A senior security official in Tehran said Iran would consider US political targets, along with the infrastructure of countries participating in a new war, legitimate targets if another round of broad war includes assassinations of officials and the massacring of civilians, Fars News Agency reported late on Wednesday.
The official said Iran has communicated this to its operational ranks.
The official explained that Iran takes a US and Israeli attack as a given and regards American diplomatic gestures as lacking credibility, a view that intensified after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s October 7 speech in Athens, which Tehran sees as giving the war a historical and civilizational cover.
The official said Iranian leaders and elites have reached the unprecedented conclusion that US Middle East policy is directed from Tel Aviv and that “Israel” will not allow a diplomatic solution, because for Trump, “Israel” comes first.
Iran says it is already at war
The official said Iran already considers itself at war with the United States, and sees the US economic and naval blockade and the restrictions on air traffic as a continuation of the military aggression that began on February 28. There is strong pressure across Iranian society for decisive action to break the blockade on the basis of legitimate defense, the official emphasized.
Washington reinstated its naval blockade of Iranian ports on July 14, after collapsing an interim truce and attacking areas across southwestern Iran.
Iran asked the UN Security Council on Wednesday to condemn the blockade and demand it be lifted. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that Tehran’s seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz remains on the table. Iran hinges the reopening of the Strait on a ceasefire across all fronts, a US sanctions waiver on oil sales, and a release of $12 billion in frozen assets.
Trump want to ‘finish the job’
The warning followed US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post on Sunday in which he said Iran has been “systematically destroyed” and that unless it changes course the United States will “soon finish the job.”
The same post gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu his “Complete and Total Endorsement” for “Israel’s” October 27 election. Trump called Netanyahu a “Great Warrior Prime Minister” in the war on Iran and wrote that if “Israel” chooses any other leader, America would have to do the work itself, which he is not inclined to do.
Netanyahu answered with a video and a post thanking “my friend Donald.” He directed part of his message to American voters, saying gas prices would fall once Iran’s government “disappears,” but only under Trump. US midterm elections are on November 3. Trump had declined for months to endorse Netanyahu, and US Vice President JD Vance declined to join him, saying he is focused on American races.
Araghchi replied on X that “last time you wanted to ‘finish the job,’ Iran emerged even stronger,” adding that Tehran has “unfinished jobs too.”
Israeli jets fly to the Iranian border
On Wednesday, Axios reported that dozens of Israeli Air Force jets, with refueling aircraft, flew more than 800 miles on Monday, violating Syrian and Iraqi airspace, as far as the Iranian border before turning back. “Israel” told Washington it was a “power projection” training exercise, which is said was meant to deter Iran ahead of the elections
US officials said “Israel” knew Iranian air defenses would detect the jets, and some said they had the impression “Israel” hoped Iran would fire on them, providing a justification for strikes. Other US and Israeli officials called the sortie unusual only in scale.
The stunt took place on the day US War Secretary Pete Hegseth met Netanyahu at Ovda Airbase. Meanwhile, Netanyahu and Security Minister Israel Katz made new threats, with Katz saying “If Iran attacks Israel, Iran will burn!”
Axios reported last week that Trump and Netanyahu discussed in early October a major new aggression against Iran before the Israeli and US elections. A US official said Trump told Netanyahu to “go ahead and get ready,” though he made no commitment.
Additionally, the US State Department has prepared to order some personnel and family members to leave US embassies across the Gulf, Reuters reported, which would include all personnel at the mission in Saudi Arabia.
More ships targeted in Hormuz
On the other hand, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy has stepped up its operations on ships in and around the strait, which have violated its navigation rules.
On October 9, it said any vessel using an unauthorized route would be pursued and “punished” anywhere in the region. On Sunday, six commercial vessels were struck in and around the strait, the most in a single day since the war began.
On October 12, the IRGC said it had hit a third tanker in two days for navigating without its tracking system and ignoring warnings. Tankers have since caught fire after hitting mines on unauthorized routes. Ships on a non-compliance list kept by Iran’s Gulf Strait Authority now number about 100.
Iraq shut the strategic Sheeb border crossing with Iran on 21 October, sources told western media outlets, framing the move as a result of intensified US pressure on Baghdad to strangle the Islamic Republic.
An Iraqi source told AFP that the crossing was shut “until further notice.” Two other sources said Washington is pressuring Baghdad to close more border crossings.
Iranian judiciary-linked website Mizan reported that the shutting of the crossing came “following a decision by the Iraqi prime minister’s office.”
According to other sources, the US wants Iraq to close all its border crossings with Iran.
“The US Treasury Department raised this with Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi when he was in New York. All border crossings will be closed except for one crossing in federal territory and one crossing in the Kurdistan region. The US has asked all countries bordering Iran to do the same.”
Disruptions have also taken place on the border with Pakistan.
“Regarding Pakistan, yes, there have been disruptions to border exchanges with some neighboring countries,” Iranian Interior Ministry spokesperson Ali Zeinivand said on 21 October.
Reuters also reported on the closure of the Sheeb crossing.
The closure took place “to review security and install detection equipment to stop the smuggling of prohibited materials,” the British outlet cites an Iraqi border official as saying.
Sheeb will be closed to passengers, vehicles and commercial trucks “until further notice,” the source added.
Valiollah Hayati, a security official from Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan, confirmed the closure and said consultations to resume operations were ongoing. Tehran has said Iraq failed to provide any formal notice prior to the sudden closure of the Sheeb crossing.
Separately, the UAE-based Al-Ain outlet reported, citing Iraqi government sources, that Iraq’s premier informed leaders of the Shia-led Coordination Framework, during a 19 October meeting, that Washington had demanded the closures.
“The US is pressuring Baghdad to close its border crossings with Iran,” an Iraqi source said.
Al-Ain further reported that Zaidi has stressed Iraq’s need to maintain a balanced position, adding that Baghdad rejected the US call for all crossings to be closed.
Washington then “proposed keeping only two crossings open, one in the north and the other in the central region – the Mehran crossing, which connects Iraq’s Wasit province with Iran’s Ilam province,” the Emirati report went on to say.
Baghdad reportedly rejected this as well, the outlet states, adding that US envoy Tom Barrack told the Iraqi prime minister that “this step falls within the policy of economic pressure on Iran.”
Zaidi was reportedly informed that the US will resume its war on Iran. “Iraq cannot become involved in this war, and its repercussions will affect the political system and the state,” the Iraqi source told Al-Ain.
The report states more crossings could be closed in the coming days.
The latest closure follows Iraq’s temporary shutdown of the Shalamcheh crossing in September, after Saudi Arabia alleged that drones launched from Iraqi territory targeted the kingdom.
It also coincides with US-imposed restrictions on Iranian flights to Iraqi airports.
A senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has warned that Iran could target undersea Internet cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz if the country’s infrastructure is attacked.
Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, political deputy to the IRGC chief commander, made the remarks in an interview with Iran’s Arabic-language Al-Alam television news network on Wednesday.
Addressing the possibility of strikes against undersea Internet infrastructure, Javani said Iran would use its full capabilities if the country’s own infrastructure came under attack.
“The United States and its allies have substantial investments,” he said, adding that their assets could become targets if they damaged Iranian infrastructure.
Undersea fiber-optic cables carry a substantial share of global international data traffic, making them important components of the world’s communications networks. Damage to such infrastructure could disrupt connectivity and affect businesses and services that depend on international data links.
Javani also said Iran performed well during “a period of strong defense,” while the United States and Israel suffered a defeat they had not anticipated.
He added that, because Iran’s enemies would find it difficult to accept defeat, Tehran would pursue a more calculated and, in some cases, offensive approach.
Javani went on to say that the shift is intended to strengthen Iran’s deterrence and prevent the United States from considering another attack.
He further said that Iran’s military capabilities for offensive operations against the United States, European countries, Israel, and countries supporting Washington have become evident.
The general also stated that US military bases in the region have been destroyed and that facilities located farther away could also be targeted.
Javani’s remarks come amid heightened tensions between Iran, the United States, and Israel, with Iranian officials repeatedly warning that any renewed aggression against Iran would carry serious consequences for US interests across the region.
US special envoy Tom Barrack conceded that a “ground kinetic” battle in Yemen by the US “seems fruitless” during a talk at the Global Security Forum in Qatar on 20 October.
“I think the president’s been clear that he supports Saudi Arabia and the backing that they need logistically he will supply. But America getting involved in a ground kinetic battle somewhere else seems fruitless.”
Barrack is Washington’s ambassador to Turkiye and special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq.
He admitted that military force has failed in Yemen and that Riyadh is in a “very difficult position.”
“These kinetic reactions have never worked. It doesn’t work. It’s probably not likely that it’s going to work,” he said.
Barrack questioned whether US meddling across West Asia has helped or harmed the region, arguing that Ansarallah in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the resistance factions in Iraq would lose their reason to exist only once states took responsibility themselves.
He pressed for talks between Riyadh, Sanaa, and regional mediators, urging regional capitals to build their own alliances instead of leaning on Washington.
He went further, admitting that the US has had a hand in 23 regime changes across the region, none of which achieved their aims.
He declined to say whether the US-Israeli war on Iran launched on 28 February was a mistake, while conceding that it had unleashed unintended consequences across the region.
The admission comes as the Saudi-led coalition presses on with airstrikes on Yemen, drawing retaliatory missile and drone strikes by the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) on the kingdom.
Riyadh has turned to its defense partners under the Mecca pact, including Pakistan and Turkiye, after Washington declined its requests for direct US intervention against Yemen.
Barrack’s remarks follow Washington’s failed bid to subdue Yemen by military force, with more than 1,000 US airstrikes between March 2024 and April 2025 unable to halt Yemeni naval operations waged in support of Gaza, forcing the US into an Omani-brokered ceasefire with Sanaa in May 2025.
The campaign cost Washington $1 billion in its first three weeks alone, as Yemeni forces downed 17 MQ-9 Reaper drones and the US lost two F-18 fighter jets.
Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said in November 2024 that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier had retreated hundreds of miles after coming under Yemeni fire, while then US Under Secretary of Defense Bill LaPlante admitted he was “just shocked” by what Yemen’s missiles could do.
Europe fared no better, with Rear Admiral Vasileios Gryparis, commander of the EU’s Operation Aspides, telling Bloomberg in June 2024 that his Red Sea fleet needed to more than double in size and that US–UK strikes on Yemen were “not contributing to the solution,” after France withdrew one of his frigates citing the threat level.
Ukraine has deployed drone personnel and thousands of microdrones across countries surrounding Iran, including Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, an Iranian security source told Tasnim News Agency, highlighting the deployments as part of a broader network of hostile activities directed against Tehran.
According to the security source, Kiev had established an operational microdrone network across the region, with thousands of drones deployed in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.
The source withheld the names of the countries hosting Ukrainian personnel and equipment, stating that the information remained confidential and would be disclosed in due course.
Tehran preparing appropriate response
The Iranian security source further said Tehran considers Ukraine’s activities part of the broader hostile actions pursued by Europe and NATO against Iran, adding that Iranian authorities are fully aware of Kiev’s operations.
Tehran, according to the source, is considering an appropriate response to the deployments, which it stressed as a security threat.
Describing the operation as a “failed attempt and an embarrassment” for Ukraine, the source stressed that Iran remains aware of Kiev’s activities and their implications for regional security.
The bigger picture
The deployment comes amid longstanding security concerns over armed Kurdish separatist groups operating along Iran’s western border and growing tensions between Tehran and Kiev following a Ukrainian attack on an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea.
Baghdad, Tehran, and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) signed a security agreement in March 2023 requiring Iranian Kurdish separatist groups to disarm and relocate away from the Iraq-Iran border.
The agreement also obliges Iraqi authorities to prevent the groups from using Iraqi territory to launch military operations against Iran. While Baghdad and the KRG have fulfilled their obligations, sources told Al Mayadeen that four or five Iranian separatist groups continue to defy the agreement and carry out provocations along the border.
The remaining groups have continued their activities despite guarantees offered by the KRG, with Al Mayadeen Plus reporting in September that they had refused to leave their positions.
Tehran has responded to the separatist groups with missile and drone strikes, as well as ground operations targeting positions in Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. In July, Iranian strikes martyred nine members of the Komala Party. Iran is also building a security wall extending more than 250 kilometers along its border with the Kurdistan Region.
These security concerns have unfolded alongside a deterioration in relations between Iran and Ukraine. In July, Tehran condemned a Ukrainian attack on an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea that killed one sailor and injured another. Iran’s Foreign Ministry characterized the strike as an act of aggression and a violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, warning that it could widen the scope of the war.
Iran’s Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN has urged the world body’s Security Council to hold an emergency meeting and condemn threats by the United States and the Israeli regime against the Islamic Republic’s territory and critical infrastructure.
Gholamhossein Darzi made the remarks in a letter dated Monday and addressed to UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the president of the Security Council.
The letter cited recent US media reports that the White House and the US Department of War had prepared fresh military options, including the possible use of the GBU-43/B, known as the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) or so-called “Mother of All Bombs,” against Iran.
Darzi noted that US President Donald Trump had discussed the weapon in a televised interview and threatened further attacks.
The diplomat also cited remarks by Israeli minister for military affairs Israel Katz that the regime was prepared to attack the Islamic Republic and would target “all energy targets” in any renewed aggression.
The letter also pointed out how Katz had threatened to return Iran to the “Stone Age”, besides claiming that the United States and the regime had dropped a total of 35,000 bombs on Iran and that their military campaign was not over.
Darzi further denounced Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for openly declaring an intention to launch another unprovoked war against the Islamic Republic, adding that the silence and explicit support of certain Security Council members had emboldened him.
He called for immediate action against “brazen existential threats” issued by Trump and renewed Israeli threats of military aggression.
“These unabated threats, in the context of the U.S.-Israeli wars of aggression launched on 13 June 2025 and 28 February 2026 against Iran, and the deliberate attacks against Iranian civilians and critical infrastructure, pose a grave risk of further violation of international law with catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences, and serious threats to regional and international peace and security,” he wrote.
The diplomat argued that threats to destroy Iran’s civilian and energy infrastructure could cause severe and potentially long-term humanitarian and environmental damage.
He also condemned Washington and Tel Aviv for disregarding obligations under the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and customary international humanitarian law.
Darzi requested an emergency Security Council meeting, unequivocal condemnation of threats against Iran’s civilian infrastructure, and accountability and full reparation for damage resulting from Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s internationally wrongful acts.
“The Security Council cannot remain silent in the face of explicit threats of renewed aggression and the destruction of essential civilian infrastructure,” he stated.
The letter, meanwhile, reaffirmed Iran’s right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
He warned that the United States and the Israeli regime would bear responsibility for the consequences of further aggression, including “the risk of unpredictable and uncontrollable escalation.”
Tehran no longer views Pakistani and Qatari mediation as yielding tangible results, Iranian sources told Al Mayadeen on Tuesday, as a Russian initiative coordinated with China proposes joint management of the Strait of Hormuz with Iran.
Iranian sources told Al Mayadeen that Tehran has come to view Pakistani and Qatari mediation as ineffective in delivering tangible results, citing Islamabad and Doha’s limited ability to influence the US position. This has prompted Iran to explore alternative channels for mediation.
In this context, Iranian international affairs expert Mehdi Khan Alizadeh told Al Mayadeen that a new Russian diplomatic move could pave the way for Moscow to assume a more substantive mediating role, amid coordination between Russia and the United States. He pointed to a Russian initiative developed in cooperation with China that proposes joint management of maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran.
Alizadeh explained that the initiative concerns the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf security. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Tehran addressed these issues, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is expected to visit Moscow again, reflecting continued efforts surrounding the Russian proposal.
Regarding Tehran’s immediate priorities, Alizadeh stressed that ending the war takes precedence over the nuclear issue. He said this position follows a decision by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic, Sayyed Mojtaba Khamenei, adding that Iran’s current focus is on securing a ceasefire, while the nuclear file is not presently among its priorities.
These developments coincide with US President Donald Trump’s remarks about “providing a framework for Russia to communicate with Iran,” potentially intersecting with Moscow’s diplomatic efforts.
Lavrov visits Tehran for first time since start of war
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived in Tehran on Monday for his first visit since the start of the war on Iran, as Moscow seeks to play a mediating role.
Lavrov said Moscow’s efforts “aim to prevent the return of a full-scale war.”
Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told Lavrov that the establishment of US military bases in regional countries has offered, and will continue to offer, no benefit to the region beyond increasing tensions and undermining security.
During his meeting with Lavrov, Pezeshkian said US interference and divisive policies had led to the emergence of disputes across the region.
He stressed that there are no fundamental disagreements between Iran and regional countries, affirming Tehran’s readiness to address existing challenges through dialogue and mutual understanding.
Pezeshkian also said Iran shares common ground with countries across the region and has consistently sought to develop relations with them on the basis of brotherly engagement and mutual cooperation.
Araghchi, Lavrov reject military action, call for stability in Gulf
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, for his part, said during a joint press conference with Lavrov that Tehran and Moscow agree that military action is not the solution. He added that relations between the two countries contribute to strengthening regional stability.
Araghchi said he had hosted Lavrov in Tehran for “important discussions” covering several issues spanning Europe and West Asia, including Lebanon, Palestine, Ukraine, and Yemen.
The talks also focused on expanding economic and nuclear cooperation between the two countries. Araghchi underscored that ties between Iran and Russia have never been closer or more collaborative than they are today.
Washington and Israel are talking again about “finishing the job” in Iran. Before they do, someone should take a hard look at the bill for the jobs already done. My friend Karl Miller, who has called this region correctly more often than most of the people paid to do it, sent me his latest assessment on Monday. His conclusion is blunt: on the current course, another round of escalation is coming, and the countries paying for it will be the ones that never got a vote.
The Gulf is being bled dry
Start with the people who are supposed to be America’s partners. The IMF’s October outlook reads like a casualty report. Kuwait’s economy is forecast to shrink 16.7 percent this year. Qatar’s will shrink 15.6 percent, and Bahrain’s 11.3 percent. The UAE, long sold as the region’s safe haven, is now expected to contract 3.9 percent, a seven-point swing from the IMF’s April forecast. Saudi Arabia is forecast to shrink 3.3 percent. The only Gulf economy still growing is Oman, and that is because its ports sit outside the Strait of Hormuz.
These are not paper losses. Qatar lost two LNG trains at Ras Laffan in March, about 17 percent of its export capacity. QatarEnergy says the repairs will take three to five years and will cost it roughly $20 billion a year in revenue. Saudi Arabia’s escape route around Hormuz, the East-West Pipeline to Yanbu, is crippled. My sources tell me four of its 11 pumping stations are severely damaged and out of service. Riyadh now projects a deficit of 4.9 percent of GDP, is borrowing to cover it, and has frozen non-essential spending.
Miller explains why this is worse than the headline oil price suggests. A damaged plant produces nothing to sell, but the payroll, the debt payments and the repair bills keep coming. A plant that is still standing but cannot get parts in or cargo out is in almost the same position. A $108 barrel of oil is worth nothing if you cannot ship it. And the cash the Gulf states used to invest at home and abroad is vanishing fast. If a government takes in 100 and must spend 70, it has 30 left over. Cut income to 80 and that cushion drops to 10. A 20 percent hit to revenue wipes out two-thirds of the money for everything else.
The Gulf states bought American protection to safeguard exactly this wealth. Instead, as Miller puts it, they have ended up paying for the costs of American strategy. That is a bargain they will not keep making forever.
A new round means a deeper shortage
Now consider what another round of American and Israeli strikes would do to a world that is already short of energy. Oil flows through Hormuz are running around 11.6 to 11.9 million barrels a day, against a pre-war level of about 17 million. Middle Eastern fuel exports are below half of what they were before the war. The International Energy Agency says diesel will stay tight well into 2027, and that the diesel stocks already burned will not be rebuilt before the second half of that year. Brent is around $108, up more than 75 percent from a year ago.
Every escalation so far has followed the same pattern. Iran answers by tightening its grip on Hormuz. Its allies in Yemen widen their target list. Gulf facilities that were patched together get hit again before they earn back the cost of repairing them. That is the cruelest part of Miller’s analysis: repeated attacks make repairs pointless, because nobody will spend billions restoring a plant that may be destroyed again next month. A new campaign will not reopen the Strait. It will close it further, take more Gulf capacity offline, and push diesel back toward September’s record of more than $200 a barrel, just as Europe heads into winter. France and Italy are already rioting over the cost of living. Imagine them in February.
Israel’s dark future
Miller’s harshest judgment is reserved for Israel, and it deserves a full hearing. He believes Israel will never recover from what it has done in Gaza, which a UN commission of inquiry concluded last year was genocide. In his words, the state is “done economically. It is done politically. It is done morally.” That is strong language, but the argument behind it is not hysteria. It is about how a state wears itself out.
His reasoning runs like this. Israel’s leadership has bet everything on military domination: hit every opponent hard enough that no one dares resist. Force can win battles, but it cannot make anyone accept the result. Every campaign therefore creates the need for the next one. Opponents rebuild, resentment grows, and the circle of countries willing to stand with Israel gets smaller. So the government doubles down with more force, because the alternative, accepting real limits on occupation and on its treatment of the Palestinians, threatens the political project it is defending. War becomes a way to postpone the reckoning, not avoid it.
The cost is already showing. The IMF says Israel’s economy is about 9 percent smaller than it would have been without the war. The budget deficit is heading to 6.2 percent of GDP, and public debt is on track to reach about 74 percent of GDP by 2031. Reservists are pulled from their jobs again and again. Israelis are already fighting over who carries the burden, with ultra-Orthodox men still far less likely to work or serve than everyone else. Foreign investors and partners grow more cautious with each campaign. Miller’s warning is that Israel’s project could become unsustainable long before its military power runs out. A country can keep its tanks and jets and still lose the economy, the alliances and the legitimacy it needs to survive. That is the dark and uncertain future he sees, and I find it hard to argue with.
Trump says Russia is doing nothing. Lavrov says otherwise.
Which brings me to the President’s latest reassurance. On October 13, Donald Trump said he does not believe either Russia or China is helping Iran. On Sunday he went further on social media, insisting that “Russia is doing very little to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared with what it could be doing,” if it is doing anything at all, and that he wants it to stay that way “unless some stupid people get in the way.”
Less than a day later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stood next to Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Tehran and said the opposite. “I am confident that Iran’s cause, like Russia’s, is a just cause,” Lavrov declared. He said Russia “has no intention of abandoning the implementation of agreements with Iran in the economic and investment spheres,” and recommitted Moscow to the 20-year strategic partnership that formally took effect on October 2. He announced that Russian specialists will return to the Bushehr nuclear plant. He called for Hormuz to return to pre-war conditions, and tied that to protecting Iran from renewed attacks. Before landing in Tehran, he called Trump’s approach “wrong.”
To be fair to the President, Russia has not gone to war for Iran, and the partnership treaty does not require it to. There is no mutual-defense clause. But that is a lawyer’s distinction. Russia’s foreign minister does not fly into a capital under threat of attack to call its cause just by accident. Add the reported Russian satellite data reaching Iran’s allies and the steady improvement in the accuracy of Iranian and Houthi missiles, and the picture is of a partner that is careful, deniable and very much engaged. Moscow does not need to fire a shot. It only needs to keep Iran standing while America bleeds its Gulf allies and Europe’s economy.
The bill comes due
If Washington and Israel launch another round, they will be betting that this time force produces a settlement. Three years of evidence says it will not. What it will produce is deeper Gulf recessions, a longer energy shortage, more anger in Europe’s streets, and a bigger bill for an Israel that is already running out of room. Miller’s forecast is that the next round is coming anyway. I hope he is wrong this time. I doubt it.
Egypt’s Civil Democratic Movement rejected any involvement of the Egyptian armed forces in a regional war on behalf of any side, insisting that Cairo make its decisions independently of foreign influence.
The movement said Monday that no outside party should dictate Egypt’s position, arguing that the country’s most important role lies in pursuing “wise mediation to establish peace.”
Turning to domestic affairs, the movement called on civilian opposition groups, its own members included, to begin preparing for the presidential election scheduled for 2030. The call follows President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s recent statement that his presidency will end in 2030 and that the matter of constitutional changes to alter that timeline is “completely settled.”
Parliament postpones debate on troop deployment
The statement comes as Egypt’s parliament has yet to take up a proposal to authorize the president to send troops abroad. Lawmakers adjourned an emergency session devoted to discussing support for Saudi Arabia, and deliberations were due to resume on Monday. The debate was postponed again on Monday, this time until October 26.
The session was convened at el-Sisi’s request after he said Cairo would take any action Saudi Arabia asks of it to defend its security and sovereignty.
Yemen’s Sanaa-based Parliament Speaker Yahya Ali al-Ra’i had urged Egypt’s parliament on Saturday not to let the country be drawn into the Saudi escalation, saying such a step would contradict Egypt’s historical role in defending Arab causes.
Yemeni scholars welcome Al-Azhar initiative
Separately, Al-Azhar urged the urgent formation of a mediation committee bringing together respected figures from across the Muslim world. It said the committee should start work immediately to end conflicts and wars in the Arab region, defuse crises, and bridge differences between the parties involved.
The Association of Yemeni Scholars, in turn, reaffirmed its commitment to engaging constructively and in good faith with the invitation extended by the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, expressing appreciation for the Islamic values and principles it conveyed.
The association also declared Sanaa’s readiness to host the committee proposed by the Grand Imam, comprising respected and wise figures from across the Arab and Islamic worlds.
France’s fuel shortages persisted Monday, with roughly 14 percent of the country’s service stations reporting at least one product out of stock and hundreds completely dry, as diesel prices hovered near multi-year highs and President Emmanuel Macron began a Gulf tour aimed at securing additional supplies.
Official data from the Economy Ministry showed 14 percent of stations nationwide facing shortages of diesel or gasoline as of 9 a.m. Monday, up from 10 percent on Saturday.
Independent trackers drawing on the same government feed reported more than 1,600 stations with at least one temporary shortage and several hundred that had run completely out of the fuels they normally sell. Diesel was among the products affected, with median prices around €2.35–€2.36 per liter.
The disruptions have been most acute at TotalEnergies stations, which have capped prices at €1.99 per liter for gasoline and €2.25 for diesel since July.
More than half of the company’s roughly 2,300 sites have reported shortages in recent days, according to data analyses, as drivers seek the cheapest fuel and inventories run low. Regions including the Grand Est, Île-de-France and Normandy have been among the hardest hit.
The shortages are rooted in global market tightness linked to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz amid conflict involving Iran, which has constrained refined product flows, particularly diesel. However, Ukraine’s ongoing strikes against Russian refineries have also played a key role.
France and other G7 members agreed earlier this month, under French chairmanship and with International Energy Agency coordination, to release up to 100 million barrels of emergency oil and diesel stocks. France is drawing down 10 million barrels of its own diesel reserves over three months, with the government estimating the move could cut pump prices by 12 to 18 cents per liter starting around Nov. 1.
TotalEnergies has separately pledged reductions of roughly 8 to 12 cents at its stations over the same period.
Macron arrived in Kuwait on Monday for a three-day tour that also includes the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar. The Élysée said the goal is to secure additional diesel and oil volumes and explore alternative shipping routes, with senior executives from TotalEnergies and Engie accompanying him.
A presidential adviser said that the aim is “additional volumes and more supplies for the French people, which will indirectly have an effect on prices.” Macron has linked the price surge to the Hormuz disruptions and maintained the trip despite the weekend’s violent cost-of-living protests, during which fuel prices were among the grievances cited by demonstrators.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said the reserve release should begin easing prices from Nov. 1 and that electricity bills will not rise this winter. Opposition figures have called the plan insufficient or a “scam,” arguing it does little to address longer-term vulnerabilities or the immediate empty pumps. The government has maintained that strategic stocks remain adequate and that the main issue has been logistics and distribution under high demand.
Drivers across multiple regions reported long searches for open pumps over the weekend, with some stations posting “out of stock” signs for diesel. The combination of high fuel prices and shortages has added to broader cost-of-living pressures that [have fueled] large demonstrations and mass riots on Oct. 17, which turned violent in several cities.
The United Arab Emirates has reportedly agreed to resume funding selected forces in southern Yemen fighting the Yemeni Armed Forces, while Saudi Arabiahas agreed to provide air cover for those forces, according to sources in Yemen.
The reported arrangement signals a possible thaw in relations between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi after months of disagreement over the scope of each other’s political influence in Yemen.
The renewed coordination comes as the Yemeni Armed Forcescontinues to make gains and Saudi Arabia faces repeated drone and missile attacks targeting its territory, airports, and energy infrastructure.
Gulf rivals reconsider their positions
Southern forces, particularly the Giant Brigades, were previously trained and funded by the UAE and are considered among the more effective formations in the fragmented coalition opposing the YAF. Abu Dhabi withdrew its involvement in Yemen in January, cutting off financial support to forces it had backed, following pressure from Saudi Arabia.
The reported agreement suggests that advances by the YAFare prompting rival Gulf powers to reconsider their differences. However, neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE has responded to a recent demand by southern separatists for an independence referendumthat would restore the borders in place between 1967 and 1990, when Yemen was divided into two states.
The Southern Transitional Council (STC) has also yet to agree to deploy its forces beyond the boundaries of the former South Yemen. Saudi approval of a referendum could potentially remove that restriction, although no such agreement has been announced.
Attacks on Aden intensify pressure
The Aden government announced a counteroffensive last week aimed at retaking Sanaa. The campaign achieved limited gains around Majzar near Marib and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, but was met with a sizeable retaliation by Sanaa’s forces.
On Friday, two missiles struck Aden airport;Information Minister Moammar Al-Eryanisaid the missiles landed about 500 meters from the Yemenia Airways aircraft and roughly 100 meters from the runway’s midpoint. No casualties were reported.
The attack followed a strike on a presidential palace in Aden that killed at least five people and wounded 16, further underscoring the risks facing the Gulf-backed south.
Relations between the STC and Riyadh remain strained. STC leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi fled to Abu Dhabi in January after an unsuccessful attempt by the council to assert control across southern Yemen and announce a referendum on independence within two years.
Saudi Arabia subsequently bombed UAE arms shipmentsintended for STC forces. Abu Dhabi then announced its withdrawal from Yemen, while the Saudi-backed government said it would seek to prosecute Zubaidi for treason.
Egypt and UK face decisions over military support
Regional involvement is also expanding beyond the Gulf rivals. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisihas called for an emergency parliamentary session to authorize possible military action to “defend” Saudi Arabia if requested, while emphasizing that Egypt would not undertake offensive operations.
Sanaa’s Parliament Speaker Yahya Ali al-Ra’i warned Egypt against a potential involvement in the Saudi military aggression against Yemen, urging Cairo not to allow itself to be drawn into a confrontation that serves Riyadh’s policies.
In an urgent letter to Egyptian Parliament Speaker Hisham Badawi, al-Ra’i expressed serious concern that developments could lead to Egyptian military participation alongside Saudi Arabia, stressing that such a move would contradict Egypt’s historical role in defending Arab causes.
In the UK, discussions continue over a Saudi request for additional military assistance. London has deployed an RAF Voyager aerial refueling aircraft, but some Arab officialsare pressing for further support.
The prospect of deeper British involvement raises legal concerns. In 2019, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the government had acted unlawfully in granting arms export licenses during the previous Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen in 2015–2016. The Campaign Against Arms Trade argued that officials had failed to properly assess potential violations of international humanitarian law, prompting revisions to export licensing procedures.
Sanaa’s resistance against Saudi aggression followed a brutal, years-long siege that caused one of the worst famines in modern history. The Ansar Allah government has made clear that their fight against Saudi Arabia will not cease so long as Riyadh continues to escalate it even further.
The Yemeni Armed Forces forces have remained firm in their resistance under the banner of a military equation: blockade for blockade and escalation for escalation.
The two-week exchange of fire between the United States and Iran, triggered by Washington’s attempt to force open an illegal southern corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, represented the most consequential direct military confrontation between them since the 40-day war.
The Iranian response to the unprovoked and illegal American aggression was not a chaotic escalation but a methodical, layered military campaign that drew on years of doctrinal development, weapons investment, and operational planning.
The efforts of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces, spearheaded by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) aerospace and naval branches, executed a decisive and swift response.
What unfolded was a layered operation with nine distinct but interlocking lines of effort. Each line reinforced the others. Infrastructure degradation reduced American operational tempo; area denial forced repositioning that compounded the effects of that degradation; extended-range precision strikes demonstrated that repositioning offered no sanctuary; ISR attrition blinded American targeting systems; terrorist suppression closed the land flank, while strikes on utility infrastructure imposed costs on host nations and denied services to American bases.
One can employ the open-source reporting, satellite imagery, and the observable pattern of strikes to examine each dimension of Iran’s military response in detail, and construct a coherent operational picture. It is getting exceedingly clear that the ceasefire period has very likely translated to a window for reconstitution and preparation in Iranian strategic calculus.
The primacy of solid-fuel tactical ballistic missiles
Iran’s decision to anchor its retaliatory campaign in solid-fuel tactical ballistic missiles was not accidental. It reflected a decade-long investment in a specific capability designed precisely for this kind of confrontation. Solid-fuel ballistic missiles offer decisive operational advantages over their liquid-fuel predecessors. They require no fueling time at the launch site, dramatically compressing the window between a launch order and missile departure.
This matters enormously in a sensitive environment where adversary assets, particularly MQ-9 Reaper drones and maritime patrol aircraft, are actively hunting for launch preparations.
A liquid-fuel missile requires a visible, time-consuming fueling sequence that creates a detectable signature. A solid-fuel missile can be transported, erected, and fired in a fraction of that time, often before a targeting solution can be developed and a strike authorized.
These missiles are road-mobile, launched from transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) that can disperse across Iran’s mountainous terrain, making pre-emptive targeting extremely difficult.
Having destroyed much of the air defense systems belonging to the US and its Arab allies using the older, less sophisticated liquid fuel missiles in previous wars, Iran’s strikes this time primarily relied on its tactical solid-fuel ballistic missile inventory, meaning the various variants of the Fateh family.
Simply put, the choice of solid-fuel systems reflected a calculated assessment of the adversary’s weakened interception capacity, an assessment that proved accurate.
The air defense inventory crisis
Perhaps the single most consequential factor shaping the operational environment was the state of US and allied air defense missile inventories.
The United States entered this round of military aggression with critically depleted stocks of its most capable interceptors. The Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) and Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), which arm Aegis-equipped destroyers and cruisers and provide the American Navy’s primary ballistic missile defense capability at sea, have been drawn down through a combination of expenditure in the Red Sea campaign against Yemen, the costly defense of Israel during two previous wars, and the simple reality that production rates have never kept pace with consumption.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which provides upper-tier defense against medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, is similarly constrained.
The decision not to employ Aegis and THAAD at full capacity was therefore a forced one. The United States simply could not spend its remaining meager inventory of SM-3 and THAAD interceptors against Iranian tactical ballistic missiles, which, while accurate and damaging, are not the only threats to American interests.
Doing so would have left the United States strategically exposed against another serious contingency in East Asia or Europe. The calculus was that American military bases had to absorb more hits to preserve the interceptors.
Moreover, the Patriot system, which bore the brunt of terminal-phase defense in recent weeks across the region, was in no better condition. Years of expenditure across Ukraine, the occupied territories, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea mission have drawn PAC-3 and PAC-3 MSE stocks to extremely low levels.
The Pentagon’s response was telling. Rather than accelerating full-capability PAC-3 MSE production, it has chosen to pursue the cheaper, less capable PAC-3ACE Cost Reduction Initiative variant. More revealing still were the recent PAC-2 GEM-T orders, an older interceptor not procured by the US in decades, signaling just how severely stocks had been exhausted.
That the world’s most sophisticated air defense enterprise was compelled to resurrect a 1990s-era design to sustain basic readiness is the starkest indicator of the American munitions crisis that Iranian planners appear to have understood, measured, and exploited with precision.
The situation among Persian Gulf states was equally dire. Saudi Arabia and the UAE had expended substantial portions of their Patriot PAC-3 interceptor stocks during years of Yemeni military missile and drone attacks, and entered the 40-day imposed war with depleted inventories. The situation is even direr in Kuwait and Bahrain, with the Persian Gulf microstates effectively running out of Patriots, being forced to solely rely on American-operated systems.
PAC-3, the most capable variant of the Patriot system against ballistic missiles, has effectively been exhausted in several batteries. PAC-2, the older and less capable variant, is the only available option in certain areas against Iranian missiles, and even that missile is running low as well. The collective air defense architecture of the Persian Gulf states, which had appeared formidable on paper, has been effectively hollowed out.
Iranian operational planners were aware of these facts. The sequencing and volume of Iranian missile salvos during the exchange reflected a deliberate attempt to exploit the gap between what the defense could theoretically intercept and what it could actually intercept given real-world inventory constraints.
Iran’s multi-layered operational strategy
What distinguished Iran’s response from a simple missile barrage was its architectural coherence. Iranian planners did not merely fire missiles at American targets; they executed a phased, multi-domain retaliatory campaign with distinct operational objectives at each stage, each phase creating the conditions for the next.
The campaign can be understood as having five interlocking lines of effort: infrastructure degradation, area denial and operational displacement, precision strike at extended range, ISR and logistics attrition, and proxy terrorist force suppression.
Together, they constituted a campaign design far more sophisticated than most Western analysts had publicly credited Iran with possessing.
The overarching logic was one of progressive operational constriction. Rather than attempting to destroy US forces – an objective beyond Iran’s reach given American conventional superiority – the campaign aimed to degrade, displace, and exhaust them.
Each successful strike reduced American operational capacity; forced repositioning that consumed time and resources, and demonstrated to regional partners that proximity to American occupation forces carried real costs.
Infrastructure degradation
The first phase of the Iranian retaliatory campaign targeted the physical infrastructure of American military power in the Persian Gulf region. This was not indiscriminate bombardment. Satellite imagery and post-strike assessments revealed a pattern of targeting that prioritized specific high-value nodes: radar installations, fuel and ammunition storage facilities, maintenance hangars, and communications infrastructure.
Radar systems were a particular priority. The ability to detect, track, and target Iranian missiles and UAVs depends on a layered network of radar systems. By striking radar installations at air bases, Iran degraded the situational awareness that underpins both offensive operations and defensive intercepts. A radar that is destroyed or forced offline creates a coverage gap that cascades through the entire air defense architecture.
Before-and-after imagery of an AN/FPS-117 early warning radar installation at Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base, Kuwait, showing structural damage
Logistics infrastructure was targeted with equal deliberateness. Fuel depots, ammunition storage sites, and maintenance facilities at American bases around the Persian Gulf were struck with sufficient accuracy to cause meaningful operational disruption.
An air force that cannot fuel its aircraft, rearm them, or repair battle damage cannot sustain sortie rates. The targeting of logistics was a direct attack on the tempo of American air operations to derail the American aggression against Iranian sites and reduce the pressure on Iranian forces.
The accuracy of these strikes, achieved at ranges of several hundred kilometers, validated the operational utility of Iran’s solid-fuel ballistic missile force and demonstrated that the IRGC aerospace force had developed the targeting data, launch procedures, and quality control necessary to achieve consistent results against fixed infrastructure.
The anti-access/area denial campaign
The most strategically significant dimension of the Iranian retaliatory campaign was its systematic execution of an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy that progressively pushed American air operations out of the Persian Gulf and into increasingly distant and operationally constrained locations.
The logic of A2/AD in this context was straightforward. The closer American aircraft operate to Iran, the shorter their flight times, the larger their payloads, the less refueling they require, and the more sorties they can generate per day.
Conversely, every additional hundred kilometers of distance imposes compounding costs: greater tanker support, longer mission times, reduced payload, increased crew fatigue, and more complex coordination. By rendering the Persian Gulf operationally untenable for American air assets, Iran systematically degraded the offensive capacity of the aggressors.
The first displacement was from the Persian Gulf itself. Sustained missile and drone attacks against air bases made sustained operations from those locations unfeasible. The American response was to shift primary air operations to bases in Jordan – Al-Azraq and Muwaffaq Salti –which offered greater distance from Iranian missile systems.
Iran’s response was to extend its reach to Jordan. Multiple strikes against American bases, documented by US casualties and satellite imagery showing damaged hangars and destroyed aircraft, demonstrated that Iran had the capability to contest operations from that distance.
The retaliatory strikes destroyed American aircraft, damaged infrastructure, and forced the US war machine to reconsider the viability of Jordan as a primary operating location.
The second displacement was to the occupied territories. American air assets, including tanker aircraft critical to sustaining long-range strike operations, were pushed further west to Israeli military bases.
This displacement carried its own operational costs. The distance from Iranian targets increased further, and the concentration of American assets in the occupied territories created its own targeting opportunities for Iran, which has demonstrated both the willingness and capability to strike at extended ranges.
A particularly telling indicator of this displacement dynamic was the repositioning of the RQ-4 Global Hawk strategic reconnaissance aircraft, which had been operating from Al Dhafra in the UAE and from Jordanian facilities, to Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily.
The Global Hawk, with its long endurance and high-altitude sensors, is a critical ISR asset for tracking Iranian missile launches and providing targeting data. Its displacement to Sicily represented a dramatic reduction in persistent surveillance coverage over Iran and the Persian Gulf, with direct consequences for the effectiveness of American strike operations.
A qualitative leap in extended-range precision
One of the most significant revelations of the recent round of US aggression and Iran’s retaliation was the demonstrated accuracy of Iranian ballistic missiles at ranges exceeding 1,000 kilometers. Previous assessments of Iranian ballistic missile accuracy had generally been skeptical about the ability to achieve consistent precision at such distances. The strikes on Jordanian targets, located well over 1,000 kilometers from Iranian launch sites, completely shattered that skepticism.
The circular error probable (CEP) – the radius within which 50 percent of strikes fall – observed in the Jordanian strikes was dramatically smaller than what Iranian missiles had previously demonstrated at comparable ranges. Strikes that hit specific buildings, specific aircraft shelters, and specific sections of structures, rather than simply landing somewhere on a base, indicated a qualitative improvement in guidance accuracy that demands explanation.
Several hypotheses present themselves, and the evidence suggests that the answer likely involves a combination of all of them. First are technical improvements. Iran may have upgraded the terminal guidance systems on its Kheibarshekan, Haj Qasem, and Fattah variants, potentially incorporating improved inertial navigation, satnav receivers, or optical terminal seekers that allow the missile to better correct its trajectory in the final phase of flight.
Second are tactical improvements. Iranian launch crews may have refined their pre-launch survey procedures, improving the accuracy of the initial position fix that the missile’s inertial navigation system uses as its reference point. Third are software improvements, which mean updates to the missile’s flight control algorithms could improve trajectory optimization and reduce the accumulated errors that degrade accuracy over long distances.
The most likely explanation is a combination of all three – a systematic program of improvement across the technical, procedural, and software dimensions of missile accuracy that had been underway for years and was now being demonstrated operationally for the first time at this range, following the experiences of the 40-day war.
The MQ-9 hunt
The MQ-9 Reaper drone occupied a central and uniquely vulnerable position in American military offensives against Iran. The Reaper is not merely a strike platform but the primary persistent ISR asset used to locate and track mobile Iranian missile launchers, particularly after the heavy attrition of similar Israeli military systems.
Without the MQ-9’s ability to loiter for extended periods, the capacity to find and destroy TELs before they fire, or to conduct battle damage assessment after strikes, is dramatically reduced.
Iran understood this dependency and targeted it systematically during this campaign. The campaign against MQ-9 assets operated on multiple levels. Ground-based air defense systems, which had previously demonstrated the ability to engage high-altitude targets, were used to engage Reapers operating over Iranian territory and adjacent areas.
But Iran also struck the ground infrastructure that supports MQ-9 operations: the maintenance facilities, fuel systems, satellite communication ground stations, and launch-and-recovery equipment that allow the aircraft to operate.
Western media reporting confirmed the destruction of a number of MQ-9 aircraft on the ground at Jordanian bases and, in a particularly striking detail, the destruction of some aircraft while still in their transport canisters before assembly.
This achievement indicates that Iran has developed targeting intelligence on the logistics chain supporting drone operations, not merely the operational bases themselves. Destroying aircraft before they are assembled and made operational is a force multiplication achievement. It eliminates capability before it can be employed, at a point when the aircraft is most vulnerable and least defended.
The cumulative effect of the MQ-9 campaign was a significant degradation of American persistent ISR coverage over Iran. This directly reduced the effectiveness of the hunt for mobile missile launchers, allowing Iranian TELs greater freedom of movement and survivability.
Suppressing proxy terrorist forces in Iraq
From the first day of the exchange, Iran conducted daily retaliatory strikes against armed terrorist groups in Iraq that had the capability and potential motivation to conduct land attacks against Iranian territory or to serve as a forward platform for American-directed operations.
This campaign was methodical and comprehensive, targeting personnel concentrations, weapons storage facilities, and command infrastructure.
Iran’s western flank, which includes the border with Iraq, represents a potential vulnerability. Armed terrorist groups in Iraq, some with historical ties to American intelligence, could in theory conduct cross-border raids, provide intelligence for American strikes, or serve as a distraction that forced Iran to divert defensive resources.
By striking these groups preemptively and continuously, Iran sought to exhaust their operational capacity before it could be brought to bear.
The daily rhythm of these retaliatory strikes was itself a message. It demonstrated that Iran had persistent targeting intelligence on these groups’ locations, that it was willing to expend munitions on this secondary campaign even while conducting the primary campaign against American forces, and that it intended to maintain pressure regardless of any ceasefire negotiations that might be underway.
The logic of reciprocity
Iran’s retaliatory strikes on electrical and water infrastructure in Kuwait represented a deliberate response that operated on two distinct logics simultaneously.
The first was reciprocity: Iran’s own civilian infrastructure had been targeted, and the strikes on Kuwaiti infrastructure were a direct signal that such targeting would not be absorbed without response to the aggressor and its facilitators.
The second was military utility. American forces in the Persian Gulf region depend on host nations’ electrical grids and water supplies for base operations. Infrastructure that serves both civilian and military purposes is, under the laws of armed conflict, a legitimate military target when the military use is substantial and the strike is proportionate.
The targeting of Kuwait’s infrastructure was also a message to Persian Gulf states more broadly. Kuwait, like Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, hosts American military facilities and had provided varying degrees of support to American operations.
By demonstrating the ability and willingness to strike Kuwaiti infrastructure, Iran was communicating that the costs of hosting American forces were not abstract. They were concrete, immediate, and would be borne by the host nation as well as the American military.
The pillars of operational success
Iran’s two-week retaliatory campaign against American aggression and attempts to force open an illegal southern corridor through the Strait of Hormuz largely succeeded on every dimension that its operational planners had identified.
The exchange demonstrated that Iran had developed, over decades of institutional study and investment, a military capability genuinely capable of contesting American power projection in the Persian Gulf region, even after two high-intensity wars.
It demonstrated something relevant to the strategic environment of the region – that the costs of American military aggression in the Persian Gulf had increased substantially; that the infrastructure of American power projection was more vulnerable than pre-war assessments had suggested; and that Iran possessed both the capability and the operational sophistication to exploit those vulnerabilities in a systematic and disciplined manner.
American media this week began circulating a carefully placed story, claiming that the US military has drafted strike options against Iran that include deployment of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, the weapon branded as the “Mother of All Bombs.”
CNN was the first to report it on October 15, followed immediately by a wave of amplification across the mainstream American and European media.
US President Donald Trump, appearing later on Newsmax in an interview, did not deny the story. He offered instead a characteristically garbled endorsement, describing the MOAB as “like a tiny nuclear bomb, but it’s not nuclear,” and adding that the US may have to “take a shot” at Pickaxe Mountain in Iran’s Karkas mountain range.
The narrative was set, and it deserves to be taken apart with facts.
The GBU-43/B is an enormous munition by conventional standards. It carries approximately 8,500 kilograms of high explosive in a casing that brings its total weight to around 9,800 kilograms, just under 10 tons. Stretched end to end, it measures just over nine meters.
It is GPS-guided and essentially designed to detonate above the ground.
The MOAB is a thermobaric, or fuel-air, weapon. This description explains precisely why the weapon is irrelevant to the current discussion. A thermobaric weapon does not carry all of its oxidizer within its casing the way a conventional explosive does.
Instead, on detonation, it disperses a fine aerosol of fuel particles or reactive material into the surrounding atmosphere. A secondary ignition then detonates this cloud together with the ambient oxygen in the air itself, producing a pressure wave of exceptional duration and reach.
The fireball essentially consumes the atmosphere around it. The result is a weapon optimized for destroying things on or just above the surface, such as personnel in the open, light structures, and cave mouths, across a wide area. What the MOAB does not and cannot do is drive energy downward through hundreds of meters of solid rock.
Trump’s description, “like a tiny nuclear bomb,” is not merely imprecise. It is exactly the kind of rhetorical inflation that makes the current hostile military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran intelligible as communication strategy rather than military planning.
The MOAB has been used in combat once. On April 13, 2017, during Trump’s first term, a single GBU-43/B was dropped on a tunnel complex in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, claiming to target the ISIS (Daesh) Khorasan infrastructure.
The US administration at the time announced that the strike had killed approximately 90 ISIS-K militants. The actual battle damage assessment remained classified. What was confirmed is that a very large explosion occurred in a mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan.
The strategic effect on ISIS-K’s operational capacity in the region was, at best, ambiguous. The organization has continued to carry out attacks in the months and years that followed. That one strike, against an unprotected tunnel network in soft ground, in an area with no air defense, delivered by a slow cargo aircraft operating in uncontested airspace, is the entire operational history of this weapon.
The target reportedly under consideration is Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, internationally known as the Pickaxe Mountain, in the Karkas range of central Iran. The facility buried beneath it reportedly sits under more than 100 meters of hard granite.
To suggest that an air-burst weapon, however large, could threaten such a target is to misunderstand the physics of the problem at the most elementary level.
The United States possesses a weapon actually designed for this task, namely the GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator; a 13,600-kilogram bomb built specifically to drive through reinforced concrete and hardened rock before detonating.
The MOP was used against Iranian nuclear sites on June 22, 2025, during the 12-day imposed war. Its effectiveness against the deepest and most hardened of those facilities, particularly the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, remains a matter of genuine debate.
If the weapon engineered for penetration cannot be confirmed to have neutralized Fordow, a target much less protected than Pickaxe Mountain, then the notion that an air-burst weapon detonating above the mountain surface would accomplish anything beyond scorching rock is not a serious military proposition.
Even setting aside hardened underground targets, the MOAB offers no material advantage against any conventional surface target that cannot be achieved more efficiently and with far less operational risk by using multiple precision-guided JDAMs delivered from fighter aircraft operating at standoff ranges.
The MOAB does not expand the target set. It does not add capability. It adds spectacle.
There is a further operational reality that receives almost no attention in the current American media narrative. The GBU-43/B is confirmed to be deliverable only by the C-130 family of cargo aircraft. Flying such a platform into contested Iranian airspace is not a minor planning consideration and introduces significant operational difficulties.
The United States lost two MC-130J Commando IIs during its wars of aggression against Iran. The idea of routing another slow cargo aircraft into that same environment in order to drop a weapon that cannot reach the target it is supposedly meant to destroy compounds the absurdity.
What the current MOAB narrative resembles most closely is not a serious military planning process. It resembles the late-war German doctrine of the Wunderwaffe, the wonder weapon.
Under mounting pressure, facing an unwinnable strategic position, Nazi Germany’s leadership turned to announcements of extraordinary new weapons that would change the course of the war. The V-1 and V-2 generated genuine fear and caused real casualties.
They did not alter the strategic outcome by a single day. The function of the wonder weapon is not primarily military. It is political. It tells a domestic audience and a wavering alliance that there are still options, that new instruments of power remain available, that the situation is not as bad as it looks.When strategy fails, spectacle fills the gap.
The Trump administration is conducting a war that did not emerge from American strategic interests. It entered the war of aggression to further Israeli goals and expansionist ambitions, has absorbed significant losses and embarrassments, and now approaches midterm elections with a public that has not been offered a clear account of what victory looks like.
In that very context, the MOAB story makes complete sense as an information management campaign, to paint a picture of a strong American military, when the truth is something else.
There is one more thing worth stating plainly. Even if the MOAB is used, even if a C-130 penetrates Iranian airspace, releases the weapon over Pickaxe Mountain, and produces the largest conventional explosion seen in the region, Iran will be compelled to respond.
Not because the strike will have damaged anything of military significance. A major attack that fails to achieve its stated objective does not end a war. It resets the escalation clock. Tehran’s hand will be forced, and it will answer with something commensurate in visibility, and Iran has demonstrated repeatedly that it possesses the means and the will to do exactly that.
The MOAB is a very large bomb, but it is particularly good at the thing it is now being asked to symbolize. What it is, in the current context, is a prop, useful for an interview, useful for a news campaign, and essentially useless for anything happening 100 meters below the surface of a granite mountain in central Iran.
Arman Shariati is a Tehran-based military analyst and researcher.
Iran has obtained the technology behind a US-made 14-ton GBU bomb and now possesses samples of the weapon, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, senior advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), stated.
Speaking during the “Fedayeen for Iran” military exercise in Sari, Naqdi said Iranian forces acquired some of the bombs after they failed to detonate during the 12-day war, allowing local forces to seize them and study their technology.
“We should recall that during the 12-day war, 14-ton bombs were dropped,” Naqdi said, adding that “the failure of some of the 14-ton bombs to explode enabled the local forces to seize them.”
“Today, Iran possesses samples of these bombs alongside the manufacturing country,” he asserted, adding that Iranian forces have analyzed all the technologies associated with the US 14-ton bomb and now possess its technology in full.
What is the GBU?
The weapon Naqdi referred to is a GBU, or Guided Bomb Unit, a designation used by the US military for a broad family of air-dropped precision-guided bombs.
GBUs use guidance systems to direct their warheads toward designated targets, with different variants ranging from conventional precision bombs to much heavier bunker-busting weapons.
The term “14-ton bomb” is generally associated with the US GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a deep-penetration weapon designed to strike heavily fortified underground facilities, such as Iran’s nuclear facilities bombed during the 12-day war.
The GBU-57 is one of the largest conventional bombs in the US arsenal and is designed to penetrate deeply buried and hardened targets before detonating. Its deployment requires specialized heavy aircraft.
Iran has heavy fighter jet at hand
Earlier, Iranian Defense Minister Mehrdad Akhlaghi announced Sunday that a heavy Iranian fighter jet will take its first flight next year.
Naqdi also warned that Iran’s response to any renewed US aggression would extend to infrastructure and energy investments belonging to those involved in attacks against Iran in the region.
“In the event of any mistake, the investments related to the infrastructure and energy of the aggressors in the region will be within the operational targeting circle,” he said.
Responding to US threats involving the use of weapons such as the “Mother of All Bombs,” Naqdi said Iran’s Armed Forces have demonstrated advanced missile and deterrence capabilities capable of delivering a decisive response to any aggression.
Iran advances domestic defense production
The emphasis on domestic defense production forms part of Iran’s broader strategy of military self-reliance.
Iranian officials have repeatedly linked the development of indigenous defense capabilities to the need to maintain national security and deterrence without relying on foreign suppliers.
The focus on precision, missile range, and warhead development also reflects the importance Iranian military planners place on technological advancement as a component of deterrence.
J.D. Vance is approaching the halfway point of his term as vice president in an administration that has committed the United States to wars in locations from Ukraine to Venezuela to Somalia to Iran and beyond. All the while, the administration has threatened sending the military into other places across the world including Mexico, Greenland, and Cuba. In short, this presidential administration is fully committed to a warmongering agenda.
Over his 14 years as a United States House of Representatives member, Mike Rogers similarly established his reputation as a committed advocate for US warmongering across the world. This Michigan Republican and the presidential administration are two peas in a pod when it comes to supporting an aggressive empire.
President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential campaign portrayed himself as the peace candidate in the race, a tactic that may have brought him the votes needed to obtain a close electoral victory. But, once elected, Trump turned on a dime, becoming the war president who delivers turmoil, destruction, and death. Through this, Vance has stood by Trump in support.
Given this context, it seems almost unimaginable that Vance would stump in Michigan for electing Rogers to the US Senate by asserting that Vance and Rogers are supporters of peace. Yet, that is what Vance did in a Monroe, Michigan speech on Thursday. With the “peace candidate” ploy having worked for Trump in the 2024 presidential election, Vance audaciously gave it a try in the Michigan speech despite it being divorced from reality.
Vance, in his speech, framed the race between Rogers and Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed as a battle “between politicians obsessed with foreign causes and leaders who remember that their first duty is to fight for the people right here at home.” Vance’s claim is that he and Rogers are among the good “leaders” instead of the bad “politicians” in this comparison. But, it is Rogers, who relentlessly supported US intervention abroad as a House member and in his chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee is the quintessential politician obsessed with foreign causes. And it is crystal clear that over the last two years the Trump administration has, in its obsessive pursuit of foreign causes, sacrificed the interests of the American people, including by substantially increasing the national debt and driving the cost of fuel sky-high.
Vance proceeded in his speech to declare that the Democratic opponent Rogers faces in the race is “absolutely obsessed with conflicts occurring thousands of miles away in the Middle East.” “He is obsessed,” continued Vance, “with the state of Israel and with Gaza.” This, of course, is an obsession of the Trump administration that started the Iran War jointly with Israel and has been giving Israel enormous financial, military equipment, and intelligence aid to support Israel’s attacks on not just Gaza but also other places including Iran and Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Rogers, a staunch supporter of the US aiding Israel, has asked the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — the most prominent organization in the “Israel Lobby” in America — to not directly fund advertisements for his campaign while he travels the country to attend AIPAC organized fundraisers. Rogers is trying to keep under wraps that he is what Vance says his opponent is. Will voters understand the reality or be tricked by the subterfuge?
Why did Vance go through with making claims regarding US foreign policy in his speech that fly in the face of reality? The answer may be found in a comment by Rogers’s Democratic opponent in a Senate election debate held the week before. In that debate, El-Sayed stated in regard to Rogers: “So, it’s just inconsistent to me to be running for Senate from Michigan when you’re more focused on what’s happening to a foreign government than you are focused on what’s happening to folks right here in Michigan.” The foreign government referenced in El-Sayed’s comment is Israel. Instead of trying to give a nuanced counterargument to this charge from the debate, Vance went in his speech with the old standby of “I’m rubber and you’re glue; whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.” In the process, Vance ended up looking ridiculous to anyone with basic knowledge of the foreign policy records of Rogers and the Trump administration.
Iran’s ambassador and chargé d’affaires to the UN has stressed that any arrangements for the Gaza Strip’s future must fully respect Palestinian rights and self-determination, denouncing the United States and the Israeli regime for the current situation affecting the Strait of Hormuz.
Gholamhossein Darzi made the remarks on Friday, addressing a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in West Asia, including the Palestinian question.
He noted that Gaza remained devastated and continued to be subject to military aggression, despite the announcement of a ceasefire last year.
The ceasefire was announced last October as part of a United States-proposed plan to bring an end to two years of Israeli genocide, supposedly.
The Israeli regime has, however, killed more than 1,400 Palestinians during attacks across the territory ever since, in addition to the tens of thousands it had already killed throughout the genocide that began on October 7, 2023.
Darzi called for a permanent end to the Israeli aggression, lifting of the Israeli blockade on the coastal sliver, and realization of a lasting ceasefire in the territory.
He called for unconditional and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory as well as immediate and sustained delivery of humanitarian aid and deployment of relief personnel.
The diplomat called accountability for serious violations of international law a legal obligation, condemning the regime for committing genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
He also denounced expansion of illegal settlements, intensifying settler violence, and Israeli plans for “annexation” of the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians must be able to establish an independent, sovereign, and viable state, with the holy occupied city of al-Quds as its capital and full membership in the United Nations, the official stated.
He also demanded Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory and occupied Syrian areas and respect for both countries’ sovereignty.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Darzi slammed the United States and the Israeli regime for launching two rounds of unprovoked aggression against Iran respectively, last June and from February 28 until April 7 this year.
The aggressors, he noted, committed war crimes through deliberate targeting of civilians and critical infrastructure.
He also attributed the situation affecting the Strait of Hormuz to the American-Israeli atrocities, including an American naval blockade.
“Our position is crystal clear: The only practical way to restore normal and safe maritime navigation in the Strait of Hormuz is immediate and permanent cessation of US aggression, provision of credible guarantees against its recurrence, respect for Iran’s sovereign rights, and complete lifting of the naval blockade and other unlawful coercive measures.”
Following the US-Israeli aggression against Iran on February 28, Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz to its adversaries. The key waterway has remained largely closed ever since, driving up fuel prices worldwide and increasing the cost of living for millions of people.
Tehran has made it clear that it will not reopen the strait until Washington meets its demands, including a permanent end to the war.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung is trying to maneuver between pressure from the United States, which demands participation in the conflict with Iran, and risks to national security and reputation, opting for a strategy of stalling and minimizing a direct military presence.
The previous article explained why South Korea refused to join the United States in the “denuclearization of Iran” and how, in response, Donald Trump struck at Lee Jae-myung’s ambitions, nudging him toward the desired choice. And although President Lee’s rhetoric ultimately seems anti-war, in reality there are many loopholes remaining: for example, not a new contingent, but a decisive increase and expansion of the existing contingent’s mandate.
“No!” or “Maybe”
On September 16, Donald Trump said on social media that countries that “provided no assistance” would, after the war with Iran ended, have to “compensate” the United States for damages. Trump did not say whom he meant.
On September 17, First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea Park Yun-ju stated that the ROK’s participation in an international operation in the Strait of Hormuz region depends on a number of factors and is tied not only to relations with the United States but also to the safety of navigation, energy supplies, and the protection of the country’s citizens.
On September 18, Lee Jae-myung stated that South Korea would not deploy troops or military equipment in a way that would draw the country into the war between the United States and Iran. However, he allowed for minimal measures to protect South Korean vessels, oil delivery routes, and citizens, pointing to disruptions in crude oil supplies as one of the risks.
Apparently, eyebrows were raised in Washington, after which on September 19 the Blue House indicated that President Lee Jae-myung’s remarks did not amount to a rejection of Trump’s call for military cooperation. An administration official said that the government is considering practical ways to assist in close contact with the international community, including the United States.
The Specifics of the Future Conflict
Because the war with Iran follows a sine curve, and Donald Trump’s promises to “flatten Iran” alternate with talk of peace, it is possible that, once Trump enters a peace phase, Seoul’s need to rush to help the United States will temporarily disappear. Therefore, let us consider the scenario in which Seoul is actively pressed to help Washington—at least as proof of the Republic of Korea’s allied status.
Compared with previous deployments of South Korean troops as U.S. allies—whether in Vietnam or Iraq—they find themselves in a far more difficult situation. In both cases, this was a ground war in which South Koreans performed auxiliary tasks and mainly carried out clearing operations and fought poorly armed guerrillas, or guarded South Korean specialists while stationed in territory controlled by the Kurds.
However, although Iran does not have nuclear weapons, it has ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones in abundance. This means that wherever South Korean troops are located, they could become targets, especially since South Koreans have no experience countering such a threat, and any serious losses would both damage the country’s domestic political standing and hurt the president’s reputation. As the saying goes, victory has many fathers, but defeat always has one—and he is often the scapegoat.
If anything goes wrong, President Lee will be symbolically held responsible as the person who initiated South Korean participation in the war. At the same time, he may also be criticized for the fact that, in seeking to neutralize the threat of a military coup, he carried out a whole set of measures that could be seen as a certain decline in military readiness—which, alas, performed poorly when confronted with Iranian drones.
Lee Jae-myung’s Two Strategies
Lee Jae-myung understands this situation perfectly and will therefore adhere to two strategies.
The first is to stall for as much time as possible, especially since, under the country’s constitution, sending troops abroad must go through parliament. Because the conflict is escalating and there is domestic opposition, the timing of any troop deployment remains in question.
The situation is interesting: parliament is generally under President Lee’s control, and if he says “yes,” the National Assembly will vote according to his will. But if Lee throws up his hands and says, “I’m in favor, but the Korean people are against it, and we have a democracy, which I cannot go against,” then, on the one hand, outside observers may perceive this as a mutiny on board; on the other, the United States may find another painful way to push Seoul in the right direction. The hope here is rather that the geopolitical situation or Trump’s mood will change and assistance will not be needed.
The second strategy is to send assistance but minimize Korean participation in direct combat: patrol operations, intelligence and surveillance, demining assistance, medical or other humanitarian aid. As a government source told Yonhap, “we are discussing how to contribute safely, without direct participation in combat,” and according to the Dong-A Ilbo, South Korea is considering sending a P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft designed for long-range maritime surveillance, a supply ship, and explosive ordnance disposal specialists.
Another option is the Cheonghae Unit (the newest destroyer with a special forces team aboard), which has long been in the Middle East and is engaged in protecting shipping and responding to threats, including piracy. Increasing its size is not the same as deploying a new contingent, and when, on July 24, 2019, during one of the previous rounds of escalation, the United States demanded not only an increase in South Korea’s share of the costs of maintaining American troops but also the deployment of South Korean naval forces to the Strait of Hormuz, the Cheonghae contingent, which was supposed to fight Somali pirates, “expanded its area of operations” from the Gulf of Aden to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Gulf. In 2021, Cheonghae was also in the strait, but it was withdrawn to leave a window of opportunity for negotiations after Iran seized a South Korean tanker.
Iran’s Response: What Matters to Tehran Is the Fact Per Se, Not the Scale
It seems that the Iranian side responds in this respect much as North Korea does: what matters is the very fact of Seoul’s participation on the side of the United States, not the scale of such measures. Diplomats and officials have already issued a series of warnings, voicing fairly specific and inconvenient response options for Seoul.
On September 7, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei published a warning in Korean, stating that Tehran would regard the military presence or participation of any third country in operations in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz as direct support for the aggressor, which could entail “serious consequences.” At the same time, the diplomat stressed the importance of friendly relations with Seoul.
Earlier, Iranian expert Mohammad Marandi said that South Korea’s participation in the war could make it an enemy of Iran, and retaliatory strikes could affect not only military but also economic assets of South Korean companies in the Persian Gulf countries. South Korea gets most of its energy resources from the Near and Middle East, and a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on vessels delivering petroleum products to South Korea would force it to urgently rethink its supply chains.
At the same time, the most convenient and safe backup supply-chain option is also uncertain, because it involves obtaining petroleum products from Russia. Talks on this issue have already begun, and South Korea is trying to prepare its European partners for the possibility of obtaining Russian petroleum products. But, first, the EU still has to be persuaded; second, it is not at all clear that Moscow would welcome this with open arms, knowing that this is not a conceptual turn toward Russia but a desire to solve a problem now that is de facto completely irrelevant to Moscow.
In Lieu of a Conclusion
Lee Jae-myung remains trapped. Refusing to send troops could lead to a further deterioration in relations with Trump, who could take actions against South Korea, such as imposing new tariffs. Sending troops carries certain reputational and domestic political risks. This is harder than a “test of strategic thinking” and a choice between two great evils.
Therefore, we will follow with great interest whether a parliamentary discussion finally takes place and what its verdict will be. It is interesting to see how ready South Korean military personnel and South Korean weapons are to take part in a modern war.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia at the Russian Academy of Sciences
Login
