Escalating against neighbors like Saudi Arabia was a mistake.

Escalating against neighbors like Saudi Arabia was a mistake.

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Tehran hoped President Donald Trump’s naval blockade would prove unenforceable. Instead, Iran’s normal oil trade has been largely halted, depriving the regime of hard currency while its rial collapses and food prices soar. 

American forces have kept enough commercial traffic moving to demonstrate that Iran cannot exercise uncontested control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s leaders also hoped help would arrive from abroad no doubt.

China has offered diplomatic sympathy but no rescue. Russia remains preoccupied with Ukraine and its own economic problems. Some Gulf governments may want the war ended, but they have not broken the American blockade on Iran’s behalf.

That left Iran’s hardliners with another option: export Iran’s pain.

According to a detailed New York Times investigation this week, hardline security figures developed a plan to widen the conflict by attacking American vessels, disrupting commercial shipping and encouraging Iranian-aligned groups in Yemen and Iraq to strike regional oil infrastructure. The objective was to drive up energy prices until the economic consequences forced Washington to retreat.

Recent events follow that strategy closely.

Drones launched from Iraq damaged Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, its principal means of moving oil to the Red Sea while avoiding Hormuz. Iran-aligned Houthis have seized strategically important territory along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, including Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. They have also resumed missile and drone attacks on Saudi territory.

Together, these operations threaten both ends of Saudi Arabia’s export system. Iran can disrupt the Persian Gulf, Iraqi militias can attack the pipeline across Saudi territory and the Houthis can menace tankers approaching the Red Sea.

The immediate result has been painful. Oil has climbed above $100 a barrel. Saudi Arabia suspended some loadings at Yanbu, while shipping companies and insurers reassessed the risks surrounding two of the world’s most important waterways.

But Iran’s strategy has not yet produced the extended supply catastrophe its hardliners require.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says Saudi Arabia’s pipeline interruption should be measured in days, not months. Permanent repairs may take longer, of course, but Saudi engineers apparently believe they can bypass damaged equipment and restore at least significant flows relatively quickly. If oil begins moving again within days, the attack will have caused a price shock without removing millions of Saudi barrels from the market for an extended period.

Worse for Tehran, its escalation is pulling regional governments closer together.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi are now jointly demanding freedom of navigation through Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb and the Red Sea. Egypt cannot tolerate indefinite disruption because the Suez Canal provides vital foreign revenue. Saudi Arabia cannot permit an Iranian-aligned movement to dictate which of its ships may use the Red Sea. Qatar has warned that closing Bab al-Mandeb would be catastrophic for the world.

Iran’s hardliners may believe they are increasing their leverage. They may instead be assembling the coalition they most fear: the United States, Israel and major Arab governments cooperating against Iran’s regional network.

The strategy is also exposing a dangerous fracture inside what is left of Iran’s leadership structure.

President Masoud Pezeshkian and parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf have warned that continued escalation could drag the country into an abyss. Pezeshkian has said wars must eventually end. Ghalibaf has acknowledged that military strength cannot sustain a government whose people are hungry and whose economy no longer functions.

Yet these officials may not control Iran’s war.

The Times reports that hardliners sabotaged the June agreement with Washington by attacking commercial vessels without the knowledge of Pezeshkian, the Revolutionary Guard’s commander or the Supreme National Security Council. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, badly wounded in the opening strikes, has not made an authenticated public appearance. Even senior Iranian officials reportedly question whether messages attributed to him are genuine.

This is what makes the moment both promising and dangerous.

Trump’s pressure campaign has not yet produced an enforceable agreement. It has, however, forced Iran’s internal struggle into the open. Pragmatists can see that the blockade is working, the economy is deteriorating and foreign assistance is not coming. Hardliners are gambling that a wider conflict will rescue the regime before those realities become overwhelming.

Unfortunately, fragmented governments are unpredictable governments. A rogue attack could kill Americans, provoke overwhelming retaliation or send oil prices substantially higher. Escalation can develop its own momentum even when neither side initially wants a larger war.

But Iran’s hardliners are not reversing the country’s isolation. They are deepening it. They are turning Saudi Arabia and Egypt against them, giving Trump additional reasons to maintain the blockade and increasing hardship at home.

Iran may still inflict considerable damage. But damage is not victory.

The next phase will reveal whether Iran’s pragmatists can regain control and negotiate — or whether the hardliners will lead their country deeper into the abyss they claim escalation will help it escape.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)