{"id":258297,"date":"2026-08-20T22:07:48","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T22:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/258297\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T22:07:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T22:07:48","slug":"irans-secret-plan-to-escalate-the-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/258297\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s Secret Plan to Escalate the War"},"content":{"rendered":"

After President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran<\/a> in mid-June, administration officials fanned out to build support for an agreement they hoped would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and start winding down the war.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s hard-line leaders huddled in Tehran and came up with a different plan, according to Iranian and Arab officials. In their view the pact was likely just an attempt by the U.S. and Israel to take pressure off the global economy and buy time for a bigger attack down the road. Instead of putting faith in talks, they took the past two months to prepare for a bigger fight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Their efforts include giving the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps more control of the country\u2019s regular army, appointing hardened veterans of the war with Iraq<\/a> and past internal crackdowns to key posts, expanding domestic counterintelligence operations and ramping up production of missiles and drones. The leadership quickly seized the initiative, attacking ships to tighten Iran\u2019s grip on Hormuz and expanding the battlefield to the Red Sea, which Saudi Arabia has used to get around Iran\u2019s chokehold on the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n

Arab intelligence officials have picked up evidence\u2014including communications between Iran and militia allies in countries such as Yemen and Iraq\u2014of a strategic shift inside the country\u2019s hard-line leadership to get their forces ready to widen the war and raise the costs for the U.S., officials familiar with the findings say. Alarming weaker Gulf countries like Kuwait, Iran\u2019s leaders are increasingly talking about offensive operations on enemy territory.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a92026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran in mid-June, administration officials fanned out to build…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[4614,42868,5959,488,648,5955,52904,52905,52906,5966,197,19449,42869,1743,34,94,60699,71129,71132,71141,71135,71136,71133,71130,71138,71134,71140,71131,71137,71139,9284,49,857,1661,1284,5958,1737,5975,5957,81,35934,5976,5960,58315,19456,5965,51,5967,706],"class_list":["post-258297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-aerospace","tag-aerospace-defense","tag-armed-forces","tag-asia","tag-defense","tag-developing-economies","tag-dragonfly-middle-east","tag-dragonfly-north-america","tag-dragonfly-world","tag-gcapi","tag-general-news","tag-gfx-contrib","tag-industrial-goods","tag-international-relations","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-leder","tag-linkendrnrealtime-linkedarticle-dnco20260818000682","tag-linki1-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-linki10-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-linki12-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-linki13-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-linki2-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-linki3-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-linki4-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-linki5-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-linki6-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-linki7-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-linki8-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-linki9-wp-wsj-0003815787","tag-manufacturing","tag-middle-east","tag-middle-east-and-north-africa","tag-military-operations","tag-national","tag-national-public-security","tag-north-america","tag-political","tag-political-general-news","tag-politics","tag-politics-international-relations","tag-public-security","tag-risk-news","tag-risk-topics","tag-risk-topics-geopolitics","tag-synd","tag-united-states","tag-wsj-pro-wsj-com","tag-yemen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}