🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran's foreign ministry just laid out its case, and every line of it points at Washington.
Spokesman Baqeri says Tehran has never been the first to walk away from a deal. The U.S. broke the JCPOA, then broke the recent memorandum, and Iran is done pretending that a one-sided agreement is still an agreement.
On the nuclear file: Iran's commitments were always conditional on the other side keeping its own. Washington stopped, so Iran stops.
On Hormuz: Article five of the memorandum says the strait gets managed jointly, with Oman and regional states at the table. Baqeri says the U.S. is ignoring that and going for outright control of the waterway.
On Iran's own actions in the strait: He calls them limited and defensive, a response to attackers using that same water to strike Iran.
On who's destabilising the region: The U.S. and Israel, working together, keeping the war going.
The audience for this is Oman, the Gulf, and everyone watching the strait.
🇺🇸 🇮🇷 With the Islamabad MoU seemingly dead or dying, the possibility of a U.S. ground invasion of Iran may no longer be as far-fetched as it once seemed.
Airstrikes can damage Iran's military, but they may never be enough to permanently reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
As long as Iran can keep deploying drones, missiles, and naval mines from its coastline, commercial shipping can remain under constant threat.
That's why pressure for a ground operation could begin to grow.
One that would aim to seize and secure key coastal areas, eliminate launch sites, and deny Iran the ability to repeatedly shut down one of the world's most important shipping routes.
But that's where the real nightmare begins.
Even a limited operation could require tens of thousands of troops, cost hundreds of billions of dollars over time, and expose American forces to the kind of prolonged asymmetric warfare the U.S. has spent years trying to avoid.
The White House would be forced onto an almost impossible tightrope.
Push too little, and Iran keeps disrupting the Strait of Hormuz, making the entire operation look ineffective.
Push too hard, and every casualty, every billion dollars spent, and every month the war drags on becomes ammunition for Trump's political opponents.
Iran would have every incentive to make that balancing act even harder.
It would prolong the conflict using information campaigns, cyber operations, and influence networks abroad to amplify anti-war sentiment, deepen political divisions, and increase pressure on Washington to pull back before its objectives are achieved.
That is what makes this scenario so dangerous.
The greatest challenge is winning a political war at home long enough to achieve the military objective without the strategy collapsing under its own domestic pressure.
🇺🇸🇮🇷 The U.S. has struck HUNDREDS of targets in Iran over the past 5 nights, reimposed its naval blockade, and the MOU is either dead or dying fast...
Pre-war Hormuz saw over 100 ship transits per day, and the only way to truly secure the strait, if that's what the U.S. demands, may be with ground forces.
Tens of thousands of troops, an open-ended fleet commitment, and Iran only has to get lucky once while the U.S. has to stop every single drone every single time.
The deeper problem is what bombing has actually produced inside Iran:
A wave of nationalism that is turning former regime critics into military volunteers, with crowds at Khamenei's funeral chanting "death to traitors" at the officials who were willing to negotiate.
The premise of the entire campaign was that economic pain and bombing would force Tehran to make concessions.
🇾🇪🇮🇷🇺🇸 Iran has reportedly urged Yemen’s Houthi movement to shut down the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key gateway to the Red Sea, if the U.S. targets Iran’s power infrastructure.