SHORTLY after meeting China’s ambassador, Iran’s new security chief left no room for doubt about Tehran’s position after nearly six months of war with the United States.
“Iran’s message is clear: The Strait of Hormuz will not reopen until the US ends the war and blockade, releases Iran’s frozen assets, and agrees to a region-wide ceasefire, including in Lebanon and Gaza,” Mohsen Rezaei said in a social media post late on Tuesday.
“Until all conditions are met, the Strait will remain closed,” added the former wartime commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
His defiant message was in line with conditions emphasised by his predecessor, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, and by newly appointed commanders as Iranian authorities maintain that they are willing and capable of continuing to stand up to their opponents in the US-Israel war on Iran.
In his first meeting as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Rezaei sat down with a delegation led by China’s envoy to Tehran, Cong Peiwu, on Tuesday. State media said he pushed for closer ties with China, praised its unwillingness to go along with US-backed resolutions targeting Iran at the United Nations, and said any potential deal with Oman over the Strait of Hormuz is separate from Washington.
But an arrangement with Oman, which Tehran said last week had been finalised and was awaiting confirmation at the top, still does not appear imminent, with military action continuing in the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
A merchant ship appeared to have been hit by a projectile off the coast of Oman on Sunday night, when Rezaei’s appointment was announced. The Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen launched their deadliest recent maritime attack on Tuesday, hitting an Egyptian-owned ship in the Red Sea in an attack that killed six people, according to the Houthis’ rival, Yemen’s internationally recognised government.
The US military reported an overnight attack on Tuesday, saying a US Navy helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles at a Panama-flagged vessel in order to enforce its naval blockade of Iran’s southern ports. This marked the 12th vessel attacked by US forces since April, and the third since the blockade resumed almost a month ago after the collapse of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that was signed by Iran and the US in June.
With the 60-day period of the repeatedly violated MoU approaching next week, mediators such as Pakistan and Qatar have said they are continuing efforts to bring the two sides closer to a diplomatic solution.
Yet the rhetoric from Tehran has only hardened over the past week, with the IRGC indicating that it aims to take threats from the administration of US President Donald Trump, including to further strike Iran’s power plants and civilian infrastructure, more seriously.
“If Iran is threatened again, hundreds of thousands of miles of energy lines, thousands of power plants, all the American and non-American systems, and even global infrastructure connected to the internet will be exposed to threat,” IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said on Wednesday.
“The US had about 30 to 40 war vessels in the region before the war, but today not even a single US warship is present in the Persian Gulf,” he said, adding that the declining level of key air defence missiles and precision munitions in the Pentagon’s arsenal was a “big threat” facing US decision-makers.
Mohammad Reza Naqdi, an adviser to the IRGC’s chief commander, claimed on state television on Tuesday night that the force has continued to produce more ballistic missiles and drones during the war than it has been firing across the region, relying predominantly on native know-how and capabilities.
“Even if the war takes several years, our ballistic missiles would still descend on our enemies,” he said.
In appointing six new figures to leading military posts this week, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei consolidated a small circle of trusted officials, including longtime ally Hossein Taeb as the new head of the paramilitary Basij force of the IRGC.
Khamenei also selected Ali Abdollahi, head of the Khatam al-Anbiya joint wartime command, to lead the General Staff of Armed Forces.
Abdollahi is tasked with integrating the Khatam headquarters, which was formed during the eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s to coordinate operations between the then-nascent IRGC and Iran’s regular army, with the general staff overseeing all armed personnel.
In his post-appointment message, Abdollahi emphasised upgrading capabilities across missiles, drones, naval, ground, cyber and asymmetric warfare, in addition to closer inter-service coordination and naval readiness to take action around the Strait of Hormuz.
IRGC commander-in-chief Ahmad Vahidi said he would cooperate with the other military leaders in order to resist the “Zionist-American arrogance”.
Battling an exacerbating economic crunch, President Masoud Pezeshkian suggested on Wednesday that the opponents of the Islamic Republic may be looking to defeat it by banking on another round of nationwide protests on the back of public discontent.
“The current war is more complex than before, and the enemy is pursuing collapse from inside the country,” he said during a speech.