A U.S. Sailor signals an MH-60R Sea Hawk, attached to Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 77, on the flight deck aboard Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73), Sept. 18, 2026. George Washington is deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations to support maritime security and stability in the Middle East. (U.S. Navy photo)
The war with Iran is expanding in ways that seem alarming but not necessarily detrimental to the U.S. position, as Donald Trump threatens to unleash further devastating bombing campaigns on the IRGC regime following America’s midterm elections.
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The surprise Houthi offensive in Yemen, where the IRGC-backed group has captured ports and islands along the Bab al-Mandab Strait, controlling access to the Red Sea and launching missile strikes on key Saudi Arabian pipelines, opens a new front. But it’s forcing the Europeans to get involved in protecting vital oil chokepoints that are of most concern to their own economies. France has sent troops with air defense systems to guard Saudi oil installations while the U.K. has flown in mid-air refueling tankers to assist intensified Saudi Air strikes on the Houthis. EU foreign secretary Kaja Kallas has called on member states to increase their naval presence around the Red Sea. (RELATED: The Iran War, the Houthis, and America’s Problem With Winning Wars)
Ongoing Iranian drone strikes on shipping in the Hormuz Strait grab headlines. But their scale is diminishing, often timed with fake diplomatic initiatives to embarrass Trump and affect jittery oil markets. It’s a terrorist strategy rather than a strategic plan.
If Republicans win the midterms, Trump will have the congressional backing for a renewed air offensive that may be less severe than if he loses.
The U.S. Navy has managed to escort over one billion barrels of oil out of the Persian Gulf since renewing its blockade of Iranian ports and air strikes against key IRGC installations last July. Cruise missile emplacements on Qeshm Island and the port of Bandar Abbas have been systematically taken out, and communications lines into the Hormuz area have been sufficiently degraded to reduce IRGC capabilities in the area. (RELATED: Trump Faces a Choice on Iran: Make a Deal or Escalate the War)
In Lebanon, Israel is gaining the cooperation of the Lebanese government, under U.S. mediation, to substantially weaken Iran’s main proxy force, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, pushing it back from Israeli borders and dismantling much of the group’s infrastructure. Last week, Israel wound down its military presence in south Lebanon, withdrawing several brigades deployed for its months-long offensive. Ongoing cooperation from Syria and Iraq in closing Hezbollah’s vital overland supply routes from Iran is diminishing IRGC leverage.
Virtually all of Iran’s neighbors, with the possible exception of Afghanistan, have closed their borders to Iranian traffic and even shut their airports to Iranian commercial flights, largely complying with Trump’s “D-Day” sanctions.
A new regional security architecture could be emerging in which NATO member Turkey and nuclear-armed Pakistan have joined Saudi Arabia in a mutual defense pact. If it fails to deliver on Yemen, the Saudis may turn increasingly to Israel, which is deepening defense arrangements with the United Arab Emirates. CIA director John Ratcliffe has been in Egypt to try to enlist the support of president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who commands the region’s largest military, to secure the Red Sea, which is the southern entry point to Egypt’s Suez Canal.
The Houthis already show signs of backing off, saying that they will not attack European shipping. IRGC’s frontman and “president of Iran,” Masoud Pezeshkian, was going around the U.N. last week trying to disown the Houthis. Iran armed, if not created, the Houthi insurgency against a Saudi-backed government in Yemen. The U.S. Navy and other NATO allies have in the past intercepted major Iranian arms shipments to Yemen, where the IRGC maintains an army of advisors and bases one of its most secretive units. Burkan medium-range missiles, which the Houthis have been firing on Saudi Arabia, are Iranian-designed. (RELATED: Shipping Law at Hormuz: the US–Iran War and Rights of Passage)
By activating the Houthis, the IRGC has pulled what may be a last card in its bid to “control” oil shipping lanes from the Middle East. Western intelligence analysts, who appear to have been caught somewhat off guard by the renewed Houthi offensive, seem to offer little explanation on how the ragtag group managed to renew its arsenal despite intensified air and naval blockades supposedly impeding IRGC supply routes. (RELATED: Will Saudi Arabia Fight the Houthis and Join the Abraham Accords?)
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Retired U.S. Special Forces colonel Ron MacCammon has told The American Spectator that covert arms channels could be operating through Africa where terrorist groups and pirates aligned with the Houthis are highly active in Somalia just across the Bab al-Mandab Strait from Yemen. It’s also possible that Russia could be facilitating the movement of arms through African countries. Putin has plans to build a Red Sea naval base in Sudan. In a recent article for the Washington Examiner, MacCammon criticizes “slow” responses by the U.S. in countering Iranian covert operations, which are working around “physical” blockades and official sanctions, using third countries and front companies.
A terrorist siege, which is what the “war” on Iran virtually is, can take a long time. In previous columns, I have drawn the parallel with hostage standoffs involving just handfuls of gunmen which have taken months to resolve. Magnify the situation by a scale of several thousand and you have the war with Iran. The IRGC may be far from defeated. It’s still aided by Russia and China, which have sent over 1,000 shipments of drone and missile components this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The supplies may include guidance systems contributing to the growing accuracy noted in recent IRGC strikes on U.S. bases. Trump brought up the matter with Chinese Premier Xi during their talks last week in Washington, U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue told Fox News on Monday.
Major obstacles undoubtedly remain. But “the pieces continue falling into place for Trump” in the complex regional chessboard, as I wrote in my May 18 column, which mentioned how opening arms channels for Iranian opposition groups to stage revolts inside Iran was a piece that yet needed to “fall into place.” There are signs that this is now happening. An insurgency is developing in Iran’s southeast region of Baluchistan, tying down a growing number of IRGC forces. Senior IRGC commanders have been killed in assassinations and ambushes carried out by insurgents in and around the region’s main cities where IRGC units are occupying hospitals and schools in efforts to control the civilian population.
There are phone videos and audio recordings showing serious fighting inside towns, with the distinctive clap-clap sound of AK-47s heard endlessly in the background. Baluchistan’s population is mainly composed of Sunni Arabs long opposed to the Shia rule of IRGC mullahs. Neighboring Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE could be secretly backing them. Urban guerrilla attacks against IRGC and Basij units are being reported in other locations throughout Iran, particularly in the Kurdish regions along the west.
Iran’s regime remains in a state of paranoid inertia. Its front men continue their Kabuki dance of offering “peace deals” to Trump that amount to nothing more than recycled offers with the same conditions that Trump rejected months ago. IRGC chief Ahmad Vahidi just threatened to launch a “pre-emptive” attack on Israel and may also be activating covert international terrorist networks, which are believed to be behind an attempted bombing of a U.S. Air Force base in the UK last weekend.
Trump told the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York last week that Iran was counting on his losing the midterms. But it could backfire. Trump’s renewed bombing campaign can go ahead with unprecedented ferocity whether he wins the vote or not. It would target Iran’s infrastructure — electrical grid, bridges, oil facilities — leaving the country entirely fractured, with the IRGC losing control to anti-regime insurgents in key regions.
New B-21 bombers will debut with “double taps” on uranium enrichment underground complexes. The tactic now being studied would consist of dropping 30,000-pound GBU-57 deep penetrator bunker busters one after the other, in which the second bomb goes through the hole punctured by the first to detonate on target hundreds of feet below ground.
If Republicans win the midterms, Trump will have the congressional backing for a renewed air offensive that may be less severe than if he loses. Because if he is going to face a hostile Congress trying to restrain his war powers and impeach him when it convenes in January, he may reserve the two-month window after the November elections for the devastating blitz to “erase Iran” that he has long threatened, making sure there is nothing left of the regime that helped the Democrats defeat him.
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