Hormuz After the Pause: US–Iran Escalation Returns
Taiyi Sun
July 9, 2026
Image: Funeral ceremonies for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Tehran, Iran, 6 July 2026 (Sobhan Farajvan/Pacific Press/Shutterstock)
The renewed attacks on commercial vessels in or near the Strait of Hormuz, followed almost immediately by new United States strikes on Iranian targets, show that the pause in the US–Iran conflict was not a settlement. It was an interval. What looked like a possible opening for negotiation has quickly become another round of coercion, retaliation, and bargaining through risk.
This is why Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral matters far beyond the symbolism of mourning. The funeral was not only a state ritual. It was a political message. Large crowds in Tehran and Qom, the public presence of senior Iranian officials, and the language of resistance all suggested that the Islamic Republic had not collapsed after the death of its most important leader. Yet the absence of Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader, also revealed the regime’s insecurity. Iran wanted to show continuity, but it remained deeply concerned about assassination, infiltration, and further strikes.
For Washington and Jerusalem, this should force a reassessment. The assumption before the war appears to have been that Iran was brittle: that the killing of Khamenei could combine with earlier domestic protests and economic hardship to trigger regime breakdown. That assumption was always too simple. Iran does have serious domestic problems, and many Iranians are dissatisfied with the political system. But war changes political psychology. External attack, national humiliation, religious symbolism, and fear of foreign domination can also consolidate support around the state, even among people who are otherwise critical of it.
In that sense, Khamenei’s funeral did not prove that Iran is strong. It proved that Iran is not easily collapsible. That distinction matters. Iran may be wounded, penetrated, and internally divided, but it still possesses enough state capacity, social mobilisation, and nationalist legitimacy to survive a decapitation strategy.
The renewed violence in Hormuz reveals the same lesson in military form. Iran cannot match the United States in a conventional war. Its air defences, naval assets, and command structure remain vulnerable. But Iran’s most important deterrent is not military parity. It is the ability to convert limited military action into global economic pressure.
The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow maritime passage through which a significant share of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas has traditionally moved. A single attack on shipping there can raise insurance costs, unsettle energy markets, alarm Gulf states, and force major powers to react. Iran, therefore, does not need to defeat the US Navy to impose costs. It only needs to make the waterway look unsafe enough that the world demands de-escalation.
This is the logic behind the current danger. The United States sees attacks on commercial vessels as a direct challenge to freedom of navigation and to the credibility of its security commitments. It therefore strikes back. Iran then presents those strikes as evidence that Washington is violating the spirit of negotiation and using diplomacy only as cover for pressure. Each side claims to be responding defensively. Each response makes the next one more likely.
President Donald Trump’s approach adds another layer. His foreign policy is highly transactional. Earlier discussions about using unfrozen Iranian funds to purchase American agricultural products should not be dismissed as an eccentric aside. They reflected a broader attempt to turn military pressure into commercial exchange: Iran would receive limited economic relief, American farmers would gain a new market, and Trump could present the outcome as both a security success and a domestic economic win.
For Iran, such an arrangement would also have value. Even limited trade with the United States could create new constituencies against future escalation. It could make American pressure more costly and give Tehran another bargaining chip. But the recent US move to revoke permission for Iranian oil sales shows how fragile this path is. Washington wants to preserve coercive leverage while exploring a deal. Tehran wants economic relief without appearing to surrender. The result is not diplomacy replacing force, but diplomacy and force operating together.
The US–Israel relationship is also more complicated than a simple alliance moving in one direction. Israel wants Iran permanently weakened. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has strong strategic and political reasons to continue pressure: Israel views Iran and its regional partners as existential threats, and continued conflict helps keep Israeli domestic politics focused on security rather than accountability. For Israel, a temporary agreement that leaves Iran with residual power may look like a dangerous pause.
Trump’s objective is different. He wants a victory he can sell before the midterm elections: Iran pressured into talks, Hormuz reopened, US shipping defended, American producers rewarded, and no long ground war. That does not require the destruction of the Iranian state. It requires a deal that looks like strength. This creates a gap between Israeli maximalism and American deal-making.
The region is therefore entering a three-sided contest over the post-Khamenei Middle East. Israel wants to turn military superiority into a new security order. The United States wants to turn coercion into a politically profitable bargain. Iran wants to turn survival, public mobilisation and Hormuz leverage into renewed negotiating power. None of these strategies has yet prevailed.
The policy lesson is clear: the priority should be crisis management, not premature claims of settlement. First, the United States, Iran, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other states most exposed to Hormuz instability should expand direct crisis communication. Second, they should establish a credible international maritime mechanism to map shipping risks and verify facts quickly after attacks. Third, they should commit to a narrow Hormuz safety arrangement, separate from the larger nuclear dispute, so that commercial navigation is not held hostage to every diplomatic setback. Humanitarian and commercial channels should be expanded only when tied to verifiable restraint against attacks on civilian shipping. Energy-importing countries, shipping firms, and insurers should prepare for repeated disruptions rather than treating each incident as an isolated shock. Researchers and civil society groups also need support to track the human and economic costs of escalation, because public debate should not be left only to military planners.
The central point is not that Iran is winning. It is that Iran still has enough leverage to make others lose. As long as Tehran can mobilise society at home and threaten economic stability abroad, it remains a participant in shaping the next Middle Eastern order, not merely an object to be reshaped by American and Israeli power.
Related articles:
Failure of US–Iran Talks Was All Too Predictable — But Turning to Military Strikes Creates Dangerous Unknowns (3-minute read)
A Signature is Not a Settlement: Trump’s Fragile Iran Pause (3-minute read)
Donald Trump: Self-proclaimed Peacemaker Lacking Fortune and Expertise (3-minute read)
