?

Pape: Yes. Neil: And that escalation will begin with a much more aggressive, more comprehensive a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz with the possibility of ground incursion on the northern side of the straight in Iranian territory? Pape: Yes. Yes, and it’s our and and the first part has already started this week.

So, so you’re already seeing in fact last week was the beginning of the air suppression campaign for this week. And as President Trump laid out the bombing schedule last night, the reason he will, if he if this keeps going forward, okay, just keep saying that if, he’s going to want to take out things like electric power and bridges is because he’s going to want to try to suppress as much of Iran’s military defenses as he can as he goes forward here.

And the military is giving him the plans for doing that. One place where I differ with Pape is that he posits that Congress might get out of bed in six months and Do Something to check Trump then. To again invoke Stein’s Law, if something cannot continue, it will stop.

The US and Israel can of course carry on with terrorism within Iran, such as assassinations and cyber attacks. But the level of weapons depletion and on current trajectories, shortly-arriving fuel shortages, seems very likely to put a choke chain on US aggression soon.

From Larry Johnson in The US Faces a Strategic Crisis with Iran…The Rapid Depletion of US Battlefield Missiles:8 The tables below are based on the most recent publicly available analyses from CSIS, the Payne Institute, and major media outlets (as of mid-2026), and provide a current (overly optimistic in my opinon) estimate for US inventory levels of these key weapons systems.

Please note that actual inventories are classified; these are informed estimates derived from DOD budget documents, procurement records, and reported expenditures during Operation Epic Fury (the US-Israeli war with Iran). Air Defense Missiles Anti-Radiation / SEAD Long-Range Strike (Ground & Sea-Launched) Missiles These are not just the numbers currently in the hands of US CENTCOM (i.

e., the US military command in charge of the war against Iran), these are the total numbers available to all of the US military commands. If these missiles are allocated evenly to the other two critical commands — i.e., EUCOM (European Command) and PACOM (Pacific Command) — then you begin to understand the gravity of this deficit.

Let’s take the case of the Tomahawk missile. Let’s assume there are 3,000 left (I believe that is a generous over estimate) and the remaining number are divided evenly among CENTCOM, EUCOM and PACOM… That means each command gets 1,000. Does anyone want to argue that in the event of a hot war with Russia or China that EUCOM and PACOM respectively would be able to sustain combat operations for more than four weeks?

Hell, CENTCOM fired 850 of them during the first four weeks of EPIC FURY. Here’s another major problem: All eight missile systems rely on rare earth elements — there are no exceptions among modern US precision-guided weapons. The dependence is nearly universal because rare earth permanent magnets are irreplaceable for the high-performance actuators, guidance motors, and seeker gimbals that make these weapons accurate.

And who controls the supply chain of these rare earth minerals? China!… The supply chain isn’t just about mining — it’s about processing, separation, and magnet manufacturing, which China controls: - Mining: China ~60% of global rare earth oxide production - Refining/Separation: China ~91% - Sintered NdFeB Magnet Manufacturing: China **~94%** Now to updates.

From Aljazeera’s live feed: - A vessel is on fire in the Strait of Hormuz after being hit by a projectile, forcing the crew to abandon ship. They were later rescued by a tugboat. - One person has been killed and several others wounded after the US military attacked the Iranian city of Tabriz in northwestern Iran.

The entries in the feed include ones describing how Mr. Market is taking cheer from the Iran Foreign Ministry admitting they are getting communiques from intermediaries and reviewing them as if they originated from the US. Recall that the negotiators have often developed ideas and tried to sell both sides on them.

Bloomberg’s Javier Blas, who has been a consistent seller of lower oil prices, is refreshingly precise about Iran not saying either way as to whether the missives were from the US or just the negotiators operating on their own: Iran has received “some proposals” from unspecified mediators regarding the war with the US, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei says in press conference, without elaborating.

— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) July 20, 2026 Contrast that with the Aljazeera account: Oil prices ease after Iran says US contacts continuing through mediators Oil prices have scaled back their gains after hitting their highest in a month after Iran said diplomatic exchanges with the US are ongoing via mediators despite renewed conflict in the Middle East.

Grr. Another Aljazeera live feed entry: Iran ‘counting down the minutes’ for US ground invasion [Today’s Iran war post launched more or less complete. I will be off duty for a while. If there are any updates, they will come in the comment section later] Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei says the United States will face “consequences of any adventure” to seize Kharg Island in southern Iran.

He added there are people in Iran’s leadership “counting down the minutes to welcome” US forces in any ground invasion. Kharg is the heart of Iran’s oil industry. It sits 55km (34 miles) off Iran’s coast in Bushehr province. President Trump has repeatedly threatened to seize the territory during the war.

A raid on Kharg could fit Ritter’s raid scenario, with the US busting things up and then leaving.9 But experts have pointed out that Iran has at least four other export routes. Kharg is the most efficient but losing it while being repaired would be inconvenient as opposed to a fatal blow.

From Bloomberg’s landing page: From US Bombs Iran for Ninth Day as Standoff Over Hormuz Deepens: The US conducted a ninth straight day of airstrikes on Iran, trying to force the Islamic Republic to stop shipping attacks and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The American military bombed military targets and communications networks in a three-hour operation ending around 5:30 a.m. Iranian time on Monday. Iran continued to attack US bases in the likes of Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain and Iraq. The standoff shows no sign of easing, with Iran refusing to relent over Hormuz and insisting it has a right to manage traffic through the waterway.

Energy prices have jumped on the worsening hostilities. Brent crude oil rose to above $90 a barrel for the first time in more than five weeks in early trading on Monday. US gasoline prices climbed back over the $4-a-gallon mark, potentially hurting President Donald Trump and his Republican party ahead of midterm elections in November… Hormuz Shipping Traffic Slumps as US-Iran Hostilities Worsen The tit-for-tat attacks are getting deadlier….

Shipping volumes have slumped and the number of tankers and other vessels going through Hormuz is roughly down to the same level from the height of the conflict in March and early April… US President Donald Trump warned Iran last week he’d escalate airstrikes and widen the scope of targets until it backed down… Kuwait continues to experience some of the worst attacks from Iran.

Over the weekend, Kuwait’s main state energy company said an unspecified site sustained “significant material losses,” causing its evacuation and a number of injuries, while two power and desalination plants have been hit in recent days. And from Hormuz Traffic Near Standstill as US-Iran Hostilities Escalate: - Visible traffic through the Strait of Hormuz appeared at a near standstill Monday after Iran targeted vessels in the narrow waterway.

- A Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier and a liquefied petroleum gas carrier appeared to approach the strait, with the bulk carrier turning off its transponder while approaching. - The targeting of vessels will likely raise fresh concerns over the safety of ships transiting Hormuz, which could deepen disruptions to energy flows from the Persian Gulf to global customers.

Indirectly importance of US operations in Jordan, the lead story in the Wall Street Journal is Jordan Becomes New Flashpoint in U.S.-Iran War as Troop Deaths Rise. But it fails to set forth any of the juicy details that Janta Ka presents. This is the thin strategic gruel offered: For years, Jordan sought to play down its close military and intelligence cooperation with the U.

S. The U.S. aircraft that carried out strikes on Islamic State from a base in Jordan during the American war with the militants didn’t advertise the country they were operating from. But Jordan’s role is now becoming too prominent to obscure. Jordan has become an attractive location for U.

S. armed forces since it is among the most permissive in the Arab world when it comes to allowing the U.S. to operate from its bases. A bit more on Jordan: The view from Tehran. “The increased focus on Jordan may serve as part of Iran’s preparation and testing of operational concepts for more intense and precise strikes against Israel in later stages of the conflict.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia—have at times sought to impose limits… — Policy Tensor (@policytensor) July 20, 2026 By contrast, the House of Saud published a remarkably revealing document (hat tip Eugene Linden), Iran Struck Prince Sultan and No One Was Required to Say So: Iranian ballistic missiles struck Prince Sultan Air Base in Al-Kharj on July 18, wounding twelve US service members — two critically — and hitting KC-135 Stratotankers on the flight line while a second rotation was still climbing out.

Saudi Arabia’s Civil Defense Authority cleared the sirens six minutes later without naming the weapon, the origin, or the damage, and neither Riyadh nor Washington has issued an official statement since. The strike was the first direct Iranian attack on Saudi territory in approximately four months, a gap during which the IRGC struck Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, and the UAE while conspicuously sparing the Kingdom.

Its return to PSAB — confirmed by a US official to Axios, corroborated by satellite imagery, and detailed by Air & Space Forces Magazine — ended whatever territorial immunity Saudi Arabia believed it still possessed. But the more consequential development is not the strike itself.

It is the silence that followed, and the institutional architecture that sustains it: a three-party managed ambiguity in which Iran, Saudi Arabia, and CENTCOM each benefit from leaving the damage question unanswered, because answering it would force a public reckoning with a PAC-3 reserve that is approaching a ceiling none of them can afford to name.

The strike was confirmed by a US official cited by Axios as “the first time the Islamic Republic has directly attacked the kingdom in four months” — a description that the State Department, the Pentagon, and the Saudi Ministry of Defence have each declined to repeat on the record.

Air & Space Forces Magazine, drawing on multiple US military sources, reported at least twelve wounded and multiple Stratotankers damaged on the tarmac. Open-source satellite imagery corroborated the impact site within the base perimeter. Iran’s state broadcaster supplied what no government would.

The missiles were launched “moments after American refueling planes took off,” a detail that only makes sense if the IRGC had real-time ISR coverage of PSAB’s tanker rotation schedule. The aircraft hit were those that remained on the flight line after the airborne pair departed — the timing was deliberate, and the targeting message was not about maximising destruction but about demonstrating that PSAB’s daily operational patterns are watched, clocked, and within reach….

Riyadh cannot confirm the strike without confronting two questions it has spent the war avoiding. The first is defensive: if Iranian missiles hit PSAB and wounded US personnel, the Sakhir Declaration — the mutual defence framework Saudi Arabia negotiated with Washington — becomes the operative instrument, and invoking it requires publicly admitting what the Arab Center DC described as the core strategic dilemma: “the PAC-3 architecture is functionally exhausted.

” The second is economic. Aramco’s August Arab Light OSP already dropped $11 month-on-month to $1.50 per barrel below Oman/Dubai, the largest such cut in over two decades and the lowest since June 2020. Confirming that Iranian ballistic missiles are landing on military installations 77 kilometres south of the capital forces a sovereign-risk reassessment that Riyadh’s fiscal position — a Q1 deficit of SAR 125.

7 billion, with Aramco’s free cash flow at 0.85 times its quarterly dividend — is not structured to absorb…. Washington faces a different but parallel constraint. Confirming the strike means confirming that 2,300 US service members at PSAB are taking casualties at a base where 43 US warplanes have been grounded since Saudi Arabia’s Operation Project Freedom in May 2026.

CENTCOM cannot describe a defensive engagement at PSAB without also describing the legal anomaly: the 1977 USMTM memorandum governing US presence is not a Status of Forces Agreement, and Project Freedom severed the operational relationship between American air power and Saudi host-nation authority.

An official statement would invite the Congressional question that the Pentagon’s communications strategy is built to defer: why are American troops still at a base where their aircraft have been grounded by the host nation, absorbing Iranian fire under a legal framework that was designed for peacetime advisory missions?

Please read this article in full. It contains remarkable operational detail. It is over my pay grade as to why it was published, but it seems to suggest considerable unhappiness at Riyadh. Due to the length of this post, we have skipped over the fact that Ansar Allah seems just about to threaten or actually close the Bab el-Mandeb strait: 🚨 BREAKING 🇾🇪 YEMEN’S HOUTHI FORCES WILL MAKE A “HUGE” ANNOUNCEMENT TODAY AT 8:30 AM ET.

REPORTS EXPECT THEM TO ANNOUNCE A BLOCKADE OF THE BAB EL-MANDEB STRAIT. TOGETHER WITH THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ, THESE TWO CHOKEPOINTS HANDLE OVER 25% OF GLOBAL SEABORNE OIL TRADE. IF TRUE,… pic.twitter.com/yjavHpPKOi — Wimar.X (@DefiWimar) July 20, 2026 This does not look terribly negotiation-receptive.

And some additional sightings from Twitter: Israelis have never felt less secure. 64% are unhappy with how the endless wars have been run. 73% are upset at how there has been no real investigation of October 7. 73% of the public also feel the government has not dealt well with the rise in crime.

No one wins from these… https://t.co/4OjhLUD14O — Shaiel Ben-Ephraim (@academic_la) July 19, 2026 These remarks would seem to negate happy thinking about negotiations: ⚡️⭕️ Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei says Tehran is determined to exercise sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz through measures already taken, and states the US failed to fulfill its commitments under a memorandum of understanding, so Iran will not fulfill… — Middle East Observer (@ME_Observer_) July 20, 2026 The average price for a gallon of gas hit $4, the second time it has reached that benchmark since the war in Iran disrupted global oil supplies https://t.

co/Cg8rE3XnJ7 pic.twitter.com/3UqHfwU4sc — CNN (@CNN) July 20, 2026 Done for today! See you tomorrow! ____ 1 What kind of admission of weakness is this? Part of the job description of a service member is that they may wind up dying for their country.

Admittedly, the US is widely suspected of suffering a much higher body count and covering that up. But this show of extreme sensitivity to losses again shows the US has a glass jaw. 2 Nima also discusses at some length at the top of a new talk with Larry Johnson why they look misguided.

He knows Bandar Abbas well, which is where the US has been hitting bridges so as to isolate it. Nima explains and even shows pictures that the bridges exist only to cope with seasonal floods for a few months a year. Those sluices are dry now, so Bandar Abbas is easily accessible by all sorts of routes.

3 🚨 BREAKING: Russia has evacuated 198 of its personnel from the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Iran. It is believed that the plant could be targeted again. pic.twitter.com/lPoQB05qgo — GBC (@GBC_Press) July 17, 2026 4 A new trope in the US-backing commentary community is to depict the new Supreme Leader as a figurehead, which is easy to make stick given his lack of public appearances (I suspect that among other things, he is having facial reconstruction; that can take an extremely long time since procedures are done serially with healing time in between).

I believe it was on a recent Dialogue Works talk where Professor Marandi debunked one popular claim, that he IRGC was operating on its own authority. Professor Marandi described the governing structure and said the military (both the regular forces and the Guards) needed approval of the Supreme Leader for its operations.

Having said that, I have commented that Iran seems to have a Japanese-style decision-making structure, as in more bottoms-up than the West. That results in more time to make decisions but much more internal cohesion when they are reached, since those at lower levels would be able to voice concerns and make suggestions.

Upon reflection, this would make sense given that Iran adopted its “mosaic” structure of extreme decentralization so as to allow it to function well even when the leadership was killed or incommunicado, as we saw at the onset of the current conflict.

In the Japanese model, decisions are effectively made at the senior-middle level ranks, which does tend result in the board and CEO being ceremonial. But the top level can and does say no, or effectively does so by asking probing questions and sending the matter back down the chain for further study and perhaps some revision.

I have been involved in decisions in Japan where the board and CEO were highly engaged, and these were ones that were of critical strategic importance. 5 DropSite has a longer recap of Araghchi’s remarks: ⭕️ Iran FM Araghchi: Wars End Either Through Total Victory or Negotiations… Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi: 🔹 A war must be ended precisely at the point when you hold the upper hand on the battlefield.

Ending a war is possible either through total military victory or… pic.twitter.com/kHeYhShsXC — Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) July 20, 2026 IMHO his analysis is wrong-headed. As indicated above, a bit over half the modern wars do not end with a negotiated settlement.

And it is a false dichotomy to say that to win, Iran must conquer the US and Israel. FFS, please explain Vietnam. Bad logistics and depleting weapons mean that ex nukes, the US cannot win against Iran. The question is how long it takes and how much damage is done not just to Iran but also the world economy.

Keep in mind the intermediaries are still busy but motion is not progress: #Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson has confirmed that Tehran has received "ideas and proposals" from mediators. He declined to provide any further details regarding the specifics of the mediation efforts.

pic.twitter.com/8Pzs25eauc — Iran Nuances (@IranNuances) July 20, 2026 6 A memorable scene in the Daniel Ellsberg memoir Secrets is when Ellsberg, widely seen as the top US expert on Vietnam, briefed McNamara in a helicopter about how badly things were going.

McNamara said, “Just as I suspected,” and then upon landing updated the press on the great progress the US was making. 7 It has taken me too long to see why Pape often acts as if he is speaking to children or the stoopid. Making this his normal manner of presentation means that when he actually is having to speak to someone who is being stoopid, they won’t take offense.

8 However, to quibble with Johnson on another matter: he has been saying, as he does in the talk linked in Footnote 2 above, that the Iran attacks on a former US base in Syria, Al Tanf, were pointless because the base had been vacated for years. Vanessa Beeley, who has spent a lot of time on the ground in Syria and still has contacts there, begs to differ.

She says the base was recently restored to service. From Why did Iran target the US Occupation base at Al Tanf, Syria? On Friday 17th July, Iran carried out an extensive attack on the US occupation base at Al Tanf in Syria. A drone and missile strike targeted a US Special Operations Command base in south-eastern Syria..

the first strike on Syrian territory since the toppling of the former government in December 2024. In a statement, the IRGC said its aerospace forces conducted what it described as the 11th phase of “Operation Nasr-2,” targeting the strategically located base near Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan.

The IRGC further claimed the attack destroyed a radar installation and several U.S. military helicopters, while alleging that many American personnel were killed. This strike occurred as the build up of both Turkish and HTS military forces increases inside Syria, along the border with Lebanon and in the coastal region to the north of Lebanon.

I have been reporting on this here and here. Syrian sources provided more detail on the attack: Despite previous reports of an almost total evacuation of the Al Tanf base, located on the borders of Syria, Iraq and Jordan, almost 5 months ago – the intensity of the strikes suggested a shift in the site’s operational status.

This was not an empty base, in fact, according to sources, the IRGC’s tracking systems and human intelligence in the region detected U.S. forces airdropping “Special Forces” units into the base approximately two weeks before the attack. Analysis would suggest that the purpose of these drops might be to prepare for a ground incursion across Iraqi territory (Sulaymaniyah Axis) in coordination with the local Kurdish separatist factions in Iraq.

One military analyst told me: The attack reflects the operator’s ability to breach the secrecy surrounding U.S. movements and to convert radio and visual data into precise target coordinates. According to reports from inside Syria, the strikes inflicted direct damage on the base’s newly constructed infrastructure, neutralised the US elite combat force and derailed the Iraq-Axis operation against Iran.

Of course, US media will not report on the planned operations or on the number of casualties – such a critical security breach and the significant scale of damage, as reported, will not be revealed. 9 Maybe mines?

Yves Smith
strikeUnverifiedUSIsraelIranProxy

Iran targets US military sites, Houthis make port threats

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Iranian officials reported strikes on US radar and air defense sites in Kuwait and Bahrain, along with the interception of two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. The United States conducted strikes on Iranian targets following the deaths of three US soldiers, with the Pentagon stating the actions aimed to degrade capabilities affecting shipping.

Houthi forces in Yemen announced plans to blockade Saudi ports, while both US and Iranian leaders issued statements on further escalation.

Location: Iran
CurrentsAPI