Open sources warned that killing Khamenei would trigger the closure of the strait and empower the IRGC. The 2026 U.S.-Israeli strikes ignored those warnings.
Aug. 10, 2026: A cargo ship sits idle off Bandar Abbas in Iran. Iran has kept most commercial traffic out of the Strait of Hormuz and says the waterway will not reopen until Washington meets its terms. © Getty Images
×In a nutshell
Killing Khamenei removed the only restraint on the strait’s closure
Tehran has turned Hormuz into the central battleground of the war
As expected, the IRGC now dominates Iran’s wartime decision-making
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In October 1979, as a Ph.D. candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, I published an analysis of Saddam Hussein’s strategic thinking in Skira Hodshit, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) magazine. Drawing solely on open Iraqi media, I argued that Saddam was preparing the Iraqi people for war with Iran.
A few days later, Major General Yehoshua Sagui, chief of IDF military intelligence, asked me to come to Tel Aviv “for a confrontation” with the officers responsible for the northern and eastern fronts. In the meeting, I argued that, even in a dictatorship, public media and classified intelligence should carry equal weight in assessing a leader’s intent. Based on limited classified intelligence, the officers were united in the belief that Saddam intended to attack Israel.
On September 22, 1980, Saddam invaded Iran. That day General Sagui appeared on television. Counting military hardware and units, he predicted that, in their march east, the Iraqis would pulverize the Iranian armed forces “in four days.” Then, he warned, the Iraqi armor would turn around and march west on Israel. The war with Iran lasted eight years. Saddam emerged victorious, but if there ever was a Pyrrhic victory, this was it. The result was the occupation of Kuwait.
Both Saddam and Israel’s chief of military intelligence underestimated Tehran’s willingness to endure severe losses. Israel also underestimated both Saddam’s fear of Khomeini’s influence among Iraq’s Shia population and his anger over Khomeini’s withdrawal from the Iraqi-Iranian agreement over the Shatt al-Arab.
While the Shia threat was only implied, Saddam Hussein’s declared commitment to right the Shatt al-Arab wrong by force was explicit and frequent. It could have been deception, a threat against one enemy while preparing to invade another. Publicly available information is often treated as less meaningful than expensively acquired intelligence. In 1980, that habit proved costly.
Publicly available information is often treated as less meaningful than expensively acquired intelligence.
The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran
Open-source information was critical to assessing the foreseeable consequences of the United States-Israeli operation that began on February 28, 2026. It was especially important in five areas: Tehran’s thinking about the Strait of Hormuz; Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) plans for the period after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s death; whether the IRGC was motivated by extremist messianic expectations, or by a defense of its honor and privileges; former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s standing inside Iran and his reported consideration as a post-regime figure; and the extent to which the Kurds, and perhaps the Baloch, could contribute to regime change.
In all five cases, the results suggest that the available open-source information was not sufficiently considered.
×Facts & figures
U.S. bases within range of Iranian ballistic missiles
U.S. bases across the Middle East fall within range of Iran’s main ballistic missiles. After U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the IRGC used that reach to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz and strike Gulf targets. © GIS
Tehran’s prewar calculus on Hormuz
In a July 2026 interview, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi explained that “the Strait of Hormuz closed from the first day” because “from the beginning it had been agreed that if the supreme leader had been a target, the strait would close.”
If true, then on the eve of the joint American-Israeli attack on February 28, the supreme leader did not authorize a closure, even in response to a new attack, unless there was an assassination attempt against him. The two allies could not have known this, but if they had followed Iranian media, they would have known that numerous clear threats to close the strait in the event of an attack were made, yet they decided not to give them real weight.
On January 12, 2026, the Journal of Strategic Studies published an article. The authors’ analysis is sobering. For decades, the Iranian navy made extensive preparations to fight an asymmetric war against a far superior force. “The strait’s narrow width, variable depth, and high traffic density limit the maneuverability of vessels, allowing Iran to exert control and potentially close the strait,” the authors write.
In June 2025, during the 12-day war with the U.S. and Israel, Iran’s parliament voted in favor of closing the Strait of Hormuz. The vote was only a recommendation, but it created an atmosphere of legitimacy for closure. Even so, the strait stayed open throughout nearly two weeks of attacks. The restraint came from the supreme leader. As early as 2013, he had publicly endorsed “heroic flexibility” when the survival of the Islamic Revolution was at stake.
During the 12-day war, Khamenei still judged a full confrontation with the U.S. and the international community over free passage through the strait too risky. The pragmatists, President Masoud Pezeshkian, whose appointment he had engineered, and Mr. Araghchi must have shared that assessment. The IRGC’s more confrontational commanders did not. The president explicitly objected to the attacks on the Gulf Arabs even after the assassination of the supreme leader. If there was any chance of avoiding closure in the February-April 2026 campaign, it lay in keeping Khamenei in place. He was assassinated on the first day.
April 9, 2026, Tehran, Iran: People gather under a portrait of Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, at a memorial marking 40 days since his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes. The new leader himself has not appeared in public since the February attack. © Getty Images
The IRGC’s motives and constraints
On January 24, 2026, Mako, an Israeli news outlet, published an article stating that “the dominance of the IRGC reached such a level that they often ignore the official state institutions. … The organization became so influential at the top of the decision-making centers that any future supreme leader will have to win their approval before he enters his position.”
This open-source analysis was shared by the American intelligence community. On February 28, 2026, Reuters reported that in the run-up to the U.S. and Israeli attacks, the CIA assessed that if Iran’s supreme leader were killed in the operation, he could be replaced by “hard-line figures from the IRGC.”
Why did the leaders ignore this public and classified information?
The IRGC was not merely hard-line; Washington had already designated it a foreign terrorist organization in 2019. Still, a widespread Western interpretation portrays the IRGC as so steeped in jihadist ideology that it perceives death in jihad itself as constituting victory. A more plausible interpretation, consistent with the historical record, is that the organization is primarily concerned with protecting its honor, privileges and personnel. After the killing of tens of thousands of demonstrators in the January 2026 crackdown, a collapse of the regime would expose many commanders to revenge.
The IRGC has been extremist; it has also accepted concessions when a prestigious cleric could legitimize them. When able to shift blame onto a supreme leader, it has been able to live with retreat. Iran’s constitution defines the supreme leader as a just and capable Islamic jurist. In the eyes of the faithful, he also carried something of the Hidden Imam’s aura. Even when supreme leaders made humiliating decisions, the IRGC could always hide behind them.
On February 28, 2026, the indispensable figure of the supreme leader was removed overnight. As the “Guardians of the Islamic Revolution,” the IRGC viewed the assassination as an unforgivable humiliation. History suggests that Khamenei’s removal deprived the IRGC of the political-religious authority that had previously allowed it to retreat without humiliation. There was no one to whom they could shift the blame for not closing the strait, so they closed the strait and attacked their neighbors.
The limits of the Kurdish option
Assassinating Khamenei made sense for the U.S. and Israel in the context of a total regime change goal. Yet open-source information widely available beforehand pointed to serious obstacles. After the regime’s mass killings of protesters in January 2026, the Iranian opposition lost trust in the American promise that “help was on its way.” Moreover, they were in shock. How could anyone still expect Iranian youth to rise again only to be mowed down once more by the IRGC?
On February 28, when the aerial war began, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the war was meant only “to pave the way” for the Iranian people to topple the regime, but he did not promise that troops would follow. Reports suggested that planners instead counted on Kurdish forces from the north, and perhaps the Baloch from the southeast, as the missing ground element.
A New York Times account said Prime Minister Netanyahu was inspired by Ahmed al-Sharaa’s march from northwestern Syria to Damascus. If that was the expectation, it underestimated obstacles that were publicly visible beforehand. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is known to treat any Kurdish awakening as anathema. Planners may have assumed Turkish intervention would come too late.
Even if a Kurdish revolt succeeded in the Kurdish region of northern Iran, it would not have gone any further. Whatever their feelings about the regime, the Persian-speaking majority of Iran abhors the prospect of their country disintegrating into Kurdish, Baloch, Arab, Azeri, Persian and other statelets. It was therefore more likely that the revolutionaries would have joined the regime against the Kurds rather than the other way around. Mr. Araghchi struck this chord in the July interview, in which he accused the U.S. of planning to use the Kurds to dismember Iran.
More on the Iran war
Ahmadinejad as a possible post-regime figure
Haaretz reported in July 2026 that in late 2022, the Mossad identified a change in former President Ahmadinejad’s thinking. After leaving office in 2013 and having his presidential candidacy rejected in 2017 and 2021, he was assessed to have moved from virulent anti-Israel politics toward a more pragmatic line, and to have concluded that Iran’s nuclear program had “turned from an asset to a burden.” The Israeli reports also described a secret promise that, if he became leader, he would join the Abraham Accords. His office denied the accounts. U.S. and Israeli war planners apparently ran with this secret assessment, planning to free Mr. Ahmadinejad from house arrest at the outset of the war and install him in a post-Khamenei regime.
If the exposure of classified information is accurate, then Mr. Ahmadinejad’s new perspectives were a valid factor in considering him as a potential future leader, but they were only one aspect. Planning an entire regime-change campaign centered around him necessitated much more. Regardless of his views, was he a viable option for leadership?
He lacked the domestic legitimacy and institutional position such a role required. As president, he spent heavily on social support but could not uproot institutional corruption; his populist policies damaged the economy. Many Iranians believed he rigged his reelection. In 2009, when millions took to the streets, he backed the Basij, the regime’s mass militia, who opened fire, and he then authorized mass executions.
Mr. Ahmadinejad ultimately became one of the most hated presidents in the history of the Islamic Republic. After leaving office, he was also unwelcome to the IRGC and to Khamenei. So, he was both unpopular and out of power. This was public information.
July 14, 2026, Tehran, Iran: Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (center) attends a memorial service for the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Grand Mosalla in Tehran, Iran. © Getty Images
Hormuz after the memorandum
On June 17, the U.S. and Iran signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding (MoU) brokered by Pakistan. Iran committed to using its “best efforts” to ensure safe commercial passage through the strait with no charges for 60 days and to remove military obstacles within 30 days. Future control of the waterway would be discussed with Oman and other Gulf states “in line with international law.” In return, the U.S. agreed to lift its naval blockade. The MoU’s vague language allowed Tehran to claim a right to manage transit, while Washington could interpret it as a return to free passage.
The 60-day window lapsed on August 17 without an extension and without an agreed administration of the strait. Tehran declared the MoU void due to American violations and has moved toward a permit-and-route regime. Washington rejects Iranian sovereignty over the whole strait and has reimposed pressure, including blockade measures.
As of early September, Iran and Oman were discussing a temporary corridor and a joint mine-clearance project in the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC said the waterway would remain closed until the United States accepted Tehran’s terms. President Trump claimed ships were already moving and that mines in international waters had been cleared, but the routes remain contested. Fresh attacks on tankers, U.S. strikes on Iranian coastal and mine-laying assets, and Iranian fire against American and Gulf targets have again made commercial transit hazardous. Nuclear issues, missiles and proxies have receded. Hormuz now defines the confrontation.
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Scenarios
Predicting future scenarios is particularly challenging due to the U.S. administration’s unclear goals regarding regime change and its interpretation of the Islamabad MoU. However, we do know who the decision-maker in Washington is. The disappearance of the supreme arbiter Ali Khamenei, the occultation of his successor, and the struggle between pragmatists and extremists in Tehran, too, complicate matters. Analysts can no longer rely on past decision-making patterns in Tehran when making assessments. Iranian public media is providing valuable information about the positions of key players in Tehran. Nevertheless, even these players are uncertain about the extent to which they can influence their country’s policies.
Most likely: Prolonged standoff
Neither side wants an all-out confrontation, but neither can surrender. Without the cover of a widely respected jurist, the IRGC will find it more difficult than ever to relent, namely, to give up its demand for full sovereignty and control of the strait, including tolls. Mojtaba Khamenei (the current supreme leader) is not such a jurist, and in any case, he has been almost entirely invisible since his father’s death.
With its ability to block the strait or at least severely limit navigation, the IRGC considers itself victorious. Its leaders believe they have more time than U.S. President Donald Trump and see little reason to compromise. For his part, President Trump cannot tolerate the humiliation of accepting Iran’s full demands. Whatever the results of the U.S. congressional elections, after November 2026 he will be under less pressure to end the deadlock. Therefore, barring an unintended or unpredictable escalation, the two sides will continue to face each other for months amid mutual blockades and occasional low-intensity exchanges of fire. Oil prices and global inflation will rise.
Eventually, if the U.S. is able to increase the number of ships crossing the strait, together with new land routes from the Gulf and new energy sources, this will replace most of the pre-war capacity of Hormuz. In 2027, one of four scenarios is most likely to unfold.
Likely scenario 1: The deadlock drives both sides to gradually escalate
With growing economic pressure in Iran, the IRGC “escapes forward”: it begins to target Gulf energy infrastructure. The U.S. responds in kind, and the situation spins out of control. If attacked, or if asked to join the fray, Israel will do so.
Likely scenario 2: Tehran yields to Washington
On August 31, in a meeting with provincial governors and their deputies, former president Hassan Rouhani demanded a national referendum that would decide whether to continue the confrontation with the “world’s superpowers.” This marked not the first challenge to the IRGC hardliners, but it was the highest-level public challenge to date.
As economic pressure grows, the pragmatists in Tehran grow deeply worried. They see a sharp rise in both public rage and the frustration of the police and the regular army (Artesh), whom the regime can no longer pay and therefore keep reasonably happy. They manage to convince the new supreme leader to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps, accept the American interpretation of the MoU, which is very favorable to Iran, and save the Islamic Revolution. The pragmatists may be able to secure the support of the Artesh and the police. The IRGC relents.
Likely scenario 3: Iran slides toward a siege state
The IRGC prevents the new supreme leader from making any concessions. It turns Iran into North Korea: the elite is well provided for; the security forces are treated less well, but not badly enough to turn their weapons on the regime; the masses are in serious trouble. But Iran is not North Korea. The deterioration begins with mass desertion. Then the mass demonstrations resume. The U.S. prepares in advance to provide immediate tactical support to local groups. The rebels have a better fighting chance than in January 2026.
Likely scenario 4: Washington accommodates Tehran
A less likely but still possible scenario is American acceptance of Iran’s interpretation of the MoU. The U.S. will agree that, except for the toll, all navigation in the strait will comply with Tehran’s demands. This will recognize the de facto Iranian control over the entire strait, including the Omani side. Implicitly, it will open the way for the imposition of a toll in the future. It will, however, keep the strait open.
The Europeans are showing a willingness to end the conflict through mechanisms such as tolls labeled “service fees” or “voluntary” payments, similar to the model used in the Strait of Malacca.
For the benefit of its home audience and the world, Iran will declare victory. Iran will still face severe economic difficulties, but a victorious regime is a secure one. Iran will impose its will on all its Arab neighbors. The American influence in the Gulf will suffer a heavy blow.
Unlikely: A limited U.S. ground operation
The U.S. occupies strategic positions on the strait. This will take a few weeks and be costly, but it will very likely be sufficient to reopen the strait. Still, if there is no regime change in Tehran, such an American presence on the strait will have to be long-term, and U.S. soldiers will be exposed to a war of attrition. If the U.S. Navy finds a way to secure passage without landings, this option will vanish.
Least likely: American mass invasion and regime change
Although this is not likely, it may become the only way out if Tehran remains adamant about controlling the strait and the Trump administration cannot accept it, nor can it militarily secure the passage. The U.S. has the capability to reach Tehran, but the cost in terms of casualties and resources would be very high. Islamist Iran is not Saddam’s Iraq: Even if the Artesh steps aside, the IRGC and many of the Basij will fight. Except in the Kurdish areas, population support for the invading forces cannot be relied upon.
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