strikeApr 16, 2026

The End of Managed Escalation in the Gulf

Summary

Join War on the Rocks and gain access to content trusted by policymakers, military leaders, and strategic thinkers worldwide. The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has exposed a reality many policymakers long preferred to avoid: The deterrence model that governed the Gulf for decades is no longer working as intended. For years, the region operated in the gray zone — covert strikes, proxy warfare, and carefully managed escalation. Iran built a strategy around missiles, regional partners, and nuclear latency. The United States underwrote Gulf security without direct war. Saudi Arabia and its neighbors relied on that umbrella while hedging against its limits, investing in missile defense and selective partnerships. There were rules, even if unwritten. That world is breaking down. The two-week ceasefire announced last week between the United States and Iran, brokered by Pakistan after 40 days of sustained bombardment, illustrates the point. What has emerged is not a durable settlement but a fragile pause, already strained by continued Israeli strikes on Lebanon, disputed terms over the Strait of Hormuz (and now a U.S. naval blockade), and Iranian accusations of violations. The ceasefire is less a return to order than a snapshot of its absence: ad hoc, conditional, and dependent on a mediator whose security relationship with both Washington and Tehran is itself constrained. What is emerging is not simply more escalation, but a different kind of conflict: direct, sustained confrontation without clear evidence that overwhelming force can deliver decisive political outcomes. The scale of the current campaign makes this plain. U.S. and Israeli operations have targeted Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, missile networks, and command systems at a tempo comparable to the opening phase of the 2003 Iraq War. By mid-March, U.S. and Israeli forces had conducted over 15,000 strikes across 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces with the U.S. military buildup described as the largest in the Middle East since 2003. Early reporting and official summaries confirm a broad campaign targeting Iranian leadership, nuclear sites, and missile forces across the country. Yet weeks into the conflict, Iran retains a meaningful portion of its missile arsenal and continues to strike across the region. U.S. intelligence assessments indicate that roughly a third of Iran’s missile arsenal has been confirmed destroyed, with another third likely damaged or buried in hardened underground sites. Separate analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that Iran’s missile launches fell sharply after the opening days of the war, while the Israeli military claimed that around 70 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers had been disabled by day 16. However, U.S. intelligence assessments disclosed by the Wall Street Journal suggest a different picture: Although more than half of Iran’s estimated 470 launchers had been destroyed, damaged, or trapped underground, many were likely repairable or recoverable. Iran’s missile stockpile had been roughly halved, but Tehran still retained thousands of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. This reveals the central problem: Destruction is not coercion. Military power can degrade capabilities without compelling political surrender — a dynamic long recognized in Thomas Schelling’s work on coercion as signaling and bargaining power, but now playing out in real time. The danger lies not just in escalation, but in escalation without a theory of victory. If military superiority inflicts damage without producing submission, and retaliation continues without restoring deterrence, then repeated strikes become a substitute for strategy rather than an instrument of it. That is not stability. It is managed failure. The Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly a fifth of global oil transits — now sits inside an active conflict zone. Any sustained disruption, whether through mining, retaliatory strikes on tanker traffic, or the withdrawal of commercial insurance, will ripple far beyond energy markets. Gulf economies depend on exposed coastal infrastructure: Desalination, ports, and food supply chains all lie within range of Iranian systems that have yet to be fully eliminated. Yemen’s war demonstrated how quickly supply disruption translates into civilian harm at scale, even in the absence of a direct blockade. A partial or full closure of Hormuz, accompanied by possible Houthi strikes on Bab el Mandeb, would strain humanitarian agencies and systems already operating at near capacity and limit surge capacity to deal with another shock that could affect many states in the Global South. For Iran, the lesson is unlikely to be restraint. Its threshold nuclear posture — remaining just short of a weapon — did not deter attack. If anything, it combined provocation with vulnerability. Under these conditions, the logic of pursuing a more survivable deterrent will strengthen. That conclusion will not stop in Tehran. Saudi Arabia now faces a sharper dilemma. Despite close defense cooperation with the United States — including combined efforts to counter missile and drone threats through the Red Sands Integrated Experimentation Center — the war demonstrates both Washington’s willingness and ability to use force at scale and the limits of that power. Iran retains the capacity to retaliate, escalation cannot be tightly controlled, and Gulf territory remains exposed. This is what a non-absolute security guarantee looks like in practice. Recent diplomacy points to how regional actors are adapting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s April 2026 visit to the Gulf — focused in part on defense-industrial cooperation and wartime innovation — led to agreements with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar on countering threats from missiles and drones. Zelensky described these as “historic” 10-year strategic partnerships worth billions, encompassing joint defense-industrial projects, coproduction facilities, and the deployment of over 200 Ukrainian counter-drone experts across the region. Qatar’s agreement is particularly telling: It includes coproduction arrangements and technological partnerships that go well beyond procurement, signaling that at least some Gulf capitals now view sovereign manufacturing capacity as a security priority in its own right. The logic is straightforward: Gulf states have been expending costly Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors against cheap Iranian drones, and Ukraine offers a proven, lower-cost alternative. Ukraine’s war has become a live demonstration of how states can generate deterrent effects through scalable, relatively low-cost technologies. For Gulf states, the takeaway is not alignment with Kyiv, but emulation. There is still no obvious external substitute for American power. Saudi security ties with Pakistan, while politically useful, do not translate into credible wartime guarantees — particularly under conditions of U.S.-Iranian confrontation and nuclear risk. Its role as a mediator underscores this gap between partnership and commitment. Saudi Arabia, in other words, cannot outsource deterrence indefinitely. If the old model is eroding, the alternatives are narrowing. Doubling down on the United States — tighter integration, expanded missile defense — offers diminishing returns when sustained U.S. operations cannot eliminate Iran’s capacity to strike back. Building stronger conventional capabilities — long-range strike, hardened infrastructure, and cost-imposition strategies — improves resilience but does not restore the old equilibrium. A third pathway could emerge via minilateral cooperation built around specific capabilities rather than formal alliances. The Arab Gulf states are already working closely with U.S., UK, Australian, and French counterparts. They are likely to continue to work with European and Asian partners — particularly those with advanced defense-industrial bases such as South Korea, Turkey, and select European states — on codevelopment, procurement, and operational integration. These arrangements are narrower, more flexible, and better suited to an environment defined by rapid technological change and persistent competition. In this context, geographically targeted coercion regains relevance. An imminent or demonstrated capability to threaten Kharg Island — the critical node of Iran’s oil export infrastructure — could reintroduce deterrence at the margins by directly holding at risk the regime’s primary revenue stream. This logic can be found in Iran’s seizure of Abu Musa, the Greater and Lesser Tunbs in 1971: Control over strategically located nodes can shift deterrence perceptions without resolving the broader conflict. Now, there is the possibility of the United States retaking Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunb islands based on the same rationale. Diplomacy remains necessary, but the prevailing model is flawed. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action addressed enrichment timelines but left Iran’s regional posture, missile program, and support for armed non-state actors largely intact. Returning to that model in the middle of an active military campaign would signal that escalation brings diplomatic reward — precisely the wrong incentive. A new deal should be holistic, incremental, and must aim to re-establish a degree of trust or at least predictability. No alternative security provider can replace the United States, and diversification reduces vulnerability only at the margins. This leaves the most sensitive outcome: the gradual erosion of the taboo around nuclear hedging. Israel remains the region’s only nuclear-armed state, an undeclared but widely understood reality that reinforces an already asymmetric deterrence landscape. For Gulf states, this sharpens a structural imbalance: While Israel benefits from both an implicit nuclear deterrent and close alignment with the United States, Arab Gulf partners operate without a comparable nuclear umbrella. Under conditions of persistent conflict and uncertain external guarantees, this asymmetry matters. If adversaries can threaten escalation at higher thresholds, while regional states remain exposed below that level, the incentive to develop an independent deterrent — whether through latency, hedging, or more explicit pathways — becomes harder to resist. What is taking shape is not a new balance, but a more fragile and more combustible order. Direct conflict is replacing proxy competition without producing decisive outcomes. Military superiority remains real but politically constrained. Adversaries can be punished, but not compelled. Under these conditions, deterrence becomes less about prevention and more about managing ongoing conflict. As analysis of Ukraine’s drone war shows, the spread of low cost, long-range strike capabilities is already reshaping Gulf defense planning, reinforcing a shift toward persistent attrition rather than decisive victory. Deterrence is no longer delivered by a single external guarantor. It is increasingly coproduced across networks of states, technologies, and industries. This is a structural shift, not a temporary adjustment. As these dynamics take hold, the incentives facing regional actors will change. If conventional force cannot guarantee security, and external guarantees cannot eliminate risk, nuclear weapons will become more attractive. The lesson of this war is not that deterrence has held. It is that deterrence, as traditionally understood in the Gulf, is beginning to fail. And as it fails, the risks will not remain confined to strategy. A region moving toward nuclear hedging is also one in which civilian populations face escalating danger with diminishing capacity to absorb shocks. The greatest risk now is that policymakers continue to act as if the old rules still apply — as if escalation can be controlled, and competition contained. That assumption is becoming one of the most dangerous variables in the system. Robert Mason, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in the United Arab Emirates. His research concerns the international relations of the Middle East with an emphasis on the foreign and security policies of the Gulf states. His latest work is Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates: Foreign Policy and Strategic Alliances in an Uncertain World (Manchester University Press, 2023). Rikard Jalkebro, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in the United Arab Emirates. His research sits at the intersection of peace and conflict studies, humanitarian action, and international relations, with a particular focus on peacebuilding, humanitarian diplomacy, and the politics of contemporary crises. Image: U.S. Army Security Assistance Command via DVIDS

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Daisy Johnston; Robert Mason; Rikard JalkebroBy Daisy Johnston; Robert Mason; Rikard Jalkebro
Join War on the Rocks and gain access to content trusted by policymakers, military leaders, and strategic thinkers worldwide. The U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has exposed a reality many policymakers long preferred to avoid: The deterrence model that governed the Gulf for decades…

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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