President Donald Trump’s shifting timeline for victory in Iran—which has gone from a few weeks, to months, now to after the midterms—has exposed his administration’s various miscalculations as it entered the conflict alongside Israel back in February. The Iranian regime has largely held together. Its ability to disrupt energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz was underappreciated.
The overwhelming might of the American and Israeli militaries was not enough alone to secure a rapid win. But there are several signs that Trump is on the cusp of victory, albeit months delayed. The new open letter to Americans from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), claiming victory over the U.S. while also appealing directly to midterm voters to turn against Trump, was telling on itself.
Here, Newsweek unpacks five signs that Iran’s defeat is finally arriving. Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, its strongest card since the fighting started, is loosening. Gulf crude exports hit a wartime high in September, tanker tracker Kpler says, not far off where non-Iranian volumes were before February 28.
Volumes remain below normal, but Saudi supertankers are again running the strait under U.S. protection. Iran still fires on tankers, though less so in recent days according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), but they keep coming.
Even hard-line Iranian state TV conceded that at least 7 million barrels of crude a day are getting through. That may be why Tehran sounds more pliable, whatever its foreign minister insists. Its latest offer would reopen Hormuz within seven days in exchange for an end to the U.S. blockade, sanctions relief, and access to frozen funds, among other terms.
Trump has publicly rejected it, and said he is considering a return to strikes, cranking up the pressure on Tehran to compromise further. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian talked up diplomacy at the U.N. and then, in a Fox News interview, offered to dilute Iran’s enriched uranium: "It’s not a big deal." A country confident in its leverage doesn’t rush to trade it. The rial sank to a fresh record low this week, with a dollar fetching around 2.5 million rials, up from 2.2 million at the start of September.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
