As the two-month peace deal between the US and Iran expires on Monday, the Wall Street Journal is out with a story that might explain why negotiators have not been able to hammer out a permanent peace deal in that span. “Instead of putting faith in talks,” the story asserts, Iran’s hard-liners “took the past two months to prepare for a bigger fight.” That incudes giving the Revolutionary Guard more say over the army, boosting missile and drone production, and coordinating with proxy forces in Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon. Intercepted communications between Iran and its militia allies signal “a strategic shift inside the country’s hard-line leadership to get their forces ready to widen the war and raise the costs for the US.”
It’s been part of a two-track strategy, according to the story, one that focused on diplomacy and the second on the military, the latter fueled by skepticism within Iran that the US and Israel would ever refrain from future attacks. Recent moves—Iranian strikes on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, Houthi attacks on Saudi-linked targets in the Red Sea, leadership changes favoring offensive operations, etc.—illustrate the shift. “There is … a widespread view in Iran that the main war has not yet begun,” analyst Mohammad Hassan Sangtarash tells the Journal. “What we have seen so far is increasingly interpreted through the lens of ‘salami-slicing’ tactics—limited, incremental escalation designed to weaken capabilities before a larger confrontation.” Read the full story by Benoit Faucon and Summer Said.