Iran War: What happened over the weekend

We’ve had another big weekend of Iran confusion, so here are the four numbers you need to know, starting with…

• 3

That’s how many days are left in this 14-day US-Iran ceasefire, which expires Wednesday night. So there’s a bit at stake in the second round of talks purportedly due in Pakistan from tonight (Monday). But…

• Iran’s regime has flatly denied these talks are even happening, blaming DC’s “excessive demands“. And that might explain why…
• Trump just hit ctrl-z on even sending VP Vance at all, instead leaving lower-ranked (in theory) envoys Witkoff and Kushner to jet over to Pakistan.

The regime didn’t specify which specific US demands are excessive, though we’ve long flagged the two sides are in complete opposition over nukes, proxies, and Hormuz.

And speaking of Hormuz…

• 10

That’s how many international vessels just tried to break through the regime’s Hormuz blockade over the weekend before pulling a rapid U-turn amid Iranian radio warnings, plus even live fire from two regime gunboats! Yes, the regime still has gunboats.

The next day (Sunday), a regime-linked cargo vessel tried to defy the US blockade — a US destroyer gave the Iranians six hours of warnings before blowing a hole through the engine room and deploying Marines to seize the bridge.

The end result of these duelling enforcements is that Hormuz traffic is now effectively back to zero.

How’d this happen?

• 8 hours

That was the gap between Iran’s foreign minister tweeting Hormuz is open, and a regime naval unit then reportedly radioing that “the Strait of Hormuz is still closed — we will open it by the order of our leader Imam Khamenei, not by the tweets of some idiot.“

Officials later claimed the ‘idiot’ referred to Trump, but the timing and parallel dunking on the FM’s “poor judgment” make it realistically a reference to Iran’s own FM.

And we don’t usually care about name-calling, other than in this instance, it hints at the regime’s own spicy internal dynamics: playing hardball on the Pakistan talks, opening fire on Hormuz shipping, then publicly calling your own foreign minister an idiot, all hints at regime hardliners (like IRGC boss Ahmad Vahidi) now openly vying for control.

And we only care about that because it shapes a) what flexibility the regime is willing to show, and b) whether Iran’s negotiators can even guarantee compliance with any deal!

Maybe that’s why…

• ~8%

That’s how far US crude oil prices have spiked in recent hours (back around $90), as markets process the fact that…

• Trump just issued his third demand to reopen the Strait or “the United States is going to knock out every single power plant and every single bridge in Iran”, while…
• The regime is warning Hormuz will stay closed until the US lifts its blockade!

So… here we are, back to where it all began. And yet a ceasefire, a “we’re open” tweet, and a radio roast later, there are ~zero ships transiting Hormuz, and 72 hours left on the clock. From here, we either see another TACO, another vexed deal, or another war.

Intrigue’s Take

To file this all away as mere bluffing or tactics might be giving everyone too much credit. Rather, maybe this weekend’s chaos just exposes the deal’s underlying cracks:

• Trump can’t accept a nuclear-ambitious and Hormuz-controlling Iran then expect to survive November’s mid-terms, and yet…
• The mullahs can’t cede their nuclear and Hormuz leverage then still expect to cling to power.

This partly all goes to goals — the regime entered this conflict with two low-hurdle goals: regime survival, and rival deterrence. With the regime still standing and global energy markets still bruised by the retaliation, both goals still seem intact.

As for DC’s goals? They were clear at first (bomb Khamenei, anoint a Delcy), but not so clear now. And two parts of any realistic deal are worth understanding clearly:

• There’s talk of Iran ceding its highly-enriched uranium, but recall the Iranians could only build that stockpile because Trump ditched the JCPOA deal; and…
• There’s also talk of Iran re-opening Hormuz, but recall it was open until this war.

Our point? Absent regime collapse or some further US escalation (a third US carrier group is due to arrive within days), the US now needs to burn a chunk of any leverage just to get things back to where they were: with an open Hormuz and a regime negotiating the terms (not existence) of its nuclear program.