Iran threatens to expand the war across the entire Middle East if American bombs start falling again. Army spokesperson Mohammad Akraminia told Iranian state television Sunday that renewed US airstrikes would push the conflict wider. The warning landed two days after the United States paused its air campaign for the first time following 13 consecutive nights of strikes, and two days before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sits down with President Donald Trump at the White House.
“I believe that if the Americans once again fall for the Zionists’ deception, or move in line with them and insist on continuing the war, particularly through airstrikes, geographically this will expand further,” Akraminia said, according to AFP. The timing was no accident. The Associated Press reports the conflict reaches its five-month mark Tuesday, the same day Netanyahu walks into the Oval Office. Tehran wants its threats on the table before that meeting begins.
Notice the phrasing. Blaming “Zionists’ deception” for American strikes is a tell. Tehran would rather frame the world’s most powerful military as a puppet than admit its own attacks on unarmed merchant sailors brought two air forces to its doorstep.
Iran Threatens to Expand the War: What Did Tehran Say?
Akraminia claimed Iranian operations already reach across the region. “The scope of our operations now encompasses the entire region, from U.S. bases in Jordan to the countries along the Persian Gulf,” he said. He pointed to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea as proof the war has already spread beyond Iranian soil. Iran-backed Houthi rebels traded fire with Saudi Arabia there this weekend.
He also offered an unusual admission about the state of the fight. The situation in the Middle East for the United States is “difficult and unsettled,” he said, predicting Washington is searching “for a new strategy.” Then came the standard bravado: “We are prepared for each of the options and scenarios that appear likely.”
Strip away the rhetoric and the message reduces to this: please do not resume the strikes. A military confident in its deterrent does not spend a Sunday broadcast begging its adversary not to team up with Israel.
Thirteen Nights of Strikes, Then Silence
Washington’s pause followed the most intense stretch of a war running since February. Over 13 consecutive nights, US aircraft worked through a target list that reached deeper into central Iran as the campaign progressed:
- Coastal defense batteries and missile sites along the Persian Gulf
- Bridges and infrastructure feeding Iran’s southern coast
- Naval assets and command infrastructure
Then, nothing. No US strikes occurred overnight Friday or Saturday, the first quiet nights in two weeks.
President Trump met his top national security aides Friday to decide whether to hold course or escalate, according to a US official who spoke to the AP. The president described his options in blunt terms from the Oval Office. “You can just keep doing exactly what we’re doing and take them apart piece by piece. We could do it in a more rapid fashion, which we might do,” Trump said. “Or we can negotiate with them, which we’re also doing right now.”
Trump said Iran is not “ready yet” to make a deal, though he added that Tehran is “getting more and more serious as the days go by, for maybe the obvious reason.” The obvious reason is arithmetic. Iran has lost coastal defense batteries, naval assets and command infrastructure every night for two weeks. Its economy strangles on a blockade of its own ports. On Friday, the US Navy disabled a Mozambique-flagged ship in the Gulf of Oman after the vessel tried to run that blockade and ignored warnings.
Why Is Netanyahu’s White House Visit Rattling Tehran?
Israel launched the war alongside the United States on February 28, then stepped back from the renewed American strikes over Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. That restraint has become one of Washington’s strongest cards, and Tehran knows it.
“The Iranians understand that perhaps it could get worse because Israel could come into the conflict,” said Michael Singh, managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who served as senior Middle East director on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. Israel’s absence from recent operations, he added, “may signal to the Iranians that we’re looking to limit the conflict.”
That calculus explains why an Iranian army spokesperson devoted Sunday’s broadcast to the Netanyahu visit. The Israeli Air Force spent the spring demonstrating what it can do inside Iranian airspace. Israeli intelligence mapped the very networks CENTCOM has been dismantling since the strikes resumed in July. An Israel that re-enters the fight would not be starting from scratch. It would be picking up where it left off, against an Iran with five months of accumulated losses and air defenses in ruins.
Netanyahu arrives in Washington holding leverage that most wartime leaders would envy. His military has already absorbed Iran’s worst barrages without breaking. His ally’s bombers have done the recent work. Whatever emerges from Tuesday’s meeting, Tehran pre-emptively threatened the world about it, and that tells you who is negotiating from weakness.
The Strait of Hormuz Chokehold and a 20 Percent Problem
Every phase of this war has run through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow Persian Gulf waterway that normally carries 20% of the world’s oil. Iran put a chokehold on the strait when the war began by firing on tankers and freighters. Who controls transit has defined the fight ever since.
An interim ceasefire reached in June collapsed into a battle over shipping rules. Iran demanded vessels hug its coastline and floated charging fees for passage. Shippers instead ran a southern route along Oman under American overwatch, until Iran attacked vessels there too, triggering the 13-night campaign. Oil prices have climbed throughout the conflict, with Brent crude at one point jumping more than 4% to a six-week high of $95 a barrel, feeding inflation that has made the war unpopular with many American voters ahead of midterm elections in November.
A regional official involved in mediation told the AP that concerted diplomacy is underway, calling the pause in strikes a “positive signal that helps their efforts to de-escalate.” The compromise being negotiated centers on Iran running vessel transit through the strait with fewer restrictions on ships. Both sides, the official said, want to return to the interim ceasefire framework.
A Second Front at Bab el-Mandeb
While diplomats talk, Iran’s proxies keep shooting. Yemen’s Houthi rebels said Saturday they fired missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia in response to Saudi airstrikes on the Red Sea city of Hodeida. The Houthis claim they have closed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. That southern gateway to the Red Sea became even more vital for Saudi oil exports once Hormuz traffic collapsed.
Akraminia cited that flare-up as evidence of Iranian reach. He is not wrong that the war has spread. He is wrong about what the spread demonstrates. Iran’s own coastline is under blockade, its ports are sealed, and its retaliatory options have devolved to arming militias in Yemen to shoot at Saudi infrastructure. The USS Gerald R. Ford strike group has kept carrier aircraft over the Gulf for a record-setting deployment. American overwatch has kept commerce moving on routes Iran swore to close.
Trump’s Two Roads: Piece by Piece or a Deal
Trump has refused to let the November midterms rush his timeline, brushing off concerns that gas prices tied to the fighting could cost Republicans control of Congress. “Despite what everyone says about the election, I’m not in a hurry,” he said Friday. “We have to do it right. Elections take care of themselves.”
Singh cautioned against reading too much into the quiet. “If it turns into a multiday pause, that’ll be something significant,” he said. “But it’s hard to know. Is it an operational pause? Is it a pause to allow for some kind of behind-the-scenes diplomacy?”
A harder problem may sit in Tehran, not Washington. Singh pointed to fractured leadership inside Iran, where factions vying for control worry that compromising with the United States will be read as weakness and loosen their grip on power. Both countries need the strait open for economic reasons, he said, “but they have very different conceptions of under what conditions, under whose control.” Until that question is settled, he expects Washington to keep negotiating “with words and also to negotiate with force.”
The Case for Skepticism, and Its Limits
Not every reading of the moment favors Washington. The war has dragged five months against early predictions of a short campaign, and its Pentagon price tag has reached $37.5 billion. Gas prices have punished US consumers, and the fighting is unpopular with many Americans. Iran, for all its losses, has kept firing at shipping and kept its proxies in the fight from Yemen to Jordan. On this reading, 13 nights of strikes have not forced Tehran back to the interim deal it abandoned, and each additional week hands Iranian hardliners more evidence that endurance works.
Satellite passes over southern Iran supply the counterargument. Flattened coastal batteries. Cratered infrastructure. A navy that mostly stays in port, and an army spokesperson whose Sunday message amounted to a plea that Washington ignore Israel’s advice. Endurance is not strategy. Tehran is discovering the difference one night at a time.
