Deadline Tehran: All Hell About To Break Loose

All hell seems like it’s about to break loose again in the Middle East.

Let’s review the timeline. The United States entered into a ceasefire with Iran. The idea was to open negotiations for two weeks and then move toward a solution on nuclear weapons, with Iran giving up its nukes, ballistic missiles, and support for terrorist proxies.

It seemed as though there was some pretty significant movement. The president deployed JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner to Islamabad, Pakistan. They came back and said there was no deal to be made.

Then it appeared as though there might be some movement after all, because the United States imposed a blockade on Iran’s blockade. Iran had basically put a blockade on goods in the Strait of Hormuz, harassing shipping and preventing oil from exiting the Persian Gulf.

But in the aftermath of the failed first round of talks, America blockaded Iranian ships entering and exiting the Strait of Hormuz.

That put the Iranian government in significant economic trouble, which led to backchannel negotiations. On Friday, both the United States government and the Iranian government announced that the Strait of Hormuz was open.

President Trump said that a deal was very close, that Iran would ship its nuclear dust out, making a deal with the United States to permanently end their nuclear program, that they would stop supporting foreign terrorist organizations, etc.

This led to what appears to be a pretty open split between some of the negotiators and the people actually in charge, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is essentially the Praetorian guard for the mullahs. There have been a lot of rumors about the split. In fact, one of the reasons why the negotiations in Islamabad led by Vance didn’t succeed, according to Vance and members of the American side of the negotiations, was that the Foreign Ministry was making promises they couldn’t keep. They would go back, and the IRGC would then pretend that none of that ever happened.

Iran tried to tie its own ceasefire with the United States to Israel stopping its attacks on Hezbollah in retaliation for Hezbollah firing thousands of rockets into northern Israel. They tried to claim the reason that they had opened the Strait of Hormuz was because Israel had stopped its action in Lebanon, as opposed to the real reason, which is because the United States was blockading all of the oil going in and out of Iran.

On Saturday, things got heated again because the Iranian navy informed ships that Hormuz was shut.

President Trump noted:

Today, an Iranian-flagged cargo ship named TOUSKA, nearly 900 feet long and weighing almost as much as an aircraft carrier, tried to get past our Naval Blockade, and it did not go well for them. The U.S. Navy Guided Missile Destroyer USS SPRUANCE intercepted the TOUSKA in the Gulf of Oman, and gave them fair warning to stop.

The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engine room. Right now, U.S. Marines have custody of the vessel. The TOUSKA is under U.S. Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity. We have full custody of the ship, and are seeing what’s on board!

What is likely to happen next is that Iran will remain intransigent. The president is likely to authorize further military action to both significantly hamper or destroy Iran’s economic capacity, and to either bomb every possible nuclear facility into complete rubble, unleash special operations in line with the Israelis, and go get the nuclear material, or both.

That is the most likely next step, and it will probably happen sooner rather than later if the Iranians do not get on the clock and start negotiating rapidly.