After a three-month lull, Prince of Persia hid a Tornado C&C server on US shared hosting, its first US-based server since 2016.
The post Iran’s Prince of Persia APT Hosts C&C in US for First Time Since 2016 appeared first on SecurityWeek.
Bitcoin Magazine
Bitcoin Slides Towards $81,000 as Oil Above $110 Revives Rate-Hike Bets
Bitcoin’s price on Thursday slid — erasing the gains it made earlier in the week — after oil prices jumped.
The largest cryptocurrency was down by nearly 4% over a 24-hour period on Thursday in New York, trading as low as $81,331 at one point.
On Wednesday, the price of the top cryptocurrency was fast closing in on $85,000 as investors piled back into tech stocks following Elon Musk’s SpaceX earnings.
But conflict in the Middle East pushed the oil price higher, spurring inflation fears with U.S. A surging oil price can — at least in the short-term — hurt the price of bitcoin and other “risk-on” assets because it increases the chances of the U.S. central bank raising interest rates.
Bitcoin has in the past done well with low interest rates because of increased liquidity, moving at times with tech stocks and the Nasdaq.
Stocks on Thursday slid on the news of more attacks from the Yemeni Houthis on Saudi Arabia — stoked fears of oil supply disruptions and a wider Middle East conflict.
Bitcoin has typically faced downward pressure on news of war and rallied in hopes of a ceasefire.
When the U.S. and Israel first attacked Iran in February, the coin nosedived, and had been shaky on news of war in March and April.
Oil rising is stoking what many politicians are calling an affordability crisis in the U.S. Americans will go to the polls on November 3, and surging inflation is one of the hottest topics.
The Federal Reserve has said getting inflation down in the world’s largest economy is its top priority.
Despite the price of bitcoin dipping, the asset just had its best quarter in years, and analysts have said the coin is now in a bull market after rising above its 365-day moving average.
Bitcoin last month shrugged off the Federal Reserve raising interest rates and lawmakers blocking landmark crypto legislation, the Clarity Act.
This post Bitcoin Slides Towards $81,000 as Oil Above $110 Revives Rate-Hike Bets first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
The United States and Israel are moving toward a new war with Iran within days, as President Donald Trump said Washington is no longer negotiating with Tehran and that “something” will happen “fairly soon,” while U.S. troops pull out of exposed bases across the Middle East and Israeli fighter jets rehearse a strike on Iran […]
Despite the expansion of Starlink and other communications satellite services, most of the world’s Internet traffic still travels through subsea cables crisscrossing the ocean floors. Those fiber-optic cables coexist with a network of oil and gas pipelines and submarine power cables—and all these crucial links connecting countries and continents now face growing sabotage risks as gray-zone warfare and open conflicts have become widespread.
The rising risks to the world’s invisible infrastructure beneath the waves are the main subject of a new book by Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who leads the Threats to the Global Maritime Order Initiative. Her book, titled Undersea War, explores the modern rise in suspicious incidents in which ships dragging their anchors for unusually long periods have cut or damaged undersea cables and pipelines, from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean.
Braw acknowledges that about 60 percent of undersea cable damage is primarily due to human error during fishing and shipping activities, when weighted nets or anchors drag across the seabed. Natural hazards like storms and undersea landslides also account for a smaller proportion of such incidents. In total, between 150 and 200 cables are damaged each year and usually repaired quickly.
© Stefan Sauer/picture alliance via Getty Images
The DoW urgently needs to organize its scattered subterranean warfare assets into a single unified organization. Ideally, a Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager (DRPM) for Subterranean Warfare, reporting to the Deputy Secretary of War. (The Department already uses this model for unmanned systems, critical weapons and Golden Dome.) This group would have three portfolios: Subterranean Resilience, Subterranean Sensing and Subterranean Defeat. The office would integrate validated requirements, experimentation, testing, acquisition, and fielding.
Subterranean Resilience
During the 2026 Iran conflict, Iranian ballistic missiles and low-cost drones hit U.S. installations across eight Middle Eastern countries. Hundreds of buildings and structures were damaged or destroyed. The Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain was among the installations hit hard. Iranian weapons damaged one E-3 airborne early-warning aircraft and five KC-135 tankers on the ground in Saudi Arabia. (The official inspector-general report documents the damage.) Despite thousands of successful interceptions, the attacks exposed the vulnerability of concentrated, above-ground assets.
The rapid redeployment of the B-1s from RAF Fairford in the UK after warnings of an Iran-linked threat (reported as a possible drone attack) made the point: unsheltered concentrated high-value aircraft are vulnerable even way outside the theater.
The assumptions the U.S. has made about air superiority, missile defense, aircraft dispersal, building hardening, and the survivability of concentrated forward bases were all flawed. While we were prepared for ballistic missiles and hostile aircraft, drone swarms combined with ballistic missiles saturated and got through our defenses.
Washington’s reaction has been to invest billions of dollars in counter-drone and missile defense systems. Yet public budget documents reveal no comparable effort to put vulnerable aircraft, fuel, command-and-control nodes, and munitions out of harm’s way – sheltered, underground (or in space). (Agile Combat Employment, dispersal, hardening, deception, shelters, and rapid runway repair were never designed for a combined drone and missile onslaught.)
The Pentagon has recognized for decades that underground facilities are among the most effective ways an adversary can blunt U.S. conventional superiority. It described that problem explicitly in 1999. Gaza and Ukraine should have made it abundantly clear.
China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran use underground facilities, dispersal, hardening, and deception to make their own high-value assets harder to find, assess, and disable. We need to underground assets that cannot be quickly replaced: command posts, comms nodes, ammunition, fuel distribution points, repair facilities, key power systems, maintenance spares, and high-value aircraft or drones. The department needs an integrator that coordinates resilience across the Military Departments, Joint Staff, combatant commands, defense agencies, and intelligence community and provides Subterranean Resilience.
However, resilience is only one part of subterranean warfare.
Subterranean Sensing and Defeat
The U.S. needs to know where adversaries' underground facilities are located, and the internal layout of those facilities. Today, these bespoke exquisite systems for tunnel detection, robotic mapping of accessible tunnels, Hard and Deeply Buried Targets (HDBT) characterization, and target defeat are siloed in organizations scattered across the DoW. Most of these systems still require boots on the ground. Once a target is found, Combatant Commands need an integrated system that can characterize and destroy these targets, without first gaining physical access. Today, for the deepest facilities that means bombing from the air. Iran is the case in point.
Background. Iran's route to a nuclear weapon is by enriching uranium. Natural uranium is composed of 0.71% uranium-235 (U235) and it’s only the U235 that is used to build a bomb.
Iran uses centrifuges to separate U235 and increase its concentration (enriching it.) One centrifuge won’t do much, but connecting thousands of centrifuges together into cascades and running them for months can produce pounds of U235.
Iran’s underground nuclear enrichment site at Natanz had well over 10,000 centrifuges installed across dozens of cascades, and their Fordow nuclear enrichment site was built for 16 cascades, roughly 3,000 machines. Before the June 2025 strikes, Iran’s three declared enrichment facilities contained more than 20,000 centrifuges in 125 full-sized cascades.
The rough estimate needed for one Iranian nuclear weapon is ~100 lbs of U-235 at 60% enrichment or 55 lbs of U-235 at 90% enrichment (modern designs use less.) The difference is important, the lighter the weapon the easier it is to fit on a missile.
At its peak (Feb 2025 to June 2025) Iran’s cascades were delivering ~86 lbs of uranium enriched to 60% which is about 50 lbs of U-235 per month, which is just under one potential weapon every month. (Most weapons use U235 enriched to 90+% because that permits a smaller, more reliable design. Getting to that level in Iran might take days or weeks running the cascades, but building it into a weapon would still be needed.)
Deeply Buried Targets Versus Bunker Busters. One of the stated goals of the U.S. strikes on Iran was to remove their capacity to build nuclear weapons. This required the U.S. to destroy their deeply buried underground nuclear enrichment sites. The largest conventional bomb in the U.S. military’s arsenal is the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, carried by the B-2 Bomber. A 2019 description said it could reach targets as far as 200 feet underground (its actual effectiveness depends on geology, concrete, facility design, entry points, and the use of multiple weapons). The Iranians knew this and built their nuclear enrichment sites underground. The Fordow site is ~260 to 300 feet under limestone and dolomite. The Natanz site is 25 to 160 feet underground, protected by a 25-foot concrete shield. (But public estimates are over the place.)
Iran declared Isfahan as an enrichment complex to the IAEA the day before the June 2025 strikes; inspectors never got inside it, therefore its depth and geology are unknown, but speculation is that the enrichment complex is 260 to 330 feet underground. Another suspected enrichment facility is in Pickaxe Mountain, where the exact depths, geology, are unknown but estimates put the facility 250 – 330 feet below the summit. Both Isfahan and Pickaxe were Iran’s shift toward "deep mountain basing" to escape the reach of conventional military strikes.
In June 2025 in Operation Midnight Hammer U.S. B-2 bombers dropped 14 GBU-57 bombs on top of Fordow and Natanz. At Isfahan (Esfahan) more than two-dozen submarine-launched Tomahawks hit tunnel entrances and surface targets. In March 2026, strikes at Natanz hit its entrance.
According to the Institute for Science and International Security, the 22,000 centrifuges at Natanz, the Natanz pilot plant, and Fordow are almost certainly wrecked. What may have survived is the enriched uranium, the spare parts, and the people, and that is the problem. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimated (in June 2025) that Iran had about 970 pounds of uranium enriched to 60%; it has since lost track of where it is. Iran's known uranium conversion capability at Isfahan was damaged, which it needed to turn the stockpile of enriched uranium into a weapon, and there is no public evidence that enrichment has resumed at Natanz, Fordow or Isfahan. We never hit Pickaxe Mountain or the Isfahan enrichment facility with the GBU-57. The strikes have set Iran back, but no one knows for how long.
While the GBU-57 MOP cannot cleanly punch through solid rock, the debate has shifted from an absolute physical destruction calculation to a functional denial calculation—meaning the military's goal would be to seal Iran's nuclear assets in a mountain tomb rather than blowing them up directly.
Did We Succeed? Our stated goal was to prevent Iran from rapidly rebuilding the capability to build nuclear weapons, but there’s no certainty that we did that. Repeated airstrikes may have damaged the buried enrichment plants, but we can’t prove it or account for the buried enriched uranium inside. The fact is that it’s extremely difficult to see how much damage the bombs did to Hard and Deeply Buried Targets (HDBTs) from the air, and without inspectors on the ground, knowing for sure is guesswork. Putting boots on the ground would carry enormous costs and risks. Negotiating the removal and inspection of weapons grade uranium would depend on Iranian cooperation and a way to verify we got it all. All bad choices.
There is another emerging option: autonomous drilling equipment.
Subterranean Sensing and Defeat. It’s not hard to imagine that with enough boots on the ground the U.S. could secure a landing zone, fly in drilling equipment and have crews drill hundreds of feet vertically or thousands horizontally to either place sensors and/or explosives. The U.S. has had organizations building specialized equipment and training for breaching tunnels in Combatant Commands and scattered across the DoW for years (DTRA, DARPA, Army ERDC and CAVES and CZ5 programs, SOCOM, Sandia and the Army's half-billion-dollar underground-training push (2018) and ATP 3-21.51 Subterranean Operations.) One can even imagine that there are teams already trained and equipment ready to go. And one can equally imagine the Iranians are waiting for them.
What’s new is autonomous drills that could provide post-strike bomb damage assessments and/or destroy Hard and Deeply Buried Targets (HDBTs) without seizing the site. They might be inserted covertly; more likely they'd need air cover while they work.
The combination of AI, robotics and autonomy moves this from science fiction to the possible.
Anduril, The Boring Company, Exodigo, Phoenix Boring, Earthgrid and Traysar are possible candidates to deliver these systems. There are likely others as well.
(Disclosure: after my first blog about undergrounding critical assets, I invested and have a financial interest in companies in this space.)
Surface survivability and subterranean sensing and defeat are no longer one Service's problem, and they won't be solved by a single system or an incremental fix. Something fundamentally disruptive has changed in the nature of asymmetric warfare and there’s no going back. While we’re actively chasing immediate solutions (Golden Dome, JIATF-401, et al), we need to rethink the nature of force protection, and military and civilian infrastructure protection.
The U.S. needs a coherent protection and survivability strategy across the DoW and all sectors of our economy. This conversation needs to be not only about how we do it, but how we organize it, how we budget and pay for it, and how we rapidly deploy it.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
Bitcoin Magazine
‘We Know Where It Is’: Treasury Secretary Threatens To Freeze $1B of Iran’s Crypto
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the American authorities will soon seize $1 billion in crypto from Iran.
Speaking on Newsmax’s NPolicy Summit in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Bessent added that economic sanctions on the Middle Eastern country were working.
Iran has been using bitcoin — and other cryptocurrencies — to skirt around U.S. sanctions. The U.S. in April started targeting crypto wallets linked to the Iranian regime, Bessent said at the time.
“What we have done has never been seen before,” Bessent said Thursday on Iranian sanctions.
“We’re probably going to seize $1 billion of crypto this week,” he continued. “We know where it is. We are isolating them. We did have a maximum pressure campaign, now we have an absolute isolation campaign and it’s working.”
Bessent didn’t reveal what cryptocurrencies the U.S. will seize or how.
It would be very hard — if not impossible — for the U.S. to freeze Iran’s bitcoin unless it keeps it on a centralized exchange.
Bitcoin, being censorship resistant, cannot be frozen. But many other cryptocurrencies, including Tether’s USDT, can. Bessent previously said the feds had seized Iran’s crypto in the form of the popular stablecoin.
Iran started a bitcoin-backed insurance service for its counties shipping companies earlier this year.
The Financial Times last month reported that the Middle Eastern country was using bitcoin to settle cross-border transactions through Iranian crypto exchanges after the central bank advised its countrymen to do anything necessary to help the economy.
U.S. President Donald Trump revived his “maximum pressure” campaign weeks after returning to office. A national security memorandum signed in February 2025 put the Treasury on a sustained campaign against Iran’s shadow banking, money laundering and sanctions-evasion networks.
This post ‘We Know Where It Is’: Treasury Secretary Threatens To Freeze $1B of Iran’s Crypto first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
Amir Barati, an alleged member of the Mabna Institute, was indicted for targeting universities, private organizations, and government entities in the US and abroad.
The post In Rare Move, Alleged Iranian State Hacker Extradited to US appeared first on SecurityWeek.
Beijing says artificial intelligence will give the state a visible hand to allocate capital. Here’s the rub: Washington’s economic authority sits in five places, and none of them is in command.
This column begins a four-week series ahead of The Cipher Brief Threat Conference on economic-warfare. The author is hosting a live session on this topic with former Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, General Bryan Fenton (Ret.). Apply now to attend.
On September 26, the President answered the week's largest security question in just four words: "I'm rejecting their deal." Iran's offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days, in exchange for lifting the blockade and waiving oil sanctions, had been on the table since September 24. It received its answer in public, from the one official authorized to give it, inside forty-eight hours.
The week's economic questions received no answer of that kind. The trade truce with China, and the pause on Beijing's rare-earth licensing regime tied to it, moved from November 10 to January 10 on the strength of a Treasury Secretary's statement; Beijing has yet to publish a matching notice.
The Russia sanctions act the President signed on September 18 requires determinations on the largest buyers of Russian energy by October 18, a deadline set by Congress rather than the executive, with waivers broad enough to let it pass unenforced. In February, the Supreme Court ruled six to three in Learning Resources v. Trump that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize tariffs, removing the instrument the executive had used for its broadest tariffs.
This is important because Washington can decide a war in a sentence. But on the economic front, authority rests with Treasury, Commerce, the U.S. Trade Representative, Congress, and the courts. Each is competent. None is in command. The arrangement is by design and has served the country well for most of the last eighty years. But not anymore.
Beijing is now claiming a different design. In a recent lecture on Xi Jinping's economic strategy, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has tracked Chinese ideology for fifty years, described a shift in the Communist Party's theoretical literature. Artificial intelligence (AI) and other "new quality productive forces" are portrayed not only as sources of productivity but also as "a superior macro-allocation mechanism for resources," driven by algorithms. Rudd says the literature now uses the term "the visible hand of the state," offered for the first time as a rival to the market's invisible one. He is careful about its status: the idea sits in the ideological literature, "not yet in the policy literature," and not yet in the behavior of firms. But in his reading, ideology in China is where policy begins.
The hand is already visible without the algorithm. The rare-earth regime now paused until January, the Ministry of Commerce's Announcement No. 61, applies to any product anywhere that carries more than 0.1 percent Chinese-origin rare-earth content by value. One ministry notice imposed it; one more can reimpose it. The capital moves the same way. Chinese households, burned by property and wary of equities, hold record savings in low-yield bank deposits, and the state draws on those deposits through local, provincial, and national loan instruments to fund its technology bet. Rhodium Group puts China's AI capital spending at 932 billion renminbi this year, double last year's, financed by state banks and equity placements rather than bond markets.
America's AI buildout is financed the other way. Its five largest builders raised a net $163 billion in debt in the first half of this year, compared with $90 billion in all of 2025, in a bond market where the ten-year Treasury has reached 5.18 percent, its highest since 2007. No ministry allocated that capital. The market did, and the market will reprice it.
Neither design is simply superior, and the distinction matters more than the verdict. A single allocator is fast and brittle. It can direct capital, licenses, and supply to a strategic target within a week, and it can misallocate at the same speed. The household savings now financing the AI bet were poured into a property boom that left many of those households with assets worth only a fraction of what they paid. A distributed system is slow and resilient. Its errors stay local, its capital carries a price, and no single notice can switch it off. In peacetime competition, resilience compounds. In economic warfare, tempo is the contested variable, and the side that can decide within the other's cycle sets the terms. Beijing has already shown what that looks like. It imposed its rare-earth regime by notice on October 9 of last year and suspended it by another on November 7, having collected in between Washington's agreement to delay its own rule extending export controls to the affiliates of blacklisted firms. Two notices, one month, one American concession.
This column has traced the same gap from the drone fleet to the power grid: the capacity exists, and the decision does not. The economic front shows it at national scale. Washington holds the reserve currency, the deepest capital markets, and the reach of the dollar system. What it lacks is a place to settle competing claims on those instruments and to make them binding on the timeline decided by an adversary.
October 18 is the first live test. The sanctions act's determinations are due that day, just sixteen days before the midterm elections. They will be imposed, waived, or deferred, and whichever it is will say more about the American economic hand than any strategy document published this year. Beijing will be watching the same date, holding a notice it can publish on any morning it chooses.
The question for Washington is who, when economic warfare requires a decision, is empowered to make it, and whether that decision can arrive before the adversary's action. Coordination assigns. Integration arbitrates.
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For five and a half years, I was a hostage of the Islamic Republic of Iran. During that time, I came to believe something about the regime that may seem improbable from the outside: It is far weaker than it looks. Today, I believe we are closer to its end than many Americans realize.
As America approaches the November midterm elections, calls to turn inward will inevitably rise. There will be arguments that we have done enough, that the Islamic Republic is someone else’s problem, that the costs are too high or the outcome too uncertain. Giving in to that temptation would be a historic mistake.
After 47 years, the regime that has inflicted unimaginable misery on its own people and helped spread militant extremism throughout the Middle East may be approaching its final act. This is not the moment to lose our resolve.
Long before Americans became familiar with terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and ISIS, and long before the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Islamic Republic was using religious extremism, hostage-taking, and terrorism as instruments of statecraft. It directly nurtured organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas and helped create a regional environment in which hatred of the West and political violence could flourish.
But the greatest victims of the Islamic Republic have always been the Iranian people themselves. The 1979 revolution was an Iranian one, and the country has lived with its consequences ever since. Nearly half a century later, a different generation is demanding the right to chart an alternative course.
During my years in captivity, I watched a nation seemingly trapped in a downward spiral of corruption, incompetence, and cultish ideological obsession. Every evening, my cellmates and I watched “Akhbare Bisto-See,” or “20:30 News,” on Iran’s state-controlled IRIB Channel Two—a nightly parade of propaganda, arrogance, ignorance, and hatred.
After my first few weeks in Section 2A of Evin Prison, controlled by the intelligence arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, I began conducting a private, admittedly unscientific experiment. I watched the news, observed what was happening around me, talked to as many inmates as I could, and estimated how many years it would take Iran to catch up with the modern world.
Fifty years, I thought. Then 75. Then 100. After eight months, when my estimate reached 150 years, bewilderment set in. So I stopped counting.
What haunted me was not merely the country's physical and moral decay, corruption, or the government's incompetence. It was what decades of humiliation and hopelessness had done to people. Sometimes the evidence sat only a yard from me.
Two of my cellmates were members of ISIS. Both were Iranian Kurds. I could not understand it. They were not Arabs from Syria or Iraq. They were Iranians. How could young Iranian men join an organization as murderous as ISIS? Sometimes late into the night, I listened to their stories. Gradually, I began to understand that before extremism had recruited them, humiliation had prepared them.
One of those young men was Ibrahim. He had just turned 18 when I met him in communal Room 2 of Section 2A. One night, he told me about his younger brother’s death. His family was so poor they could not afford a simple burial. They carried the boy’s body on their shoulders to the outskirts of their village, dug a hole, and buried him without ceremony or even a memorial stone. “Like a dog,” Ibrahim told me. I have never forgotten those words.
Years later, I encountered another Iranian Kurd whose story has stayed with me.
After I was sentenced to 10 years in prison for what the Islamic Republic called “cooperating with the hostile nation of America,” an old friend arranged for a man to help me cross the border to freedom. I will call him Jafari.
We embarked on a 15-hour journey toward the northwestern frontier, but our luck ran out about 20 miles from the Iraqi border, when we were arrested by a field unit of the Ministry of Intelligence. The following day, in the city of Sardasht, Jafari and I waited to appear before a local judge on charges of attempting to cross the border illegally. We sat there, exhausted, our hands cuffed together. Until then, I knew almost nothing about him except that he was 30 years old and a Kurd.
As we waited, I listened as he spoke to the guards. I learned that he had previously spent 10 years in prison for belonging to a Kurdish political organization. Then he described what had happened when he was first arrested.
According to Jafari, while he was kneeling on the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back, his prosecutor unzipped his pants and urinated into his mouth, telling him that he and his Kurdish people were scum.
Looking at him sideways, I could see his eyes welling with tears. These were not tears of fear or anger. They were the tears of a young man whose dignity had been crushed.
There are certain things human beings cannot be expected to endure indefinitely.
I think of Ibrahim and Jafari when I think of the Iranians who have taken to the streets against the Islamic Republic.
To outsiders, demonstrations in Iran are often described in political terms: reformists versus hard-liners, secularists versus Islamists, protesters versus the government. But beneath the politics lies something more elemental: the systematic, prolonged humiliation of a proud nation.
For decades, Iranians have watched a country blessed with extraordinary human talent, history, natural resources, and culture grow poorer and more isolated, while a corrupt, insular ruling establishment enriched itself and demanded blind obedience.
For Iran’s ethnic minorities, that humiliation has often been compounded by discrimination and violence. Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, Baluch, Turkmen, and Lors have all, in different ways, experienced life on the margins of the Islamic Republic.
As for Iranian women, they require almost no explanation. We need only remember the name Mahsa Amini. Volumes could be written about their strength, courage, and dignity—and about the wrath inflicted on them by a deeply misogynistic regime. Mahsa Amini’s death became a symbol because millions of Iranian women recognized in her story the state’s intrusion into the most intimate decisions of their lives, backed by violence.
Iran’s religious minorities have their own disheartening stories. Jews, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, and Christians have lived for decades under suspicion, restrictions, and persecution.
In the yard of Ward 8 at Evin Prison, I once sat with a Baha’i man I had befriended. It was around noon on October 14, 2022, one day before prisoners rioted and fire engulfed part of Evin. I remember the conversation so vividly not because of what happened the following day, but because of the story this gentle man told me.
Back in 1980, his father had been hanged in that same prison, perhaps only 100 yards from where we were sitting. As a young boy, he had accompanied his mother to collect his father’s body. He told me his father's only crime was being a Baha’i. Nearly half a century later, the son was sitting inside Evin as well, just yards from where he had lost his father.
That is the Islamic Republic’s legacy: a seemingly endless cycle of violence, poverty, and humiliation.
It has had 47 years to build a prosperous nation. Instead, it built prisons, missile cities, and an expansive nuclear program while much of its population struggled.
It had 47 years to harness the extraordinary abilities of the Iranian people. Instead, millions left the country, while some of its brightest young minds ended up in prison cells.
Among them were Ali Younesi and Amirhossein Moradi, two kind, polite, extraordinarily bright young men with whom I had the privilege of sharing a cell in Ward 4 of Evin Prison. Younesi was an internationally recognized astronomy prodigy; Moradi, a gifted physics student. Both were in their early 20s and studying at the prestigious Sharif University. Their stories are repeated across Iran, where the Islamic Republic has spent decades crushing the hopes of some of the country’s most gifted young people.
It had 47 years to earn legitimacy. Instead, it demanded blind submission.
And that distinction matters now because Iran and the Islamic Republic are not the same thing. The regime wants the world to believe that any attack on its power is an attack on Iran itself. It wants Americans to believe that the alternative to the Islamic Republic must be chaos, civil war, or another extremist regime.
I do not accept that premise.
The Iranian people I came to know—including those I encountered in circumstances I would never have chosen—were not yearning for more ideology. They were yearning for dignity, prosperity, basic human rights, and a return to being respected members of the world community. They wanted decent-paying jobs. They wanted opportunity. They wanted justice. They wanted their daughters to live without fear. They wanted the freedom to worship—or not worship—as they chose. They wanted to belong to their country without being humiliated for being Kurdish, Baha’i, Christian, Jewish, Baluch, or anything else.
Above all, they wanted a future. That is why this moment matters.
Earlier this year, Iranians once again demonstrated their resolve. Many initially took to the streets over painfully familiar grievances: inflation, electricity shortages, water scarcity, economic mismanagement, corruption, and the relentless erosion of their purchasing power.
They were met with lethal force. Thousands were reportedly killed in the crackdown and tens of thousands arrested. But casualty figures alone cannot convey the particular cruelty of repression in the Islamic Republic.
For years, Iranian families and human-rights organizations have reported a practice sometimes described as “bullet money” or a “bullet fee”: authorities demanding payment from families before releasing the bodies of relatives killed by the state, in some accounts ostensibly to cover the cost of the ammunition used to kill them.
Think about what that means. Your son goes into the street to protest the cost of food. Your daughter demands the freedom to live as she chooses. They do not come home.
Then you go to retrieve the body of the child you raised, and the state that killed your child demands payment for the bullets before returning the body to you.
Statistics describe Iran’s economic decline. Its currency has collapsed. Inflation has ravaged household incomes. Corruption remains endemic. Millions of talented Iranians have left the country. All of those facts matter, but none captures the nature of the Islamic Republic quite like a grieving parent being asked to pay for the bullet that killed a child. That is humiliation. That is indignity.
And after 47 years, something fundamental is happening inside Iran. The Islamic Republic has survived through fear. Regimes built on fear can seem permanent until suddenly they are not.
I saw fear inside the Islamic Republic. But I also saw something the regime should fear far more. I saw what happens when humiliation turns into anger, when anger becomes courage, and when people told for decades that they are powerless—or scum—begin to realize they vastly outnumber those who oppress them.
The pressure is no longer merely political. Iran is confronting one of the most severe economic crises in the Islamic Republic’s history. Inflation has soared, the rial has fallen sharply, and the regime is struggling to obtain the foreign currency it needs to finance imports and sustain the state. A U.S. naval blockade has sharply curtailed Iranian oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, while tighter financial sanctions are closing channels Tehran once used to evade economic pressure. The Islamic Republic has survived crises before. But rarely has it faced this combination of domestic anger, economic exhaustion, international isolation, and pressure on the sources of revenue that sustain the state.
America should not determine Iran’s future. The Iranian people must decide that themselves. Nor should Washington confuse supporting the Iranian people with choosing their next government. We have learned enough from history to know the dangers of that approach. But an equally dangerous mistake would be abandoning people when they are closer to changing their circumstances than outsiders might realize.
The United States and its allies should maintain pressure on the institutions that sustain repression while making it unmistakably clear that our quarrel is with the Islamic Republic, not with Iran or its people.
We should amplify Iranians’ voices rather than presume to speak for them. And we should resist the temptation—especially when domestic politics becomes consuming—to trade long-term resolve for short-term political convenience.
The final act of this 47-year tragedy may already be underway.
If the curtain is finally beginning to fall on the Islamic Republic, it will not be Americans who take the stage for the finale.
It will be the Iranian people. Our responsibility is simpler: Don't abandon them as they prepare to take the stage.
We may be closer than we think.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
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We are squarely in the target sights of ‘Unintended Consequences.’
What do I mean by this? Think of it as a broad spectrum of possible consequences when missiles and drones are being slung back and forth between Iran and U.S. Navy vessels and bases, and the energy and commercial facilities and ships of its Gulf allies. On one end of the spectrum, accidents happen: think the inadvertent U.S. airstrike on the girls’ school at the beginning of the war, and the more recent ‘wedding party’ casualties when a U.S. missile struck a nearby communications tower. These are tragedies for all involved. On the other side, an Iranian missile made its way through U.S. air defenses to strike a U.S. military facility in Jordan, resulting in the deaths of three U.S. troops. The latter resulted in a robust U.S. military response that targeted a variety of Iranian military facilities. This was a success for Iran and a tragedy for America.
On the other end of the spectrum, what if one of Iran’s ballistic missiles successfully navigates to its target - a U.S. base or navy vessel, for example - and significant U.S. casualties, dead and/or wounded, result? The U.S. administration is likely to come under tremendous political pressure to respond with overwhelming force. This could elevate the stakes even higher, cutting off any chance of a negotiated settlement, remote as it currently is. And with the regime already having been severely degraded militarily, and its leadership ranks diminished, what does that leave in terms of targets? More of the same?
It could also result in calls to withdraw U.S. forces, given the antipathy of a majority of the U.S. population to a war they view as unnecessary, ill-advised, and ill-managed. This would leave Iran in a weakened yet still dangerous posture, with the ability to pressure the world economy at will going forward. Neither option is appealing.
Oh, and by the way, notwithstanding the administration’s verbal gymnastics, this is very much a war.
D-Day Sanctions Regime
On the surface, this appears to be a pretty solid strategy, or at least better than what has been tried to date: Simply squeeze the Iranian economy until the regime cries uncle. It is already having an impact and will likely continue to compound the pain. But it is neither simple nor clear-cut. Who will it actually impact, how badly, and when? A total blockade means not just money or arms. It means no food. It means no medicine. And a host of other basic necessitates. The Iranian people will feel it first, particularly the young, the old, and the sick. Regime insiders, including the leadership and their loyal (for now) security forces, will be the last to see the effects.
And we have already seen Russia and China reject complying with the secondary sanctions that comprise the heart of this enhanced effort. So, no one knows what will happen if they choose to challenge the blockade; It is highly unlikely that U.S. forces will use force against Chinese vessels attempting to access Iranian ports. And that does not take into account less overt (read clandestine) interactions - intelligence sharing, weapons system development, sabotage efforts against Gulf country facilities, including pipelines, etc. - that would further evade and/or erode the U.S. advantage.
So, while there will be pain, and lots of it, as I said in a recent BBC interview, there remain many unknowns. Informal smuggling networks have abounded in the region for Millenia. The regime will utilize every trick they have learned since the ‘79 revolution while building a ‘resistance economy’ to get around the blockade/sanctions. And potentially with the implicit, if not explicit, support of two major world powers. In the end, this does not presage the near-term submission of a regime that values survival above all else. This remains very much a test of wills.
Furthermore, what happens when the world sees the Iranian people starving before their eyes? I’m not sure they will countenance this for long.
So, Who Has More at Stake?
The U.S. people are seeing higher gas prices at the pump, rising food costs, overall inflation, and more. This is painful, but certainly not existential, at least not yet. The increasingly negative impact on the world economy stands to worsen things considerably if the status quo continues for too long, so Americans are watching closely. And the mid-terms are fast approaching.
The Iranian people are seeing the destruction of their economy, their country, and potentially their very way of life. It is very much existential. The specter of a thundering locomotive of new sanctions bearing down on them must certainly be terrifying. I have no doubt many Iranians blame the Islamic regime for bringing this down upon them. But as things worsen, they may turn against the U.S. and its allies for abandoning them to the depredations of the regime.
The Iranian regime most certainly views this as an existential threat, notwithstanding its rhetoric. They would be fools not to. But Netanyahu’s 2 September statement that the Israeli government is, “working to bring down this regime and defeat it,” accompanied by Trump’s 2 September statement publicly questioning, “when the Iranian people would rise up and fight,” is unlikely to motivate them to negotiate. They will need to be forced to submit. My experience with Iranians tells me that the harder you press, the more resistant they become. Uncharted territory indeed. We will see.
China and Russia both have an adversarial relationship with the U.S. and important interests vis-à-vis Iran: military for Russia (drones) and commercial for China (oil). Why would either go out of their way to assist the United States in removing itself from a self-imposed disaster that is distracting it from issues they care about while diminishing its military capabilities, all with minimal effort? That is a question that remains to be answered.
Speaking of Regime Change
U.S. political leadership answers to the American people at the ballot box. The system is a bit creaky at the moment, but (for now) it remains intact.
The Islamic regime, by design, does not answer to the Iranian people. Iran’s elections are truly rigged, primarily by the Guardian Council’s ability to reject candidates for office, but also with an increasing willingness to falsify election results. And in the end, the Supreme Leader is able to reject any initiative or law he disagrees with. We have seen the results when the Iranian people see no recourse for accountability by the regime: people in the streets, followed by blood in the streets.
Without substantial outside support, of which we have so far seen little evidence, the populace will be hesitant to go back to the streets, knowing that if they do, they are on their own. It could happen if things get bad enough, and it is possible it might even ultimately be successful, but it is almost certain to be a massacre, followed by chaos and a very uncertain end. Yet another example of unintended consequences.
Where Are We Now?
For the moment - and this may already have changed as I write this - we are back in what I refer to as a Hyperbolating phase, where we are seeing threats/counterthreats being tossed back and forth with abandon. Most of these statements are utterly meaningless and can be ignored. It appears both sides are waiting to see who blinks first.
U.S. messaging appears to be somewhat disjointed, contradictory, and lacking an overall strategy, with the President, the only real decision-maker, continually wandering on and off the path of others in his administration: Trump - I don’t care/where are the Iranians?; Hegseth - continued confrontation; Bessent - economic asphyxiation; Rubio - no nuclear weapon/economic pressure; Vance - not a war/intermittent containment. You could claim this is purposeful to keep Iran uncertain and off balance, but it should not be doing the same to Americans. President Trump failed to bring the American people on board beforehand with a coherent (and honest) case for war and an actual strategy for winning it. The continued shuffling of various justifications we have seen from the administration serves simply to stir the mix of confusion.
I get the distinct feeling that, given the fast approaching mid-terms and the deep hole they have dug for themselves, the administration just hopes that something/anything works so they can walk away from what is clearly a foreign policy disaster.
Iran messaging, on the other hand, appears, at least to me, to be a bit more coordinated if not strategic. While most Iranian government leaders are defiantly threatening massive retaliation for continued U.S. strikes (hyperbole), including the military (both Artesh - regular military and IRGC - Revolutionary Guards), the Parliament and its Speaker Ghalibaf (“U.S. actions will not go unanswered”), and the Foreign Affairs Ministry (claiming “war crimes” by the U.S.), the lone man on an island is the Iranian President, Pezeshkian; “we do not seek war but will respond,” and, “Iran remains open to negotiations, under the June MOU”. It is important to realize that the Iranian President has virtually no policymaking role in Foreign affairs, so his statements should be given less weight than others. But he would never make this offer without the approval of the IRGC, the Supreme National Security Council and, most likely, the Supreme Leader (or whoever is speaking for him). As I have written previously, I believe that the vagueness of the original June MOU was oddly advantageous to Iran and served to lead us directly back to where we currently are. So… this would seem to indicate negotiations are at least still on the table, just not under conditions particularly favorable to the U.S.
Where Are We Going?
Military escalation? A slow grinding pressure on the regime, testing their willingness to allow their people to suffer? Or a return to the negotiating table?
Who knows? There is no simple or painless way out of this.
Unintended consequences, after all.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
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Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, I have watched and listened to nearly every piece of news coverage and analysis from U.S. policymakers, pundits, and the media. What continues to puzzle me is how often the Islamic Republic is treated as a rational government operating under conventional norms. The Islamic Republic is a cult, not a predictable government.
We hear constant talk of engaging or “negotiating” with its current leadership, distinguishing between “moderates” and “hardliners,” using intermediaries such as Pakistan, and sending American negotiators to Islamabad to meet with representatives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The problem is that much of this analysis misunderstands the worldview of those who actually wield power in Iran.
I learned something about that worldview during the nearly six years (2018 – 2023) I spent as an American hostage in Iran.
The lesson began almost immediately. At around 2:00 a.m. one morning, after agents of the IRGC Intelligence Organization dragged me from my bed, I was taken to the office of a friend, a place I had visited many times. The agents began ransacking it.
At one point, I asked to use the bathroom. Two armed guards accompanied me. I used a urinal, and they escorted me back to the office. A few minutes later, I overheard one of them telling another agent, with apparent astonishment: “These guys piss in a sink against the wall!” An intelligence officer of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had apparently never seen a urinal.
It was a small, almost comical moment in what was otherwise a terrifying first night of what turned out to be 1975 nights of torture, fear, and uncertainty. But it stayed with me because it was my first indication that the men holding me inhabited a world very different not only from mine but also from those of the West.
During my imprisonment in Evin, I encountered regime insiders, arrested by the very regime they had helped bring to power and sustain, who gave me further insight into the skewed world they inhabited and the prism through which they viewed the rest of the world.
In Section 2A, the IRGC’s maximum interrogation facility, we sometimes used newspapers as makeshift placemats to eat our meals on the floor. A cellmate of mine, a former IRGC Quds Force member imprisoned on alleged espionage charges, warned me that eating off a newspaper could unintentionally constitute blasphemy. Somewhere in that edition, he explained, the word “Allah” might be printed. By placing food on the paper, I could unknowingly desecrate the name of God.
Another cellmate offered an even more revealing window into this worldview. He was the former head of security at the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a real insider in the regime. Haji, as they all want to be called, explained to me that the universe consisted of seven floors. The seventh and highest floor, he said, was where God placed his prophets, their closest disciples, and those who had lived truly pious lives. Haji was an interesting messenger for this particular theology. He had also served as a corrupt facilitator for a “businessman” who obtained a €500 million unsecured loan from Iran’s Central Bank and then wired nearly all of the money overseas—with Haji’s assistance. Now Haji was my cellmate in Section 2A.
Out of curiosity and partly because I wanted to understand how far Haji’s worldview extended, I asked him, “On which floor would someone like Alexander Fleming end up?” Haji looked at me blankly. “Who is he?” I explained that Fleming discovered penicillin, one of the most consequential medical discoveries in human history, and that his work had saved countless lives around the world—including countless Muslims.
Haji did not hesitate. “He would go to Hell,” he said. “He was not a Muslim.”
His answer gave me vertigo. Here was a man who believed deeply in a moral universe divided into seven levels, with eternal salvation reserved for the properly devout, yet who had himself been a corrupt conduit in a massive financial theft from the people of Iran. And in his moral accounting, a man whose discovery had saved millions was nevertheless condemned to eternal damnation because he belonged to the wrong faith.
These experiences may sound anecdotal, even bizarre. But they matter because ideology is not an abstraction in the Islamic Republic. It shapes how the regime’s insiders understand morality, diplomacy, legitimacy, the West—and even the value of human life. And it is what makes the regime a cult rather than a traditional government.
Now consider the people who have risen—and continue to rise—through this system. One of the most important is Mohsen Rezaee, whose career spans virtually the entire history of the Islamic Republic. Rezaee joined the newly created Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after the 1979 revolution. In 1981, at just 27, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the IRGC. When Rezaee finally left command of the IRGC in 1997, he did not leave the regime’s inner circle. He became secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, a powerful institution that advises the Supreme Leader and arbitrates disputes within the Islamic Republic.
And now Rezaee is back at the very center of power. A few weeks ago, he was appointed secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and named Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s representative on that body. The council sits at the heart of Iranian decision-making on national security, war, and foreign policy.
His appointment matters because Rezaee has never been particularly shy about sharing his views with the world. In 2015, while discussing the possibility of an American military attack on Iran, Rezaee proposed an extraordinary solution to Iran’s economic problems: take at least 1,000 Americans hostage and demand billions of dollars for their release. Years later, in 2021, while running for president, he again spoke openly about taking Americans hostage.
For someone who spent nearly six years as an American hostage of the Islamic Republic, I find such statements especially hard to dismiss as mere rhetoric. They reveal something fundamental and odious about the system. In most governments, suggesting that the kidnapping of anyone could become an instrument of economic or foreign policy might end a political career. In the Islamic Republic, it did not prevent Rezaee from continuing his ascent through the highest levels of the state. Today, the former IRGC commander who publicly entertained the idea of taking Americans hostage sits at the center of Iran’s national-security establishment.
Then there is Hossein Taeb, a hardline cleric and longtime intelligence operative whose career offers another revealing glimpse into how power actually works within the Islamic Republic. Taeb commanded the Basij paramilitary organization during the violent suppression of the 2009 Green Movement, when millions of Iranians took to the streets after the disputed presidential election. He was subsequently promoted to become the first head of the expanded IRGC Intelligence Organization, the most powerful intelligence apparatus operating alongside—and often in competition with—Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence. He remained in that position for nearly thirteen years.
But Taeb’s significance extends beyond the offices he has held. For decades, he has been closely associated with Mojtaba Khamenei. Their relationship dates to the Iran-Iraq War, when both served in the IRGC. Over the years, Taeb became a key figure in the security and intelligence network around Mojtaba, and their names repeatedly appeared together in accounts of the regime’s efforts to suppress internal opposition. Today, that relationship matters more than ever. Mojtaba Khamenei is now Supreme Leader, and Taeb has once again been placed in command of the Basij—the enormous paramilitary organization the Islamic Republic has long relied on to maintain internal control and suppress unrest.
This is not merely history to me. According to one of my interrogators, Taeb (AKA Haj Maysam) was present at two of my most brutal interrogation sessions in April 2018, including my mock execution. I remember him not as a name in an intelligence report or a photograph in a newspaper article, but as a man who stood within the machinery that held me hostage.
Today, both men are once again at the center of that machinery. Rezaee holds one of the Islamic Republic’s most important national-security posts. Taeb has returned to lead the Basij. Mojtaba Khamenei, with whom both men have longstanding ties, now sits at the apex of the system.
These are not rogue actors operating on the margins of the Islamic Republic. Nor are they relics of an earlier revolutionary era that Iran has gradually moved beyond. They are the system, and they are once again being entrusted with its protection.
Yet the clearest lesson I received about that system’s worldview came not from a senior official but from one of the men who interrogated me. Several months after my arrest, after I had endured hundreds of hours of brutal questioning, my lead interrogator had seemingly run out of questions, and I had run out of answers. We were both exhausted by the madness of it all. We sat in silence in the interrogation room. He pulled a phone from his pocket. On the screen was a photograph of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He swiped the image away, tapped the phone, and Koranic verses in Arabic began to play. He sat about a yard from me, across a small metal table that separated us. He was in his mid-thirties. By then, I had learned that he was married and had children.
Several minutes passed. Then I noticed tears sliding down his cheeks. For a moment, I wondered if something had happened to one of his kids. Finally, I asked if he was all right. He looked up at me and said: “I can’t wait to become a martyr.” I had no response and was completely dumbfounded. That moment has stayed with me ever since.
In Washington, it is tempting to dismiss rhetoric about martyrdom, religious purity, and the “Great Satan” as political theater—a vocabulary meant for domestic consumption while supposedly pragmatic men conduct the real business of diplomacy behind closed doors.
My experience taught me otherwise. That does not mean every Iranian official thinks the same way, nor does it mean diplomacy should never be attempted. It does mean that American policymakers should stop assuming that the men who dominate the Islamic Republic weigh costs and benefits, compromise, and survival exactly as Western officials do.
For decades, Washington has repeatedly sought the elusive Islamic Republic’s “moderates” who are supposed to transform the regime from within. Analysts construct elaborate theories about factions and personalities, sometimes overlooking the core ideology that binds the system together.
Rivalries certainly exist within the Islamic Republic. Disagreements over tactics, money, power, and personalities persist. But tactical disagreement should not be mistaken for fundamental ideological divisions or moderation. Nor should we assume that because a particular course of action appears irrational or self-destructive to us, the men making decisions in Tehran will necessarily see it the same way.
The Iranian people understand this distinction better than many outsiders. They have lived under this system for nearly half a century and have repeatedly risked their lives to challenge it. American policymakers should listen more carefully to them. They should also remember something else when sitting across the negotiating table from representatives of the Islamic Republic.
I once sat three feet from one of those men in a locked interrogation room in Section 2A of Evin prison. He had a wife. He had children. He had a career. He had a life waiting for him outside those walls. And what brought tears to his eyes was the joy of giving it all up. He could not wait to become a martyr.
Emad Shargi,
American Businessman
Hostage of the Islamic Republic (2018 – 2023)
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
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Hyping threats of nuclear proliferation to justify war undermines legitimate counter-proliferation policies and paradoxically incentivizes proliferation. The Trump administration’s effort to justify the Iran war as a means of saving the world from a nuclear armed Iran rings as hollow as George W. Bush’s similar claims about Iraq a quarter century ago.
Both threats were real, until the United States and the international community reduced them. The 1990 Gulf War and the ensuing inspection regime ended Iraq’s nuclear weapons ambitions. A little over a decade later, the George W. Bush administration justified its war in Iraq with claims about Saddam’s supposed nuclear (and chemical and biological) weapons. Addressing questions about the veracity of those claims, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice argued at the time, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN, “…the facts and Iraq's behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction” Inspectors scoured Iraq in search of those weapons and found none, but the war dragged on at huge cost in lives and money.
The nuclear threat from Iran was and remains real, and like Iraq’s was also contained. Like Iraq, Iran signed the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) but played cat and mouse games with its compliance for decades. Iran’s covert enrichment program received a boost in the 1980s when Tehran acquired centrifuges from Pakistan. Iran pursued a two-track strategy of building its civilian atomic energy program, which was open to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and a parallel covert program focused on nuclear weapons. For years Iran routinely denied access to IAEA inspectors who compiled extensive evidence of undeclared, weapon-related activities, which Iran denied. US and UN sanctions weakened Iran’s economy, but did not persuade Iran’s leaders to change course. The June 2025 US-Israel strikes severely damaged the critical facilities essential for Iran’s nuclear program.
At the very least, Iran’s enriched uranium and its centrifuges are buried under tons of rubble, unreachable and readily monitored. Iran’s path from buried canisters of 60% enriched gas to a usable weapon is difficult, time consuming, and depends on the very facilities and equipment that were reportedly destroyed. The threat of an Iranian bomb has been degraded, at least for now. The initial strikes, if as effective as claimed, have bought the international community time.
Buying time is a legitimate nonproliferation strategy. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) of 2015 relied on this strategy. Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to a number of key limitations. Enrichment was restricted to low enriched uranium (LEU, below 3%), there were caps on the number and types of centrifuges, limits on centrifuge production and LEU stockpiles, canceling a plutonium project, and unfettered access to international inspectors. The deal was to last for 15 years.
Critics argued that the deal ignored the full range of Iran’s bad behavior. It shelved the IAEA’s list of unresolved issues related to nuclear weapons-related activities and did not eliminate Iran’s latent technical capabilities to build a bomb. The knowledge never goes away. Moreover, the international community lifted sanctions and Iran was allowed access to $1.7 billion of its own money that was seized because of sanctions, plus $400 million from a longstanding dispute over military sales.
The JCPOA was imperfect. It did not address the regime’s support for terrorism, but it was not designed to. It was designed to restrain the most important aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, its ability to produce weapons-usable materials, without which there would be no Iranian bomb. Had the Iranian regime abandoned the JCPOA, the United States and other backers of the agreement (the United Kingdom, Russia, China, France, Germany, the EU and the UN) were poised to reinstate sanctions and take other actions as necessary to bring Iran into compliance.
That never happened because the Trump administration repudiated the JCPOA in 2018. That reversal freed Iran to expel the international inspectors, ramp up its enrichment program, and reignite fears of a hidden nuclear danger. Bombing the facilities in 2026 achieved similar goals as the JCPOA, but at a much higher price in blood and treasure. The nuclear threat has been contained. Yet, the war continues and the Trump administration continues to cite the Iranian nuclear threat as its chief war aim.
We should assume that the Iranian regime remains committed to obtaining nuclear weapons. The JCPOA would have delayed the realization of this ambition by 15 years. The 2025-26 bombings also delayed realization, although it is unclear for how long. Hyping nuclear threats, however, is counterproductive, because it persuades others of a degree of nuclear danger that does not currently exist, and incentivizes others, like Saudi Arabia, that they too must pursue a weapon, if only to deter Iran.
The United States may have other reasons for continuing the war with Iran, but they should be clearly articulated along with the price that Americans will pay to achieve them.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
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Iran is reading American service members’ social media feeds to deadly effect. The fact is that not all intelligence must be gleaned from secret, closed sources for it to be effective, and Tehran has made use of public and open-source data to target U.S. forces with psychological and kinetic attacks. Until the Pentagon updates and enforces its policies on social media posting and personal device security, American servicemembers will be sitting ducks.
Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of CENTCOM, warned in a letter last month to U.S. forces that Iran is using social media posts from personnel, such as footage of U.S. bases, to improve its lethality. For example, a video of soldiers running for shelter during Iranian strikes helped Iran perform a battle damage assessment of their strikes, including their precision, and understand base layout for future attacks.
Iran has long exploited open-source data to target U.S. forces and allies. Two years ago, Iran doxxed 2,200 Israel Defense Forces personnel relying exclusively on open-source data. In April 2026, the Department of the Navy warned service members that unnamed cyber adversaries (obviously referring to Iran) are reaching out on social media and conducting phishing attacks, urging sailors to turn on privacy settings and refrain from posting on social media. The same month, Iranian hacker group Handala sent threatening WhatsApp messages to U.S. troops and published the supposed personal information of 2,300 U.S. service members stationed in the Persian Gulf.
Open-source data is broader than just Instagram and Facebook. Iran exploits data breaches to collect information and identify and send text messages to former Israeli defense personnel to threaten them and to attempt to recruit them for espionage purposes.
Iran is exploiting Signaling System 7 (SS7), an older telecom protocol for roaming, to identify devices with U.S. SIM cards, according to threat intelligence platform Mobile Surveillance Monitor. Using SS7, Iran was reportedly able to pinpoint hotels that housed U.S. personnel and contractors.
Iran can also simply buy data for its malicious campaigns. CENTCOM stated in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) that it has been warned that Iran may have used commercially available location data used by digital advertisers to “target and surveil” U.S. personnel. While the phone numbers behind advertising IDs are anonymized, Iran could use them to track devices in specific areas such as military bases. The Pentagon conceded that these IDs are not yet disabled by default on government-issued phones.
None of these vulnerabilities should be a surprise to defense officials. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report from October 2025 found that social media posts from service members and their families or friends provide adversaries with names, ranks, and locations that can be pieced together to reveal information about U.S. force formations and operations. Wyden and his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the House and Senate sent a letter to the Pentagon’s chief information officer in May 2026 urging more secure personal data practices and blaming current vulnerabilities on the department’s “failure to prioritize this threat and implement common sense cyber defenses recommended by federal cybersecurity experts.” The House version of the annual defense bill, meanwhile, calls for the department to better understand and train personnel about how adversaries can exploit commercial technologies to identify and monitor U.S. personnel.
To curb adversarial intelligence collection opportunities, the Department of Defense (DoD) should expand operational security requirements across the force.
First, the DoD should harden government and personal devices by requiring removal of all Mobile Advertising IDs (MAIDs) on personal and DoD-distributed devices for personnel in sensitive areas. Without IDs, the locations and metadata cannot be tracked or associated with individual users and sold to adversaries posing as commercial buyers.
Next, the DoD should create and enforce stringent policies for social media posting. Personnel should be prohibited from uploading unofficial photos and videos of military facilities or that otherwise relate to their roles and should limit the amount of information they post about their roles on platforms like LinkedIn. Government devices should have their cameras disabled or removed unless required for specific purposes, and GPS should be disabled by default. DoD should also consider providing troops with alternative devices for personal use with GPS disabled and the cameras removed.
Additionally, the DoD should monitor breached data to understand what is publicly available about all its personnel. Knowing when data is exposed will allow the DoD to identify potential threats before Iran acts and begin fixing the issue as soon as it occurs. The department can also use this information to enable mandatory password and credential rotation when information is exposed. The Pentagon should also consider encouraging or requiring additional methods of authentication, such as passkeys and biometrics, for all devices and accounts
Finally, Congress should pass regulatory reforms to transition from SS7 to new signaling technology. SS7 is an outdated system and cannot guarantee secure communications, even if new updates were to be completed. Changing the system will allow service members abroad to communicate with loved ones without leading adversaries to their location.
These measures will limit the open-source data that, at present, is readily available to Iran and other adversaries. If the DoD continues to permit unrestricted use of personal devices abroad, Iran and other adversaries will continue exploiting their vulnerabilities to locate, study, and threaten American forces.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
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The South Korean Buddhist monk, the Venerable Pomnyun Sunimin, in his book “What is Happiness?” introduces us to his philosophy of life: “Everyone born into this world has the right to be happy … and being helpful to the world and to others around us increases our own personal happiness.”
The U.S. is now ranked 24 out of the 147 countries surveyed by the Wellbeing Research Center at the University of Oxford in partnership with Gallup. Factors that contribute to this ranking include higher GDP per capita, a strong social support system, higher life expectancy, greater freedom, absence of government and corporate corruption and charitable giving. The U.S. ranking has dropped each year since 2011, with a significant decline between 2022 (ranked 15) and 2025 (ranked 24).
As a world leader, the U.S. is concerned with the world around us: With the wars in Ukraine, Iran, and Gaza and the innocent people killed; with the terrorism of October 7 and the innocent Israelis killed; armed conflicts in Sudan and Myanmar; insurgencies in Africa and Asia, and the criminal conflicts and the drug cartel violence in the Americas.
With this concern, there are understandable debates and doubts in the U.S. about a myriad of issues: the amount of aid we are providing to Ukraine, to defend itself from an invading Russia that’s receiving troops and weaponry from North Korea; efforts to peacefully negotiate a ceasefire with an Iran that says it has the right to enrich uranium and kill innocent peaceful protesters; an elusive peace in Gaza when Hamas refuses to disarm and tension in the West Bank intensifies; and a nuclear North Korea building more nuclear weapons and aligned with a revanchist Russian Federation. Helplessness with the conflicts in Sudan and Myanmar and the jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State operating throughout Africa. Security concerns in Haiti and Ecuador due to gang violence and our inability to effectively counter the flow of illicit drugs coming into the U.S., primarily from Mexico, Columbia, and China. It’s hard to find happiness when assessing the world around us and the absence of peace.
Working with our allies and partners is an integral part of diplomacy and conflict resolution. NATO, AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S.) and allies like South Korea, Japan and the Philippines are key to managing the ever-increasing security threats around the world. How we manage these relationships with our allies and partners is important.
Domestically, extreme political polarization has replaced polite political debate. A myriad of issues contribute to anxiety among the people: reported cuts to food stamps, Medicaid and social programs, with the rise in food and gas prices that receives daily media coverage. Nicolas Kristof of the New York Times reports a rise in homelessness in California, Oregon, and Hawaii and the plight of the Americans left behind. There’s extensive media coverage to rescind a planned $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and whether it was vandalism or shoddy construction of the Reflecting Pool in our Nation’s capital. Indeed, there are other political and social issues, like AI, that the average informed American is exposed to daily. Following these and other foreign and domestic issues is important for an informed electorate that will be voting in November and in 2028, but are we on overload? Of concern is the extreme polarization of views on these issues and the government’s responsibility to inform and seek the public’s support on these important issues, without adding to the polemics.
The author of “What is Happiness?” tells us: “Between 1995 and 1998, about three million people died of hunger and disease in North Korea and those who survived also suffered greatly as their family members, friends and neighbors died.” Despite North Korea’s formidable nuclear and missile capabilities, there are exigent health and food issues that continue to demand attention. The U.S. previously helped with these humanitarian issues because it was the correct thing to do. Returning to talks with North Korea to halt their nuclear and missile programs, with the lifting of sanctions and no longer demanding denuclearization as a condition for talks, would be the correct thing to do. It would be a positive development for Northeast Asia and the Korean people and hopefully contribute to the eventual reunification of the Korean Peninsula.
Progress with North Korea should bring some form of happiness to the Korean people and to the people in the U.S. who cry out for a more peaceful world.
The author is a former Associate Director of National Intelligence. All statements of fact, opinion or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. government.
This piece was originally published in The Washington Times and is republished here with permission.
Read more national security insights from experienced experts exclusively in The Cipher Brief.
The South Korean Buddhist monk, the Venerable Pomnyun Sunimin, in his book “What is Happiness?” introduces us to his philosophy of life: “Everyone born into this world has the right to be happy … and being helpful to the world and to others around us increases our own personal happiness.”
The U.S. is now ranked 24 out of the 147 countries surveyed by the Wellbeing Research Center at the University of Oxford in partnership with Gallup. Factors that contribute to this ranking include higher GDP per capita, a strong social support system, higher life expectancy, greater freedom, absence of government and corporate corruption and charitable giving. The U.S. ranking has dropped each year since 2011, with a significant decline between 2022 (ranked 15) and 2025 (ranked 24).
As a world leader, the U.S. is concerned with the world around us: With the wars in Ukraine, Iran, and Gaza and the innocent people killed; with the terrorism of October 7 and the innocent Israelis killed; armed conflicts in Sudan and Myanmar; insurgencies in Africa and Asia, and the criminal conflicts and the drug cartel violence in the Americas.
With this concern, there are understandable debates and doubts in the U.S. about a myriad of issues: the amount of aid we are providing to Ukraine, to defend itself from an invading Russia that’s receiving troops and weaponry from North Korea; efforts to peacefully negotiate a ceasefire with an Iran that says it has the right to enrich uranium and kill innocent peaceful protesters; an elusive peace in Gaza when Hamas refuses to disarm and tension in the West Bank intensifies; and a nuclear North Korea building more nuclear weapons and aligned with a revanchist Russian Federation. Helplessness with the conflicts in Sudan and Myanmar and the jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State operating throughout Africa. Security concerns in Haiti and Ecuador due to gang violence and our inability to effectively counter the flow of illicit drugs coming into the U.S., primarily from Mexico, Columbia, and China. It’s hard to find happiness when assessing the world around us and the absence of peace.
Working with our allies and partners is an integral part of diplomacy and conflict resolution. NATO, AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S.) and allies like South Korea, Japan and the Philippines are key to managing the ever-increasing security threats around the world. How we manage these relationships with our allies and partners is important.
Domestically, extreme political polarization has replaced polite political debate. A myriad of issues contribute to anxiety among the people: reported cuts to food stamps, Medicaid and social programs, with the rise in food and gas prices that receives daily media coverage. Nicolas Kristof of the New York Times reports a rise in homelessness in California, Oregon, and Hawaii and the plight of the Americans left behind. There’s extensive media coverage to rescind a planned $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and whether it was vandalism or shoddy construction of the Reflecting Pool in our Nation’s capital. Indeed, there are other political and social issues, like AI, that the average informed American is exposed to daily. Following these and other foreign and domestic issues is important for an informed electorate that will be voting in November and in 2028, but are we on overload? Of concern is the extreme polarization of views on these issues and the government’s responsibility to inform and seek the public’s support on these important issues, without adding to the polemics.
The author of “What is Happiness?” tells us: “Between 1995 and 1998, about three million people died of hunger and disease in North Korea and those who survived also suffered greatly as their family members, friends and neighbors died.” Despite North Korea’s formidable nuclear and missile capabilities, there are exigent health and food issues that continue to demand attention. The U.S. previously helped with these humanitarian issues because it was the correct thing to do. Returning to talks with North Korea to halt their nuclear and missile programs, with the lifting of sanctions and no longer demanding denuclearization as a condition for talks, would be the correct thing to do. It would be a positive development for Northeast Asia and the Korean people and hopefully contribute to the eventual reunification of the Korean Peninsula.
Progress with North Korea should bring some form of happiness to the Korean people and to the people in the U.S. who cry out for a more peaceful world.
The author is a former Associate Director of National Intelligence. All statements of fact, opinion or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. government.
Read more national security insights from experienced experts exclusively in The Cipher Brief.
“I do think there's a lot of evidence to believe that we're accomplishing the military objectives [of the Iran War], which is destroying the Iranian Navy, the Iranian Air Force, their air defenses, the missile production capabilities, drone production capabilities. That's going well. But how that translates into strategic success has been, I think, the weakness in this entire operation and continues to be today. And I think that if we were to take a step back to February [when the Iran War started], and think about where we are today, I don't know that this would be in our theory of success. It would probably be a branch plan that would not be going so well. And I'm worried about that.”
That was retired-Air Force Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote, former Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy, Integration, and Requirements, now a professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy and a non-resident adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Aerospace Security Project.
He was speaking on July 23, at a CSIS event, The Air Campaign Returns: From Epic Fury to Midnight Hammer, along with retired-Air Force Gen. James Slife, former Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, former Commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, and also a non-resident adviser to CSIS’ Aerospace Security Project.
The two former senior Air Force officers not only gave their frank views of the Iran War, but also discussed the future of warfare and its impact on the Air Force and other U.S. military forces. I will start with their views on Iran and the war and then move on to other subjects they dealt with.
Since the Strait of Hormuz is central right now, let’s begin with their views on the Strait which I found inciteful.
Ret.-Gen. Slife began by pointing out, “Military planners have struggled with the Strait of Hormuz challenge for years and years. I mean I don't think it's any surprise to anybody that's paying attention to how this has played out, because geography favors Iran in the Strait.”
Slife continued, “I mean they [Iranians] have three sides of the Strait of Hormuz, right? It's a very narrow waterway. It's very shallow. The ability to maneuver inside the Strait is very limited. It's crowded. I mean there aren't a lot of great options.”
Then, as a former Air Force commander he offered the following views: “I mean, frankly, if there was a great option for how air power could unblock the Strait of Hormuz, it would probably be unblocked at this point. There are things that I think the air component is doing in conjunction with the naval component to target the means that Iran uses to exercise control over the Strait. But it is a very difficult problem. Geography just doesn't favor us in this regard.”
Ret.-Lt. Gen. Hinote added, “I think we're dealing with the problem of small numbers,” and then explained, “The [U.S.] joint force can be exceptionally good at preventing the majority of attacks on shipping [in the Strait]. That could even get into the 90% plus range. You could even call it 98%. But it's that last 2% that the joint force just has the most difficulty stopping [Iran from hitting a transiting ship] because you just can't stop everything when there are these mountainous rugged shores that Iran controls and they can use that as [protective] cover to attack shipping.”
Hinote went on, “So the problem is not necessarily that we're not militarily successful. I call 98% pretty militarily successful, but it's that last 2% that the [ship] insurance companies cannot accept. And so that's, I believe, the true dilemma that is facing the world economy today -- that as long as Iran has the will to try and negate shipping through the Strait, it's going to have some level of capability to do so. And that just creates a conundrum that we just haven't solved and [are] unlikely to solve.”
The two former Air Force generals also raised the issue of Israeli and U.S. forces having different missions for their military involved in attacking Iran.
Ret.-Gen. Slife put it this way: “I wonder to what extent the difference in [U.S. and Israeli] targeting reflects different national aims between Israel and the United States. I don't have any way of knowing that, but I do think it's noteworthy that we are actually, we have pursued very different target sets which may tell us something about what our respective national aims are.”
Ret.-Lt. Gen. Hinote picked up that idea saying, “To me, the Israeli theory of success is pretty straightforward. They [the Israelis] believe the Iranian regime will always be hostile to them and they believe that they have to go back and back and back to re-strike things and to re-strike the regime targets. And you might think of that as a strategy that we've heard called mowing the grass…meaning that the grass is going to grow back and we're going to go back and they are resigned to some way of mowing the grass again for years.”
That means, according to Hinote, “The more [Iranian] regime leaders we [meaning the Israelis] can kill, the better, because that means it takes more time for the new regime leaders to be dangerous to us.”
As for the U.S., according to Hinote, “We're at a stage now where we're fighting a coercion campaign…Hey, we want the Strait [of Hormuz] open. Hey, we want you to give up your nuclear aspirations.”
But now, as he adds, “There's nobody left in Iran who really can make that decision and enforce it up and down what is left of the government and military apparatus. So we're in a state now where what you might have thought of as the strategic aims and the military means, not only were they not necessarily totally aligned, they may have in certain circumstances worked against each other -- and that's a really difficult place to be.”
That is because, as Hinote points out, “We [the Israelis and U.S.] did one of the most successful, maybe the most successful decapitation operation [of Iranian leadership] in history. And so given that, I think you expect that there's going to be a high degree of paralysis and inaction at the
highest levels of the Iranian government. So you're almost thinking like, okay, well, what at that point, how do you take advantage of that strategic paralysis?”
However, there was no “strategic paralysis” in the Tehran regime, nor was there an internal uprising, as President Trump called for that night last February when he announced the first Iran attacks were underway. “When we are finished,” Trump said to the Iranian people, “take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will probably be your only chance for generations." Trump also called on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the armed forces and police to "lay down your weapons and have complete immunity" otherwise "face certain death."
As Hinote put it last week, “We're in a state now where what you might have thought of as the strategic aims and the military means not only were not necessarily totally aligned, they may
have in certain circumstances worked against each other -- and that's a really difficult place to be. And I think one of the reasons why it feels intractable right now is because you have that disparity.”
In fact, Hinote added, “The United States would like to be done with the Middle East, so that we could finally execute some sort of pivot to Asia. And we'd like to get out of all of these very expensive bases in the Middle East. And so we have a theory that is we want to put the [Iranian] regime into some sort of state where we don't have to go back anytime soon -- and we get to a steady state that is better than what was in existence on February 28th [when the U.S. and Israel first attacked Iran].”
Slife also mentioned an effect on U.S military readiness from the Iran War that need further attention when he said, “You know that all our readiness is built around how we generate and deploy forces, particularly for the Air Force and the Navy. We've seen heavy deployments beyond what the [military] services feel like they can routinely support from a readiness perspective and so those things always have a delayed effect.”
Slife added, “I think just the pace of operations over the last year has probably exceeded the Air Force and the Navy's ability to maintain levels of readiness going forward. So, I think we were going to have to pay close attention to that over the next three-to-five years, because there is always a delayed impact to these kinds of heavy operations.”
Hinote spoke about “the mission to rescue the [U.S.] back-seater of the F-15E [that was shot down over Iran]. We've only heard a little bit about that. My sense is that it was a huge operation that required tremendous integration across multiple types of forces in a very difficult time frame.”
He pointed out the difference from the troubled April 1980 Iran rescue attempt that was, he said, “so bad that it led to reforms for the next decade in the United States military. We may see that [the April 5, F-15E back-seater] rescue operation, in contrast, stands as being one of the best we've ever seen.”
Hinote then explained why saving the back-seater was so important.
“What if that weapon-system officer would have been captured and paraded in Iran on TV with the entire world seeing it real time,” Hinote said, “You could see that any political objectives that we were trying to achieve would be all the more difficult to achieve with one single pilot being paraded around in Iran…So, not only was the true political nature of the whole operation in jeopardy, but you [the U.S.] were willing to send what I think is going to end up being scores of airplanes into harm's way, multiple units, helicopters and such to go rescue this one pilot so that the political objectives could be preserved.”
While public concentration currently is on what’s not yet worked to end the Iran War, that rescue operation was one element that did succeed.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
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On March 25, 2025, Israeli aircraft struck a set of Syrian airfields. The targets were not Syrian assets, instead they were the sites Turkey had surveyed for planned forward military bases. Ankara quietly shelved the deployment.
That is what the Israel-Turkey rivalry looks like when it is working as designed: a NATO member and a US major non-NATO ally maneuvering against each other in a third country, close enough to require a deconfliction hotline, disciplined enough that neither has yet acknowledged the confrontation for what it is. The two governments have run a channel through Azerbaijani mediation to prevent accidents. Turkish officials describe it as, "strictly technical," signaling neither normalization nor any convergence.
The conditions that made the channel necessary are getting worse, and the outside power that has historically kept this rivalry from becoming a rupture is changing.
Trump's Gift to Erdogan
When Donald Trump landed in Ankara on July 7, 2026 for the NATO summit he became the first sitting US president to visit Turkey in over a decade. He arrived with what aides openly called a "gift bag" for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On CAATSA sanctions, imposed in 2020 over Turkey's purchase of Russia's S-400 system, Trump was categorical: "We're going to be taking the sanctions off; it's time. We don't want to sanction friends." On F110 engines for Turkey's homegrown KAAN fighter, the administration notified key lawmakers it was proceeding. The F-35 remained genuinely conditional, something his administration would "certainly consider." Erdogan told reporters Trump had pledged six aircraft and “always keeps his word”.
Standing beside Erdogan, Trump said Turkey had proven a more loyal partner than some allies Washington once counted on.
Israel's reaction was immediate and unprecedented. Speaking to Fox News and CNN, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that arming Turkey with F-35s would upset the regional balance. He described Erdogan's government as ideologically hostile to Washington and openly threatening to Israel, and pointed to Turkey's continued presence in northern Cyprus. It was the first time Israel had publicly opposed a US arms sale to a fellow NATO member.
Trump was reportedly irritated. Netanyahu insisted the two governments still saw eye-to-eye on the big picture. This difference is worth noting.
They do not see eye-to-eye, and the reason is not sentiment. This administration's Middle East policy seems focused on commercial and strategic arithmetic. On that scale Turkey scores well: 85 million people, a NATO air force, a fast-growing arms industry, control of the Bosporus, and a leader willing to transact. Israel's ability to shape US decisions in the region has always rested on an unstated premise: Washington values the relationship with Israel above the deal in front of it. Ankara is testing that premise. So far, Washington is not objecting.
The pattern repeated within three weeks. On July 8, the State Department initiated the rescission of Syria's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, a status in place since 1979, following Trump's meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa. On July 22, Washington and Riyadh announced a nuclear cooperation agreement. Neither move was calibrated to Israeli preferences, but to American interests.
What Turkey Gained While Israel Was Fighting
Ankara's leverage did not appear in July. It accumulated while Israel was occupied elsewhere.
Syria is the clearest case. Since Bashar al-Assad's fall in December 2024, Turkey has established itself as the dominant external patron of al-Sharaa's government. On July 19, 2026, al-Sharaa consolidated the security apparatus under Interior Minister Anas Khattab, who now also heads the National Security Bureau, with Abdul Qader Tahan installed at General Intelligence and Hussein al-Salamah as Khattab's deputy. For Turkey, a centralized Damascus under a friendly government is a forward base, a reconstruction market, and a check on Kurdish autonomy along its southern border all at once.
Israel reads the same arrangement as a threat under construction, and has acted accordingly. In the seven months after Assad fell, Israel conducted roughly 988 air and artillery strikes in Syria, nearly triple its previous rate, including against the Presidential Palace and Ministry of Defense in Damascus. The March 2025 framework for integrating Kurdish forces into the Syrian state remains frozen, which Turkish officials blame largely on Israeli operations destabilizing the Syrian government.
Beyond the Levant, Turkey's footprint keeps widening. In Somalia it operates its largest overseas military base, has trained more than 15,000 soldiers, deployed F-16s and armor, and in 2026 began offshore oil drilling protected by Turkish naval assets. These are moves aimed in part at countering Israel's outreach to Somaliland. Turkey's defense minister says other African governments are now requesting the same security-and-investment package. Layered onto bases in Qatar and northern Iraq, Ankara has assembled a chain of footholds from the Horn of Africa to the Caucasus.
Two structural shifts accelerated this. Iran's regional network was degraded by the 2026 war, leaving a vacuum in Syria and Lebanon that Turkish diplomacy, trade, and reconstruction capital are filling faster than anyone else. Iran is not finished, and Russia was preparing Su-35 deliveries to Tehran the same week Trump was in Ankara.
Meanwhile Moscow's grip on the South Caucasus eroded after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, when most of its forces was deployed in the Ukrainian war, and after the US brokered the 2025 Armenia-Azerbaijan framework, which opened the Zangezur corridor linking Azerbaijan to Turkey.
Israel forging new alliances
Israel has also been forging alliances, no longer counting on the US as their sole guarantee.
In December 2025, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus held their tenth trilateral summit in Jerusalem, where Netanyahu spoke against those who dream of restoring old empires. The three signed a 2026 military cooperation plan covering joint air and naval exercises, intelligence sharing, and reported discussions of a roughly 2,500-strong rapid-deployment force. By February 2026, Netanyahu was describing a broader "hexagon of alliances" built around Greece, Cyprus, and India.
Ankara's counter-positioning is equally deliberate. Turkey has hosted Hamas officials for years and holds real influence over any postwar settlement in Gaza. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan's remark that Israel had become a burden humanity could no longer bear drew an Israeli rebuke as incitement. Each government now treats the other's regional relationships as evidence of intent.
Where It Breaks
Direct confrontation remains unlikely, but not impossible. Both capitals understand the costs. But the deconfliction channel is a technical fix for a strategic problem, and four scenarios handled incorrectly could force the two powers into collision.
Syria is the live one. Israeli strikes to prevent hostile entrenchment collide directly with Turkey's project of a unified, centrally governed Syrian state. Israel has already struck sites Turkey intended to occupy. Repeat that once with Turkish personnel present and the hotline becomes a record of a failure rather than a mechanism preventing one.
Lebanon compounds it: Hezbollah degraded but intact, Turkey's expanding humanitarian and political footprint, and continued Israeli operations against Hezbollah infrastructure pulling outside patrons into direct rivalry. Trump is suggesting that Syria should intervene, something Israel can not accept.
Cyprus, divided since 1974, is where Israeli-Greek-Cypriot military integration and a prospective joint rapid-reaction force meet Turkish assertiveness in the Eastern Mediterranean. While several of the nations are NATO members, new hostility risks drawing in allied nations.
The F-35 decision itself is the fourth. If Congress and the Pentagon proceed over Israeli objections, it is a tangible erosion of the qualitative military edge that Netanyahu argues is the foundation of deterrence.
Conclusion
Israel and Turkey have been rivals for a decade; and for most of that decade, the fault line stayed closed because the US had an interest in keeping it closed. But the Ankara summit demonstrated, reinforced by the Syria delisting and the Saudi nuclear agreement, that this administration will price each decision on its own merits without allowing allies to veto them. That is a coherent policy. But it risks removing the pressure that has been holding two armed, ambitious, US-aligned states apart in the same contested space.
Washington is not choosing between Israel and Turkey. It is counting on the two allies staying away from an armed conflict. The question is whether a deconfliction hotline routed through Baku can carry the weight that American guarantees used to.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
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The Iranian leadership appears to be intent on demonstrating its defiance and courage in the face of American force while also humiliating the “most powerful man in the world.”
“Counting Coup, or striking an enemy, was the highest honor earned by warriors participating in the intertribal wars of the Great Plains. Key to a man’s success in Plains combat was demonstrating his own courage by proving superiority over his opponent and, in a competitive sense, over his own comrades.
Killing was a part of war, but showing courage in the process was more important for individual status. This was best accomplished by risking one’s life in charging the enemy on foot or horseback to get close enough to touch or strike him with the hand, a weapon, or a “coupstick.”
Humiliating the enemy also played a part in this fighting…
Counting Coup, then, was the epitome of a type of warfare that pitted skill and daring of one man against another.”
Walking the Line
Iran is playing a very dangerous game. In the face of the awesome military power of the United States, in between desultory negotiating sessions, they continue to touch the enemy by launching attacks against U.S. and allied Gulf facilities. Recently, they have reached farther afield, striking U.S. assets in an Egyptian port. This would seem to be inexplicable behavior, given the U.S.’s obvious desire for a deal, inviting as it has strong retaliatory strikes against Iran’s increasingly beleaguered military, and potentially civilian, infrastructure. Most recently, we are seeing reports of possible Iranian cyberattacks on the water supplies of U.S. cities; such activities are certain to continue and likely to escalate, plausibly deniable and effective in sowing fear as they are. The question is why?
It may be simple hubris. It may be a misread of the desperation of their opponent. Or simply overconfidence in the strength of their position. It most certainly is part and parcel of a purposeful negotiating strategy, a reminder to all involved that Iranian forces can reach out and touch you whenever they wish.
Regardless, they are walking a fine line, and they have placed this conflict squarely in the crosshairs of unintended consequences.
As they so often do, they risk overreaching. Should one of these missile or drone strikes make it through, whether by luck or skill, and inflict truly significant casualties on U.S. personnel, either in a land-based facility or on a naval vessel for example, this could surge American support for a massive response, possibly including – however unlikely – ground troops, radically altering and escalating the course of this conflict.
Internal Factions at Play
The Iranian leadership’s actions, however, are likely aimed not only at the United States but may be the result of continued factional maneuvering in Tehran, as groups jockey for advantage for what comes next. Now that it appears likely the regime will survive, they are no doubt looking ahead to where they will land in a new regime. As both factions and individuals.
As I wrote in ‘Is Iran Controlling the Gulf Conflict?’: “I would posit that the newly ascended Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, may in fact be a phantom leader. Alive in some fashion, perhaps largely incapacitated, but not actually in charge. And even if able to coherently express his views, in no way nearly as powerful or influential as his father. The seemingly reckless actions of the regime in courting U.S. retaliation may in actuality reflect a lack of a coherent decision-making process as opposed to a unified one. I think it is quite possible that competing factions within the regime are using Mojtaba as an avatar while they maneuver for decisive advantage.”
Get Out!
On 15 May, I laid out in “Ground Hog Day”, a recommended way forward for the U.S. that I think largely still applies. It is a measure of how fruitless continued military action is that these remain relevant today:
“Make a deal with Iran. One that they will accept. This will require painful concessions and is certain to include provisions that many will find objectionable, including significant sanctions relief. And it will leave the Iranian regime in place and in control of Iran. For now.”
“As much as I would prefer to see regime change in Iran, I believe a deal may be the only realistic way out of the Groundhog Day-like doom loop in which we find ourselves. Simply put, the administration squandered the initial opportunity presented by a unique confluence of events by its lack of strategic planning and a fundamental misunderstanding of Iran and the Iranian regime.”
“As a result, we are going to have to step back and take a longer view. I pity the people of Iran, at least in the near term. They are certain to suffer the brunt of the regime’s immediate ire. That is a hard truth.”
“This is not, however, the end of the story. Iran’s internal weaknesses still matter–and may shape what comes next more than battlefield successes. I am cautiously, very cautiously optimistic that even barring regime change, Iran’s leadership will be forced to change direction.”
“The issues facing Iran prior to the War were serious, in fact existential – a collapsing economy, hyper-inflation, severe water shortages, lack of electricity, and growing widespread popular anger and unrest – and are ongoing and only getting worse. Whatever the Iranian leadership looks like, it will have to address these issues. And it is not clear that they will be capable of doing this without outside help. This is where the U.S. and hopefully our Western allies come in: sanctions relief, and extensive economic and other assistance in exchange for real changes in policy and a pullback on objectionable activities and programs. The potential for this may, and I say may, have increased with the removal of Ali Khamenei from the Supreme Leader’s seat. But it will depend on whether his son and successor, Mojtaba, is less rigidly ideological than his father. We will see if he is willing to put the Iranian people ahead of the regime.”
What Awaits!
It is becoming more obvious by the day that the U.S. needs to come to a negotiated settlement with Iran. And the terms of this settlement are certain to be painful and unsatisfactory from the perspective of the West. But continuing tit-for-tat airstrikes simply prolongs the pain and risks horrific unintended consequences without solving the problem, as well as providing the regime with a distraction from its appalling management of Iran’s economy, natural resources, and foreign policy.
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The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
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Recent statements from President Trump indicate he is prepared to continue, or escalate, U.S. military strikes while simultaneously signaling he is open to continued negotiations. Some would see this as a reasonable offer of carrot or stick. But, having lost scores of ships, missiles, and military production facilities, U.S. actions still depend on what Iran does. This is allowing the regime leadership to control the pace of the conflict. How is this possible?
By his own words, President Trump is admitting the United States is in full-blown reaction-mode, granting Iran effective control over the tempo of both military operations and peace negotiations. This is a mistake, born of the obvious desperation of the White House to extricate itself from the black hole that is the Iran War, and that is increasingly proving to be a drag on Republican chances in the approaching midterms.
Iran is clearly playing the provocateur, poking the bear with selective strikes on shipping daring to test their illegal claim of administrating the Strait. They are paying the price by suffering increasingly focused destruction of their offensive coastal capabilities.
This is as it should be. Iran simply cannot be allowed to impose itself on the movement of shipping through an international waterway. But… the President’s quickly aborted claim that the U.S. military should receive a 20% gratuity for its efforts to keep the Strait open has predictably only muddied the issue further.
Who’s Really in Charge in Iran and What Do They Want?
The regime clearly sees itself in the dominant position. Or, at least, in a position to bear more pain, for now, than their adversary. I believe this likely reflects their own internal political dynamics, not unlike U.S. domestic politics driving much of Trump’s actions. But with Iran, this is a more factional disunity of opinion over the best course of action vice the overly unitary decision-making process the U.S. side is suffering from. I’ve written about this before in my 25 April post; ‘The Iranian Power Struggle’: “In my years at CIA dealing with Iran and Iranians, I observed many instances of such backroom political maneuvering, including a willingness to sabotage efforts by others engaged in back-channel deals. This was particularly the case when the counterpart was America. Publicly scorned as the “Great Satan”, but secretly coveted as the superpower of choice, individuals and factions knew that whoever secured a special relationship with America would be in the pole position going forward. The attitude was “if not me, then no one!”, essentially the grownup version of ‘King of the Hill.’”
This may account for the regime’s inexplicable willingness to reject any compromise while continuing to absorb punishment; perhaps more to put pressure on their internal political rivals than to gain external military advantage. In the end, it is likely they will eventually call a halt to this by reengaging on negotiations when they determine they risk losing too much capability.
Exacerbating this, I would posit that the newly ascended Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, may in fact be a phantom leader. Alive in some fashion, perhaps largely incapacitated, but not actually in charge. And even if able to coherently express his views, in no way nearly as powerful or influential as his father. The seemingly reckless actions of the regime in courting U.S. retaliation may in actuality reflect a lack of a coherent decision-making process as opposed to a unified one. I think it is quite possible that competing factions within the regime are using Mojtaba as an avatar while they maneuver for decisive advantage.
Regardless of which faction ultimately dominates, the implications for the United States remain how to break through to the regime’s decision-makers in the near term.
Hyperbole Weakens the U.S. Position
In the meantime, Trump’s regular stream of alternating obsequious and insulting, but always hyperbolic, ‘Truths’, the result of his obvious frustration over the regime’s unwillingness to accept what he is offering – whatever that might be at that moment - serves only to inflame and/or simply confuse an already chaotic situation. All resulting from the vaguely written and amateurish MOU that Trump himself signed.
As I wrote previously in a 12 April post, Hyperbole is Donald Trump’s love language. He continues to employ it almost daily, usually in reaction to a disappointment with the Iranian regime’s actions. And almost always to the detriment of his stated desire for peace. Unfortunately, the Iranian regime has been practicing this same language of hyperbole on an industrial scale for a generation. They understand both how to use it and counter it.
But the practice of diplomacy is a quiet profession. One that requires patience. One that requires expertise. One that requires steadiness and focus. None of which characteristics the President or his negotiators appear capable of exhibiting.
If I were to give the President a piece of advice, I would echo the words of David Ignatius in his most recent Washington Post column: “Just stop talking,” although more directly and less politely, “Just shut up and let the professionals do their job!”
What now?
I wrote about what may come next, after the permanent cessation of hostilities, in my 15 May post, Groundhog Day: “The issues facing Iran prior to the War were serious, in fact existential – a collapsing economy, hyper-inflation, severe water shortages, lack of electricity, and growing widespread popular anger and unrest – and are ongoing and only getting worse. Whatever the Iranian leadership looks like, it will have to address these issues. And it is not clear that they will be capable of doing this without outside help. This is where the U.S. and hopefully our Western allies come in: sanctions relief, and extensive economic and other assistance in exchange for real changes in policy and a pullback on objectionable activities and programs. The potential for this may, and I say may, have increased with the removal of Ali Khamenei from the Supreme Leader’s seat. But it will depend on whether his son and successor, Mojtaba, is less rigidly ideological than his father. We will see if he is willing to put the Iranian people ahead of the regime.”
Next steps
First, we need to significantly blunt the regime’s ongoing ability to project power and control the Strait of Hormuz. It needs to reopen and stay open. And it will. Both sides need it to, but not on the regime’s terms. The focused effort on degrading Iran’s coastal offensive capabilities should continue apace.
We need the regime to be forced to address the internal existential threats listed above. This is sure to absorb much of their time and money and may eventually consume them. And it may even bring them back to the negotiating table. Escalating military strikes on energy facilities and civilian infrastructure would serve only to alienate the Iranian population and distract from the Iranian leadership’s appalling incompetence, strengthening the regime. As part of this, the current MOU must be abandoned and recast in a more evenhanded manner, leading to permanent peace. Adhering to it as currently written will only ensure we will be forced to return in the future. As we are already seeing.
The current dynamic from the U.S. side is emotionally driven and self-defeating. The Iranians appear riven by paralyzing factionalism, with a hefty dose of hubris regarding their temporary advantage. Neither is a recipe for success. The question is not whether Iran can win a military confrontation with the United States. It cannot. The question is whether it can continue forcing Washington to react rather than act. For now, that answer appears to be yes.
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