How Tehran made the most of Trump's Hormuz proposal

As the US-Iran memorandum of understanding unravels and the confrontation shifts toward the Strait of Hormuz, renewed fighting in Yemen is raising a broader question: is Tehran preparing another source of maritime pressure at Bab al-Mandab?

Hezbollah and Hamas have been severely weakened by Israeli military operations. The Houthis, by contrast, remain armed, entrenched and positioned astride one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

Even a credible threat to Bab al-Mandab could unsettle shipping, energy markets and global supply chains. For Iran, that threat alone may be valuable.

The fight over one airplane

The latest escalation followed Yemen's decision to block an Iranian aircraft carrying a Houthi delegation returning from the funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran. Yemen's internationally recognized government accused Iran of attempting to enter its airspace without authorization.

The dispute quickly escalated. An attack damaged Sanaa International Airport's runway. The Houthis blamed Riyadh before targeting Saudi Arabia's Abha International Airport with missiles and drones.

Senior Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti later warned of what he described as a "siege" of the Kingdom and openly identified Bab al-Mandab as a strategic pressure point.

"The key thing here was the precedent," Chatham House fellow Thomas Juneau told Iran International. "Iran and the Houthis are trying to force open the air bridge between Tehran and Sanaa."

Iran has long supplied the Houthis through maritime smuggling routes stretching around Oman and the Horn of Africa. Those routes are slow, costly and vulnerable to interdiction.

A direct air bridge would dramatically improve Tehran's ability to move sensitive military components into Houthi-controlled territory. That is why one apparently ordinary passenger flight mattered.

Rebuilding the Houthis

Farzin Nadimi, a defense and security analyst at the Washington Institute, believes Iran's urgency reflects another problem: after years of Red Sea operations and repeated US and Israeli strikes, the Houthis are running low on some of their more advanced military capabilities.

"They are very much eager to help the Houthis rebuild their strategic inventory in order to be a viable player again," he said.

Nadimi suspects the aircraft may have been carrying critical weapons components, although there is no independent confirmation of its cargo.

Modern missile and drone forces depend less on complete weapons than on a steady flow of electronics, guidance systems, engines and other specialized components.

If the Houthis are running low, a direct air link would offer Tehran a faster and more reliable route to replenish those capabilities.

A second chokepoint

The strategic importance extends well beyond Yemen.

The dispute between Tehran and Washington is already centered on the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has demonstrated the leverage that can be created by threatening one of the world's most important energy corridors.

A revitalized Houthi force capable of disrupting Bab al-Mandab would force Washington, Saudi Arabia and their regional partners to consider the security of two strategic waterways simultaneously.

"Iran, having demonstrated the extraordinary value for itself of closing the Strait of Hormuz, absolutely understands that if it closes both Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab at the same time, the effect would be magnified," Juneau said.

"The effect on the global economy, the ability to pressure the US, to pressure Saudi Arabia and to pressure all of their allies."

Juneau cautioned that neither Tehran nor the Houthis appear poised to close Bab al-Mandab in the near term. But the ability to credibly threaten it would give Iran another source of strategic leverage.

Yemeni-American researcher and author Fatima Abo Alasrar believes the latest confrontation was deliberately engineered by Tehran.

"I think, honestly, Iran has engineered this escalation," she said.

In her view, widening the potential cost of confrontation creates another avenue through which Tehran can shape future negotiations with Washington.

Saudi Arabia's red line

The confrontation also threatens to upset the fragile balance that has prevailed in Yemen since the 2022 truce.

Saudi Arabia has spent years trying to extricate itself from a costly war that increasingly looked unwinnable.

"It's really Saudi Arabia that's been absorbing a lot of the pain here," Juneau said.

The Houthis understood Riyadh's reluctance to return to full-scale conflict and repeatedly tested how far they could push.

The attempt to establish a direct air bridge between Tehran and Sanaa appears to have crossed a different threshold.

Saudi Arabia may still prefer de-escalation. But allowing Iran an easier route to replenish Houthi military capabilities would strengthen an armed group positioned directly on its southern border and potentially restore its ability to threaten Saudi cities, airports and energy infrastructure.

Alasrar described Saudi Arabia and the Houthis as pieces on a much larger geopolitical chessboard.

"Houthis and Saudis are almost like pieces on a chessboard that are fighting with each other right now," she said. "But it's Iran and the US that get to impose everything."

Whether the Houthis intend to launch a renewed campaign around Bab al-Mandab remains uncertain. Juneau cautions they are not simply Iranian proxies waiting for orders, while Nadimi expects de-escalation unless the wider US-Iran confrontation expands significantly.

Hormuz has already demonstrated the leverage created by maritime chokepoints. Iran may not even need the Houthis to close Bab al-Mandab. If it succeeds in rebuilding their capabilities, simply making the threat credible could become a source of strategic pressure in its own right.

Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Riyadh and Doha have spent years trying to build globally competitive technology sectors through sovereign wealth, tax incentives, accelerator programs and direct investment.

Despite attacks in the region and renewed fighting between the United States and Iran, founders have largely remained in the region and government-backed programs continue to attract applicants.

None of the 27 companies selected for the February intake of Hub71, Abu Dhabi’s startup program, withdrew after the conflict began, according to Bloomberg. The program’s latest cohort also received a similar number of applications and was the first made up entirely of companies from outside the United Arab Emirates.

The financial effects, however, may not yet be fully visible. Middle East and North African startups raised $1.35 billion in the first half of 2026, down more than 20% from a year earlier, according to data platform Magnitt. The number of deals fell even more sharply to 214, while second-quarter activity dropped to its lowest level in at least two years.

“I don’t believe that the impact of the war has come into the numbers yet, that will come in Q3 and Q4,” Magnitt chief executive Philip Bahoshy told Bloomberg TV, adding that investors were already shifting their attention from early-stage companies toward more established businesses.

Some startups are also facing higher fuel, shipping and insurance costs, worsening cash flow and longer delays in receiving payments. Bloomberg cited one investor as saying that a sovereign investor withdrew a $1 million commitment from a funding round when the war began.

Regional governments are continuing to spend heavily. Hub71 offers successful applicants $140,000 in investment and incentives, while Qatar expanded its Fund of Funds program from $1 billion to $3 billion before the conflict. Startup Qatar has awarded more than $51 million to 45 companies, including 11 since the fighting began.

The Persian Gulf’s startup markets remain smaller than established centers in the United States, Europe and Asia, with limited late-stage financing, technology listings and specialist talent. But founders and investors told Bloomberg that access to capital, lower costs and government support continued to outweigh the risks for many companies.

The revenge-laden rhetoric that dominated the week-long mourning ceremonies for former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is rapidly evolving into something broader.

State media have published images depicting not only US officials but also European leaders, including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, as targets.

On Monday, July 13, Ali Mahdian, a hardline seminarian and academic associated with the late Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, the ideological father of the ultraconservative Paydari Front, went further still, seeking to provide a religious justification for political assassination.

Writing in the Tehran municipality’s daily Hamshahri, Mahdian presented the killing of Western leaders and those he held responsible for the deaths of senior Iranian figures not as terrorism but as a “divine mission.”

Citing Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, he rejected the argument that a sovereign state should not engage in targeted killings. Referring to remarks by Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani, Mahdian even suggested that an actor inside the United States might carry out such an attack.

“This is a global wrath… an era in which the head of Satan must be cut off,” he concluded with an apocalyptic call to action. “Everyone must help: scholars, clerics, preachers, speakers, broadcasters, channel writers, officials, Iranians, Iraqis, everyone.”

The significance lies less in the practicality of his appeal than in how openly such arguments are now being advanced in an established state newspaper.

Late last week, US forces resumed strikes on Iranian military infrastructure, while Iran retaliated against American bases across the Persian Gulf. President Donald Trump announced a renewed blockade of Iranian shipping, saying the United States would keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

Tehran, meanwhile, says transit through the strait is no longer possible because of US military action and insists it retains control over the strategic waterway, while threatening further retaliation.

The same day, Kayhan offered a strategic counterpart to Mahdian’s theological argument.

In a commentary by Alireza Mashouri, introduced as a scholar of international relations, the newspaper called for Iran to abandon its longstanding policy of “strategic patience” in favour of what he termed “offensive diplomacy.”

“When a state exercises restraint, enemies do not see it as moral high ground or peace-loving nature; they calculate it as a lack of capability or will to respond,” he wrote.

Mashouri argued that Iran’s year of compliance after the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal convinced its adversaries that Tehran lacked the will to respond, paving the way for “maximum pressure,” targeted assassinations and progressively bolder military attacks.

“In global politics, there is no such thing as a moral ledger where a state is rewarded later for its past good behavior,” Mashouri wrote. “This does not mean starting a war; it means making the cost of aggression real for the enemy.”

None of this necessarily means that Tehran has adopted political assassination or uncontrolled escalation as formal policy.

Iran has a long history of violence against opposition figures and regional adversaries, but public appeals for the killing of sitting Western leaders represent a notable escalation in the language emerging from influential hardline circles.

More significant than the rhetoric itself may be the erosion of the political and ideological case for restraint. As US and Iranian forces exchange attacks and the dispute over Hormuz becomes another front in the war, hardline voices increasingly portray negotiation not as a means of protecting Iran but as proof of weakness.

What began as funeral rhetoric is becoming something more consequential: an argument that the era of strategic patience is over, and that peace now demands a justification war no longer does.

Iran's attack on facilities supporting US naval operations in Oman has plunged relations with one of Tehran's closest regional partners into their deepest crisis in decades, turning a dispute over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz into a direct military confrontation.

Relations deteriorated sharply after Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said they had launched a "heavy and surprise attack" on logistical support facilities and aircraft carrier refueling infrastructure at the Omani port of Duqm on Sunday.

Oman condemned what it described as "irresponsible acts" and summoned Iran's ambassador in protest, marking a dramatic deterioration in relations between the two countries.

The military escalation appears to have followed the collapse of negotiations over a proposed framework for managing maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

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Relations deteriorated sharply after Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said they had launched a "heavy and surprise attack" on logistical support facilities and aircraft carrier refueling infrastructure at the Omani port of Duqm on Sunday.

Oman condemned what it described as "irresponsible acts" and summoned Iran's ambassador in protest, marking a dramatic deterioration in relations between the two countries.

The military escalation appears to have followed the collapse of negotiations over a proposed framework for managing maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

According to a CNN report, Oman proposed maintaining the existing system for vessels using the southern shipping lane through Omani territorial waters. Ships entering Iranian territorial waters, however, would require Tehran's approval, though they would not pay transit fees.

The proposal appears to have fallen short of Tehran's broader ambition to assert greater authority over traffic through the strategic waterway, including a reported plan to charge ships for "management services."

Iranian officials confirmed that such discussions had taken place.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he had discussed “management of the Strait of Hormuz and maritime traffic" with Omani counterpart Badr Albusaidi. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei later confirmed the talks had failed, blaming US pressure on Oman.

"Our effort was to reach, through consultations with Oman, a mechanism that would ensure the safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Unfortunately, because of overt and covert US pressure on Oman, this was not achieved," he said.

Tehran hardens its position

The collapse of negotiations was followed by increasingly confrontational rhetoric from Iranian military officials and hardline politicians.

On Tuesday, the spokesman for Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters warned that Iran's armed forces would respond forcefully to "any disruption or insecurity affecting commercial vessels and oil tankers by the US military outside the routes designated by Iran and without authorization from the armed forces."

He also warned regional states that "any cooperation with the United States and logistical support for its military will be regarded as a war against Iran's sovereignty and national security," adding that any wider conflict would engulf the region.

Ali Khezriyan, a member of parliament's National Security Committee, declared that Iran would pursue control of the Strait of Hormuz "with or without Oman." He warned that if Muscat failed to cooperate or secretly assisted Iran's adversaries, "its territory will not be safe from Iranian missiles."

Other lawmakers echoed the message. Ebrahim Rezaei said Oman should recognize Iran as the region's dominant power, while Mahmoud Nabavian argued that the IRGC should impose "exclusive management" of the strait, rejecting any arrangement requiring Iran to share authority with Oman.

Beyond Hormuz

Analysts suggested the confrontation extends well beyond the immediate military exchange.

Middle East analyst Ahmad Taqaddosi noted that Duqm sits on the Arabian Sea, outside the Strait of Hormuz, allowing US naval vessels to dock, refuel and undergo maintenance without entering the Gulf. Under a 2019 agreement, the United States has access to both Duqm and Salalah.

"From this perspective, Iran's claimed attack targeted not merely a port but part of the US Navy's operational rear base in the northern Indian Ocean," he wrote.

Energy analyst Abdollah Babakhani argued that the dispute ultimately reflects Tehran's fear of losing strategic leverage.

"Any mechanism that creates a permanent and independent route through Omani waters for the bulk of global energy trade could, over the long term, reduce Iran's geopolitical weight in Hormuz," he wrote, arguing that restoring the traditional shared shipping corridor would better preserve Iran's strategic position.

Debate inside Iran

Hardliners argued that allowing unrestricted passage through Omani waters while requiring authorization only for ships entering Iranian waters would surrender Tehran's leverage, insisting that management of the Strait of Hormuz must remain exclusively in Iranian hands.

Critics countered that Oman has long served as one of Tehran's most important diplomatic intermediaries.

One moderate commentator wrote: "The Strait of Hormuz is not our exclusive property. Oman's territorial waters are part of it, and Oman's wishes must also be respected. Claiming absolute control is adventurism and folly."

Others warned that another regional war could leave Tehran simultaneously alienating its own population, undermining relations with mediators such as Oman and Pakistan, and weakening its strategic position in the strait.

The confrontation leaves Tehran facing a strategic paradox. Its effort to convert military leverage in Hormuz into political control over regional shipping has pushed it into conflict with one of its closest Gulf partners while encouraging alternatives to the very influence it is trying to preserve.