Iran Plotted Multi-Front Proxy War in Cease-Fire
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- Iran secretly devised a step-by-step plan during a fleeting spring cease-fire to use its "Axis of Resistance" proxy militias to escalate attacks if the United States intensified its campaign.
- Iran's proxies have struck a widening circle of targets, including a drone attack on Saudi Arabia's largest oil facility, two gas tankers bursting into flames at an Egyptian port near the Suez Canal, and missiles fired toward a U.S. base in Jordan.
- Mahdi Mohammadi, senior adviser to Iran's chief negotiator, publicly boasted on social media that "the rules of the conflict are changing" and that coordinated fronts are "multiplying from different directions in the region."
- The Iranian strategy is explicitly designed to make war as costly as possible for President Trump and pressure the U.S. to halt its campaign against the Islamic Republic.
- Iran and its allies have regrouped after taking powerful blows since Hamas's 2023 attack on Israel, with recent events demonstrating their capacity to stir chaos and gain leverage.
Why it matters: Iran pre-mapped a multi-front campaign that specifically targets the world's largest oil facility and the Suez Canal — the two most consequential chokepoints in global energy and trade — meaning each attack imposes outsized costs on U.S. allies and markets, giving Iran leverage to deter further U.S. escalation.
