On September 29, President Donald Trump and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), commanded by Major General Ahmad Vahidi, each claimed victory. At the White House, Trump said Iran was “failing very badly” and the war would be “over with very, very soon.” Oil prices, he promised, would tumble back to where they had been before “that little excursion to the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
The same day in Tehran, Vahidi’s IRGC delivered the opposite verdict. In an open letter to the American people, it declared that “the United States and Israel have suffered a crushing defeat, while the Islamic Republic of Iran has achieved a decisive victory.” After seven months of war, it wrote, the U.S. military “has scored no wins,” while Iran had won “operational control over the Strait of Hormuz.”
So, who’s right? As of now, Trump has the stronger case. But it is not quite as strong as he claims.
Let’s begin with the reality that Trump’s policies are inflicting real pain on Tehran. Shortly after the war began on February 28, Iran surprised the Americans by laying siege to the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil normally passes. In response, starting around April, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) borrowed a page from medieval warfare: It besieged the besiegers. For months, the United States has blockaded Iranian ports while escorting other countries’ oil out of the Persian Gulf. It struck coastal radars, minelayers, and missile launchers, and it threatened to hit an Iranian tanker whenever an American warship came under attack.
CENTCOM now says it has helped move more than a billion barrels of oil through Hormuz in recent months. To be sure, shipping remains below normal, and Brent crude spent much of late September between $100 and $106 a barrel, roughly $30 above its pre-war level. But enough oil is moving through the strait and along alternative export routes to blunt Iran’s effort to make the war intolerable for Washington’s partners.
That gives Trump a strategy he can sustain. Rather than using U.S. troops to seize Kharg Island or march on Tehran, he only needs to stay the course: If CENTCOM keeps imposing costs at a price Washington is willing to pay, Iran’s ability to hold the oil market hostage will steadily weaken.
The question is whether Trump will do it.
A popular school of commentary says he won’t. Its shorthand is TACO: “Trump always chickens out.” As the pain in Tehran mounts, the argument goes, the regime will offer the president just enough carrots to let him leave the battlefield with honor. Trump, who calls himself a “deal junkie,” will find the offer hard to resist. The war is already unpopular with the public, and leading voices in the military worry that the ongoing conflict is draining the readiness we will need if China moves on Taiwan. The imminent midterm elections add to the pressure, with Republicans expected to lose the House and possibly the Senate. Something will have to give, the thinking goes, and it will be the war.
The scenario is not fanciful. But it is unlikely, because it misreads both Trump and the Iranian regime.
Consider Trump first. Opposition to the Islamic Republic is among the most consistent threads running through both of his terms. He withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, killed IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020, and bombed the Fordow nuclear facility in 2025. Although the president has repeatedly escalated and de-escalated in search of a deal, even in his de-escalatory phases he has applied more pressure on Iran than any of his predecessors. Trump’s record suggests he will keep spending political capital to stand up to Tehran.
Nor is Iran likely to offer the kind of concessions that would truly tempt him. Vahidi clearly has no intention of handing Trump a graceful exit. On the contrary, he intends to humiliate the American president. Meanwhile, Vahidi is using the chaos and pressure of the war to consolidate the IRGC’s hold on the state: The clerical Islamic Republic is giving way to a military dictatorship run by the Revolutionary Guards. Iran is indeed undergoing a regime change, just not the one Washington hoped for.
Military dictatorships see force as the answer to every major problem. Vahidi can see that Trump’s policies are choking Iran economically, but he won’t drop to his knees. He will instead try to break the choke hold.
How? On September 21, IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi offered a clue. Renewed American aggression, he warned, would lead Iran to “change the weaponry and the geography of the war.” To see how this is already manifesting, one need only look at recent weeks. The IRGC has repeatedly tried for a lucky shot at American warships in the Gulf while also pursuing a “two strait” strategy. In Yemen, the Houthis pushed down the Red Sea coast, taking the port city Mocha and the island of Perim, which divides the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. At the same time, on September 10 and 11, drones launched from Iraq struck pumping stations on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, which carries crude to the Red Sea and bypasses the Strait of Hormuz. Riyadh shut the line down. The Iranian proxy system is mobilizing to squeeze the global energy system at every gate, and put the U.S. Navy under fire while doing it.
In retrospect, the fact that the drone strike on the East-West pipeline came from Iraq was the biggest tell. Iraqi militias have no independent interest in Saudi export routes. They do not live on the Red Sea, nor are they in a state of conflict with Riyadh. Nor were they in charge. We can safely assume that the IRGC ordered the strike. Tehran hit the line because it needed the work-around closed once the siege of Hormuz began to fail.
The pipeline strike pointed to the next front: Iraq. On September 30, the last American troops left the country, a move heralded by Trump as “the end of a very expensive excursion into Hell.” But officials in Tehran did not read the withdrawal as a footnote to U.S.-Iraqi negotiations; they read it as a major Iranian victory. The Americans, they believe, have now vacated the one Arab state that shares a land border with Iran. Now, the IRGC will want to capitalize on the “victory” by turning Iraq from a contested rear area into a forward base, and to move the battle with the U.S. out of Iraq and into the countries around it.
Why Iraq? Because Israel has closed off most of the alternatives. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have been battered. Lebanese Hezbollah has lost much of its leadership and its arsenal. The fall of Bashar al-Assad cut the Syrian land bridge that carried Iranian weapons to Lebanon. Of the Arab theaters that once gave Tehran strategic depth, only two remain: Yemen and Iraq. Both lie at the far edge of Israel’s reach. Yemen is already in play, in plain sight. Iraq is the quieter theater, yet the more dangerous one.
Kuwait, sitting only 150 kilometers from Basra, Iraq, is the most exposed to Iraq-based operations. The oil terminals, desalination plants, and American bases on which the country’s population depends all sit within range of cheap drones and short-range missiles launched from southern Iraq. From there, Tehran can threaten the American military presence and Kuwait’s civilian lifelines in the same salvo.
Jordan has already received a preview. On the night of September 8, the IRGC fired about 20 ballistic missiles at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, which has grown in importance as a reliable, relatively unexposed location for American aircraft. Jordan said it intercepted 18 of the missiles, but U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that American batteries expended 60 to 70 Patriot interceptors and more than a dozen Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors—roughly four defenders for every incoming missile—to combat the attack. Even then, the defense was not airtight. An A-10 Thunderbolt attack aircraft was badly damaged, and about eight F-15E fighter planes took lighter damage. No Americans were killed.
In other words, if we accept the widely cited prices of about $4 million per Patriot interceptor and about $15 million per THAAD interceptor, Washington spent well over $400 million to defend one base on one night. If the ballistic missiles from Iran were of the Kheibar Shekan class, commonly priced at about $1 million apiece, Iran spent perhaps $20 million. That is a 20-to-one exchange, before counting the damaged jets or the interceptors the United States cannot quickly replace.
The IRGC is not trying to win the air battle over Jordan. It is trying to bleed the defenses on which the American position in the region rests. But the missiles are only the most visible part of the threat. Iraq gives Tehran something no launcher in Iran can: a land border with Jordan. And no interceptor can defend a border.
Jordan will not be the only target. Once Iran is able to launch campaigns from Iraq, it is likely to graduate to sabotage and subversion while continuing its bombardment: cross-border raids, cells inside Kuwait and Jordan, pressure on Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.
The machinery is already running. West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center has identified 36 brigades of Iraq’s paramilitary Popular Mobilization Forces that have participated in or supported Iran’s war effort. Reuters has reported that small Iraqi cells answering directly to the IRGC launched drones from southern Iraq against Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The Kataib Hezbollah militia remains entrenched in Basra. In April, Kuwait’s consulate in the city was stormed. Drones have been launched from boats near the Iraqi port of al-Faw, and border posts have come under fire. Iraq is not a future launchpad; it is a current one.
Baghdad offers little reassurance. While Iraqi prime minister Ali al-Zaidi announced that he would be requiring non-state militias in the country to disarm, he has already pushed the deadline from September 30 to June 2027. Further, both Kataib Hezbollah and another Iran-linked group in Iraq, Harakat al-Nujaba, have already refused to surrender their weapons, and Esmail Qaani, Soleimani’s successor at the head of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force, reportedly told the factions in August to keep them.
Iraqi leaders pledge that Iraqi territory will not be used against the Gulf States or Jordan. Amman has warned that it will strike factions inside Iraq if attacked. Aren’t these pledges and warnings portents of the chapter to come?
The Kurdistan Region also faces immediate danger. Kurdish officials say they have absorbed more than a thousand drone and missile attacks since the war began on February 28. With the Americans gone, and their Patriot and C-RAM (Counter-Rocket, Artillery, Mortar) defenses with them, the region is more exposed than ever to the next barrage—and to the quieter work of intimidation and sabotage.
Tehran’s options are clear. It can expand fire from southern Iraq toward Kuwait, probe Jordan from the western desert, and intensify pressure on the Kurds. It can send raiding parties and operatives across thin borders rather than lofting drones over them. Its militias can use the months before Baghdad’s new disarmament deadline to tighten their grip on ports and border crossings. And because the work will be done from Iraqi soil, by Iraqi hands, Tehran can widen the war while blurring its responsibility for any single attack.
The United States is winning the contest at sea. Iran’s answer will be to fight it on land, from a country where its proxies can strike and Tehran can deny it, against the partners on whom America’s strategy depends. We must all understand that the American departure from Iraq is not an end to anything; it is an opening. Keeping the oil moving will now require defending Kuwait, Jordan, and the Kurdistan Region from the country American forces just left.
Trump says the war will be over very soon. In Tehran, they are preparing for the next round.