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Iran Signals Readiness to Escalate Fight in Face of Rising U.S. Pressure
The Iranian government is taking an increasingly aggressive approach as it confronts a growing economic threat and worries that its grip on the Strait of Hormuz is slipping, analysts say.
Erika Solomon is the Iran bureau chief.
Iran has signaled that it is willing to escalate its fight with the United States, with senior leaders issuing increasingly sharp warnings in recent days after attacking American warships for the first time.
The country’s leaders are taking a more aggressive approach as Iran faces mounting economic pressure and they worry that their grip on the Strait of Hormuz is slipping. The American blockade is making it nearly impossible for Iran to ship oil, its main money source. And in effect, Iran sees escalation as the primary leverage it has against the United States, analysts said, warning that the recent clashes could reignite a full-blown war.
The U.S. military said Tuesday that it had destroyed five Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for attempted strikes on a U.S. Navy warship, while Iran said it launched strikes at a base used by American forces in Jordan in response. The attacks occurred three days after Iran made its first known attempt at striking an American military vessel.
On Sunday, Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s lead negotiator and the speaker of Parliament, told lawmakers that the era of “proportionate responses” to American attacks was over. Iran’s security chief, Mohsen Rezaei, also announced plans to impose a “restricted zone” for shipping in the Persian Gulf that would go beyond the country’s efforts to control the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has largely withstood the heavy military campaign launched by the United States and Israel in February. But the war of attrition in recent months has created an economic threat that is now pushing the government to intensify its rhetoric and attacks.
An American naval blockade has prevented Tehran from exporting much of its oil, the country’s main source of revenue, making a longstanding economic crisis even worse. On Tuesday, the government raised some gasoline prices because of fuel shortages, a move that is expected to further roil a country already struggling with soaring inflation and unemployment, and a rapidly depreciating currency.
At the same time, U.S. naval escorts have enabled a trickle of oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, undercutting Iran’s closure of the waterway, which has caused global oil prices to rise sharply. The number of ships getting through is small, and the effort is extremely costly for the United States, but it has prevented oil prices from rising further and blunted Iran’s ability to impose economic pain on Washington.
“How do you regain the momentum? You escalate,” said Farzan Sabet, an Iran analyst at the Geneva Graduate Institute, a research group. Iran will likely attempt to intensify the military confrontation, he said, while seeking to avoid a return to full-out war. “It’s highly damaging, but at the same time, they hope it raises global oil prices or fully re-closes the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.
‘Make or break moment’
Senior Iranian officials have said they are open to negotiating a return to the fragile Memorandum of Understanding that halted the war in April and was meant to lead to talks on an Iranian nuclear deal.
But President Trump has said he has no interest in negotiations, preferring to maintain his strategy of attrition and suffocating Iran economically.
Iran’s leadership believes that now may be the best moment to raise the stakes, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November when an unpopular war could hurt Mr. Trump and the Republican Party.
“All signs point to a make or break moment,” said Mohammad Ali Shabani, an Iran analyst and editor of the regional news website Amwaj.media. “I’m not sure the Iranians are going to wait until after the elections to be attacked if diplomacy fails.”
Iran’s move to strike two U.S. warships with ballistic missiles was a significant escalation, said Hamidreza Azizi, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group.
Iranian forces had previously made no serious effort to target U.S. naval ships and seemed reluctant to conduct attacks that could cause heavy American casualties. “These calculations have obviously changed,” he said.
The U.S. decision to retaliate by striking three Iranian oil tankers — and sinking one of them — was an indication of how seriously Washington took the Iranian attack.
“Both sides are trying to dictate their red lines and trying to push the red lines of the other side as far back as they can,” Mr. Azizi said.
It was also a recognition that Iran’s military capabilities have evolved. Before the war started, the United States did not think Iran could target American military bases in the region with precision, he said. But in recent months, Iran has shown it can do so, including with a strike on a U.S. base in Jordan in July that killed two American soldiers.
Iran could become similarly adept at targeting naval fleets, Mr. Azizi said.
Iran has also been very public about its efforts to capture and learn from its enemy’s weapons. On Tuesday, Iran’s state news agency IRNA announced that naval forces of the powerful Revolutionary Guards had seized a U.S. submarine drone known as the Dive-LD. Iran has previously managed to reverse-engineer weapons offered to it by its allies or captured from its enemies.
U.S. Central Command said the drone was an older model that had malfunctioned and “neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radar equipment.”
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