Tehran has delivered to the United States a "firm and rational response" whose contents no one has disclosed. The White House is split into three camps, Gulf allies have been told to prepare for strikes as early as November 4, and Trump promises to hit an underground nuclear site "in one hour." A war that Washington calls "very soft" could become a real one again in the coming days.
On the morning of November 3, as polling stations were opening on the U.S. East Coast, Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf took the rostrum and delivered a line that Tehran had clearly spent more than a day polishing. Iran, he said, had given the American side a firm and rational response, and now the ball was in America's court: it was up to Washington to decide whether there would be a new war. Ghalibaf did not specify what the response actually said. Nor did he name the channel through which it had been delivered.
A day earlier, American aircraft had struck Qeshm, the largest island in the Persian Gulf. That same evening, in a phone interview with a conservative television network, Donald Trump asked with genuine puzzlement: "When was the last time we launched something? This is not a war, it's a very soft war." He immediately added that the United States could strike the Iranian site inside Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La mountain, known as "Pickaxe," "in one hour, whenever we want."
Eight months of war have taught both sides to speak two languages at once. Ghalibaf threatens a "new battlefield" and, in the same speech, emphasizes rationality. Trump threatens to bomb and, in the same interview, insists that the chances of a deal are "very good." Each tosses the ball to the other, hoping the opponent will blink first. The trouble is that the ball in this game has very tangible contents: roughly a fifth of global oil trade passing through the Strait of Hormuz, and an underground complex beneath granite where, according to intelligence agencies, Iran may have moved some of its uranium enriched to 60%.
The Response No One Has Seen
The choice of speaker says more than his words. Ghalibaf is a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps air force, a former police chief, mayor of Tehran for twelve years (2005 to 2017), and speaker of parliament since 2020. He now also heads the negotiating team. Iran's voice in its contacts with Washington belongs not to the reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian or to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, but to a man from the security establishment. For the domestic audience, this is a signal: any agreement will be sold as a victory for the IRGC, not as a concession by diplomats.
The context of the response can be pieced together from indirect evidence. In recent days, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi was in Doha, passing messages to Washington through Qatari mediators. The Iranian delegation left Qatar on Sunday, November 1, and on Monday evening Qatari negotiator Ali al-Thawadi flew into Tehran. According to the American press, the Qataris have drafted an agreement with a three-day sequence of confidence-building measures designed to clear the way for a resumption of direct talks. The draft itself has been under discussion for eight days.
The Iranian side describes the basis of this draft differently: a seven-step plan developed back in September. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on November 2 that the plan had not changed, but could now be implemented in two days rather than a week. Tehran's conditions have long been known: lifting the American naval blockade of Iranian ports, removing sanctions, guarantees that strikes will stop, and a complete ceasefire across the region, above all in Lebanon. Araghchi added to these the restoration of oil waivers and the unfreezing of all Iranian funds, including those held in Qatar.
Iranian state media explicitly linked Ghalibaf's words to the conditions for reopening Hormuz. In other words, the "firm response" is not a concession but a restatement of Iran's own demands on a compressed timetable. Tehran has picked up the pace but has not shifted its position.
There is a detail in the speaker's speech that is easy to miss. He addressed his point about the ball being in America's court to "the countries of the region." Translated from diplomatic language, it is simple: if strikes are launched from bases on your territory, you become part of the equation. Ghalibaf stressed separately that the response to any new attack would not be limited by geography.
A "Very Soft War" With Shooting at Night
American officials described the November 2 strike on Qeshm as defensive. The account goes like this: an IRGC unit fired a surface-to-air missile at an American aircraft over the strait, after which an American fighter jet destroyed the launcher. According to other reports, the strikes hit radar sites and missile positions. Iran's state news agency reported five consecutive explosions, which were also heard in Bandar Lengeh. The IRGC claimed to have shot down an American MQ-9 drone east of Hormuz; another version had two drones downed south of Qeshm. Washington did not confirm these claims.
I treat IRGC claims of downed American aircraft with caution: over eight months of war, a significant share of them have gone unconfirmed. Something else is far more telling. According to American officials, limited strikes of this kind have been carried out for several weeks and are deliberately not announced, so as not to create the impression that a full-scale campaign has resumed. The last publicly acknowledged attack on Iran dates to early September, and Trump promised not to launch new ones before the election.
The result is a war below the threshold of visibility. Loud enough to keep the IRGC on edge near the strait. At the same time, quiet enough not to crash the oil market the day before the vote. The line about a "soft war" was uttered on the very evening that radar positions were burning on Qeshm.
The island was not chosen at random. Qeshm guards the narrows of the strait opposite Bandar Abbas, the main base of the Iranian navy. It has been hit before: in March, Tehran accused the United States of striking a desalination plant on the island, and on May 7, American strikes hit Bandar Abbas and Qeshm. Whoever controls Qeshm's radars sees every tanker in the strait.
A Mountain Beneath Granite: What Is Hidden Two Kilometers From Natanz
Pickaxe is the main trump card Trump has been brandishing since summer. The complex is cut into a granite massif roughly 1.6 to 2 kilometers south of the enrichment plant at Natanz, 225 kilometers from Tehran. Construction began in 2020, after an explosion destroyed the aboveground centrifuge assembly hall at Natanz. Ali Akbar Salehi, then head of Iran's nuclear program, announced the start of work on an underground plant. IAEA inspectors have never set foot on the site.
Estimates of its depth vary, and the spread itself speaks volumes. Open-source satellite studies put it at 80 to 100 meters. Some publications in the Gulf states claim it lies as deep as 600 meters. The truth is probably closer to the first figure, but even that is enough to cast doubt on the capabilities of America's most powerful non-nuclear bomb, the GBU-57. In June 2025, during Operation Midnight Hammer, American B-2s dropped 14 of these bombs on Fordow and Natanz. Pickaxe was left untouched, and Iran kept digging.
American military planners have reportedly discussed a tactic of dropping two bombs in sequence on the same point. That approach offers no guarantee of destruction. Hence the question that Trump's "in one hour" does not answer: can you destroy a facility whose depth no one reliably knows?
Trump keeps returning to Pickaxe, and the reason, in my view, is political. The Hormuz blockade is a topic for market reports. A nuclear facility beneath a mountain is the only argument capable of justifying a resumption of full-scale strikes in the eyes of an American voter weary of gas prices. If the White House needs a new campaign, it will be sold under a nuclear banner, not an oil one.
Three Camps Outside the Oval Office
The most valuable aspect of what is happening is the leak about the split within Trump's team. According to American sources, the president is weighing three options, and his inner circle is divided almost evenly.
The first camp consists of Vice President JD Vance and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. They are pushing for a deal, believing that a new war would change nothing for the better. Most Gulf states, according to the same sources, agree with them. On November 2, Vance told reporters that he and the president were "pretty confident" about the prospects for a settlement, that there was no deadline for resuming strikes, and that Trump retained "kinetic and non-kinetic options." Vance's condition is a firm and verifiable commitment by Iran not to rebuild its nuclear program.
The second camp consists of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Their argument: Iran cannot be trusted either in concluding a deal or in implementing it, so the job must be finished militarily. According to the American press, Netanyahu urged Trump in a phone call to strike immediately after the election. A detail that is hard to overlook: the list of the American president's advisers on Iran includes the head of a foreign government.
The third camp consists of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. They propose maintaining the status quo: no war, no deal, only economic strangulation. According to a source, Ratcliffe told Trump that prolonged economic pain would either force Iran into major concessions or create enough instability for a popular uprising.
In his phone interview on November 2, Trump himself summed up his position this way: "One way or another we'll do something, but there's no rush. We've bled them dry financially. They have no money, no gasoline, and their people are very tired." That evening, asked whether he was considering strikes after the election, the president answered with a curt "no."
My conclusion from this picture: the third camp has already won, just without an announcement. The strikes on Qeshm are the military expression of the Bessent-Ratcliffe doctrine: pressure without war, pinpoint force without a campaign. The question is how long this arrangement will hold if Tehran keeps hitting tankers.
90% Inflation and Not a Single Tanker: What the CIA's Bet Rests On
The numbers the economic camp relies on are indeed grim. The American naval blockade of Iranian ports was imposed on April 13, after the collapse of the talks in Islamabad on April 12 and 13. According to a Pentagon estimate, Iran had lost $4.8 billion in oil revenue by May 1. In June, the Islamabad Memorandum signed by the presidents of the two countries lifted the dual blockade, but on July 8 the truce collapsed after Iranian attacks on merchant ships, and on July 14 the United States reimposed the blockade.
On August 24, Bessent announced Operation Economic Pariah, which the administration dubbed "economic D-Day." Secondary sanctions were extended to digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. "We used to have a maximum pressure campaign. Now we have an absolute isolation campaign, and it's working," the secretary said in October. According to the U.S. Treasury, Iran has not loaded a single cargo of oil onto a tanker since August 25. On October 8, sanctions were imposed on another 17 vessels that Washington regards as the backbone of Iran's remaining shadow fleet.
Iranian statistics confirm the main point. Annual inflation in September, according to the Statistical Center of Iran, reached 89.8%, with a twelve-month average of 73.6%. In early 2025, the figure was around 35%. On August 24, the rial traded at 2.02 million to the dollar on the open market, and in October it fell to a record 2.687 million. In August, Noor and Ayandeh banks collapsed and were forcibly merged into Bank Melli. In its October outlook, the IMF expects Iran's economy to contract by 7.6% in 2026.
The U.S. Treasury report published on October 30 should be read with its author in mind: it is a document from the very agency that designed the campaign and has an interest in showing it works. Even so, it does not claim that the regime is close to collapse. The Treasury writes about a crippled economy, not a collapsing state.
The history of sanctions regimes suggests why Ratcliffe may be wrong. Iraq lived under the harshest UN sanctions from August 1990 to 2003, lost a significant share of its GDP, and suffered a humanitarian catastrophe, yet Saddam Hussein fell to an invasion, not an uprising. North Korea went through mass famine in the 1990s without a change of power. Economic pain rarely topples regimes built on a security apparatus. More often, it shifts resources from society to the army and the intelligence services.
An October Surprise From the Revolutionary Guards
Iran understands the American electoral calendar perfectly well, and in October it placed its bet on it. Attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz increased sharply, and Iranian officials speaking with foreign journalists made no secret of the goal: to keep oil prices high and influence the midterm elections.
Estimates of the scale vary, and the spread itself is telling. One Washington think tank counted 26 attacks on vessels from October 1 to 19, compared with 13 for all of September. A Western official cited by the American press spoke of roughly 30 attacks a week in September. The difference apparently lies in methodology: some count only confirmed hits, while others include shelling and attempted attacks. Either way, the direction is the same: up.
By early October, the International Maritime Organization had counted at least 24 sailors killed and about 100 merchant ships attacked in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman since the start of the war. On October 16, the supertanker ST3 caught fire northeast of Saudi Arabia's Jubail. Oil exports through Hormuz in the first week of October were around 8.5 million barrels per day, roughly 40% below prewar levels.
The market responded. Brent rose about 13.6% in October and closed the month at a six-month high. On November 2, on the back of the Qatari talks, prices plunged: the January Brent futures contract settled at $106.65, down $6.78 on the day. Part of the decline reflects the technical rollover from the December contract to January. A year ago, a barrel cost about $65, and on the eve of the war about $70.
For Trump, this is electoral arithmetic. Gasoline in the United States has risen by an average of more than a dollar a gallon since February, and diesel by more than two. A new national poll published on Election Day gives the president a 35% approval rating, and about 70% of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Tehran has deliberately turned Hormuz into a campaign headquarters for the Democratic Party, and this is one of the most cynical, and at the same time most rational, operations of the entire war.
In October, Iran's national security adviser Mohsen Rezaei went beyond oil. He warned that if full-scale fighting resumed, Iran could attack undersea cables, data centers, and artificial intelligence facilities in the region. In recent years, the Gulf has invested tens of billions of dollars in digital infrastructure, and the threat is aimed squarely at those investments.
Seven Steps in Two Days: Where the Talks Are Actually Stuck
On the surface, the sides are close. Iran talks of two days to implement the plan, Trump of a "very good chance" of a deal, Vance of progress. Beneath this layer lies a dispute over sequencing that has gone unresolved since spring.
Tehran demands that the blockade be lifted, sanctions removed, and guarantees against strikes provided first, after which it would reopen the strait, with nuclear talks to begin later. An Iranian official who spoke with the international press on November 2 put it bluntly: Tehran's conditions must be met if the United States wants Hormuz reopened, nuclear talks are possible only after that, and Iran will not accept Washington's "excessive demands." The American side puts nuclear verification at the start of the process.
This dispute is far from technical. The strait is Iran's only lever that has retained its force after eight months of strikes. Giving it up before obtaining sanctions relief would mean entering nuclear talks empty-handed. For Washington, lifting the blockade before securing nuclear commitments would mean handing Iran oil revenue that, according to American officials, it would channel into rebuilding its military capabilities.
The mediators have their own interests, which are rarely discussed. Qatar holds Iranian funds transferred there in September 2023 under a prisoner exchange deal, around $6 billion. All of Qatar's liquefied natural gas exports pass through Hormuz, and in March Iranian strikes had already hit Qatari infrastructure. For Doha, mediation is a matter of the survival of its export model, not of prestige. Pakistan, the chief mediator of the spring Islamabad Memorandum, borders Iran and fears destabilization in Balochistan on both sides of the border.
Asked about the significance of the American elections, Baghaei replied that Tehran does not expect them to give birth to a "new America." The line is designed for external effect, but there is truth in it: Iran's strategy is built not on a change of power in Washington but on making the war more expensive for whoever holds power.
The Gulf Prepares for the Worst
While Tehran and Washington talk about a deal, Gulf capitals are preparing for strikes. According to senior Arab officials, Washington has warned its allies of a possible new round of strikes on Iran as early as November 4, the day after the election. The strikes have been described as short but intense, lasting several days. Allies were advised to protect energy facilities and critical infrastructure.
The preparations are visible to the naked eye. The roughly twenty American warships in the region are to be joined by another carrier strike group and a Marine expeditionary unit. A Patriot battery has been moved from Texas to Israel. Schools in Riyadh have switched to remote learning this week. Qatar and the UAE have held drills, including at airports. Back in October, the State Department withdrew nonemergency personnel from Saudi Arabia, where the Houthis are striking airports and oil facilities.
Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the president of the UAE, told a security conference last weekend that his country hopes for diplomacy but is ready for the worst. The UAE already carried out strikes on Iran in the spring, while the other Gulf monarchies stayed on the sidelines. Mediators report that several Arab states have warned Tehran that an attack on their infrastructure could trigger an individual or collective response. One senior Gulf official suggested that some countries might oppose the use of American bases for new strikes.
Last week, Saudi, Pakistani, and Turkish representatives visited Tehran. Riyadh asked the Iranians to rein in the Houthis. Israel, according to Israeli public broadcasting, is pressing Beirut to have the Lebanese army deploy in areas where Hezbollah fighters live and prevent the group from joining a new war.
Iran's logic is clear and frightening. Tehran cannot repel American and Israeli airstrikes, so it is betting on horizontal escalation: hitting vulnerable neighbors so that the price of any American operation is paid in Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Dhahran. The Gulf monarchies will pay that price whether or not they take part in the strikes.
The View From Astara: Azerbaijan's Dimension of the War
For Azerbaijan, the Iran war is not a television image but a border more than 700 kilometers long. Baku experienced its most acute moment on March 5, when drones crossed into the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic: one hit the airport, another exploded near a school, and four people were injured. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev called the incident an act of terror and warned of a response. On March 6, Baku evacuated the staff of its embassy in Tehran and its consulate general in Tabriz. Iran's Armed Forces General Staff denied involvement and blamed Israel.
Baku's subsequent conduct deserves study as a textbook case. Azerbaijan did not allow itself to be drawn into military action against Iran, but neither did it let Tehran turn it into a hostage. On March 9, border crossings were opened for cargo; on March 10, 30 tons of humanitarian aid went to Iran, and on March 18 another 82 tons, including 76 tons of food and 4 tons of medicine. On April 12, the embassy in Tehran resumed operations, headed by the ambassador. The Astara border crossing became a managed humanitarian corridor through which citizens of China, Russia, Tajikistan, France, and Pakistan left Iran. Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov discussed the evacuation of Europeans with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.
In November, this story is relevant again. Ghalibaf promises a response without geographic limits, Rezaei threatens the region's infrastructure, and Ratcliffe's camp is openly betting on internal instability in Iran. For Baku, that last scenario is especially sensitive. Iran's northwestern provinces are home to ethnic Azerbaijanis. Western agencies put their number at about 10 million, while Azerbaijani researchers cite figures two to three times higher. Any wave of unrest in Tabriz, Ardabil, or Urmia would hit Astara first.
There is another side to the coin. Azerbaijani oil reaches global markets via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, bypassing Hormuz. Every day the strait stays closed raises the value of the Caspian route and the Middle Corridor, of which the TRIPP route through Zangezur is becoming a part. War in the Gulf devalues southern transit routes and makes northern ones more reliable. Even the Russian-Iranian Rasht-Astara railway project, worth about 1.6 billion euros, runs into a dead end at the border without Azerbaijani infrastructure. Baku, having preserved its channels of communication with Tehran while retaining the trust of Western capitals, is emerging from this war with more influence than it had going in.
The Poisoned Chalice: What Iran Has Swallowed Once Before
Advocates of pressure in Washington surely have 1988 in mind. On April 18 of that year, during Operation Praying Mantis, the U.S. Navy in a single day destroyed two Iranian oil platforms, sank the frigate Sahand, and knocked out a significant part of Iran's combat-ready fleet. On July 3, the cruiser Vincennes shot down an Iran Air passenger jet over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 people. On July 18, Iran accepted UN Security Council Resolution 598 on a ceasefire with Iraq, and on July 20 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini compared the decision to drinking from a poisoned chalice.
The combination back then looks familiar: defeat at sea, an exhausted oil economy, international isolation. The analogy is tempting, but it has a significant flaw. In 1988, the chalice was drunk by a man with absolute religious and political authority, capable of forcing both the army and the IRGC to submit.
The current Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has not appeared in public since February 28, when his father, Ali Khamenei, who had ruled since 1989, was killed in a strike on his residence. Also killed at the time were IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour and adviser Ali Shamkhani. Mojtaba addresses the country only through written messages. Pezeshkian has admitted that reaching him is "very difficult," and Iranian hardliners have publicly demanded the president's resignation over the talks. On November 2, Pezeshkian announced that the Supreme Leader had granted the government "certain powers" to speed up contacts with the United States.
At a rally in Arizona in October, Trump himself described the problem: according to him, the first and second tiers of Iran's leadership have been wiped out, as well as half of the third, and he had to promise to stop killing Iranian leaders because it was unclear whom to deal with. Who in Tehran today is capable of drinking from the poisoned chalice and forcing the IRGC to accept the result? I have no answer to that question. I suspect Washington does not have one either.
Three Scenarios for November
The first scenario is an interim agreement along the Qatari lines. A three-day sequence of confidence-building measures, a partial easing of the blockade, a limited resumption of shipping, and the start of direct talks on the nuclear program. Signs of movement in this direction would include the departure of at least one tanker carrying Iranian oil and a noticeable drop in the number of attacks in the strait. This path suits Vance, Qatar, Pakistan, and most of the Gulf monarchies. Against it stand Netanyahu, Hegseth, and the logic of Iran's security hardliners, for whom the strait remains their last card.
The second scenario is the short, intense campaign favored by Hegseth and Netanyahu. Strikes on Pickaxe, the remnants of the IRGC navy, and missile positions along the coast. Iran would most likely respond not against Israel but against the Gulf's energy and digital infrastructure. Oil traders are already pricing Brent near $120 for this scenario. The main danger is that a "short" campaign against an adversary that has deliberately chosen horizontal escalation rarely stays short.
The third scenario is the continuation of the current situation: blockade, sanctions, covert pinpoint strikes, and sluggish talks through mediators. It is the most likely, because it requires no decision from Trump and no concession from Tehran. Its price is a continued war of attrition in which Iran loses its economy while America and its allies pay with high fuel prices and the constant threat of attacks on shipping.
My forecast, which is easy to check. Before November 26, Thanksgiving in the United States, there will be no massive strike on Pickaxe: the administration will most likely confine itself to pinpoint "defensive" attacks near the strait. The Strait of Hormuz will not be fully and durably reopened to shipping before December 31. By mid-December, the Qatari track will produce at best a procedural result, a format for direct talks or a partial exchange of gestures, but not the full unfreezing of Iranian funds. If even one of these points fails to come true, it will mean that one of the three camps outside the Oval Office has won more decisively than it appears today.
In Lieu of a Conclusion: Watch Kharg
Ghalibaf's ball metaphor works well from a podium but poorly describes reality. There is no referee in this game, and the ball was torn apart long ago: one piece lies in the granite depths beneath Natanz, another in the shipping lane between Qeshm and Hormuz, and a third at American polling stations.
The results of the U.S. elections will still be coming in when this piece is published, and Iranian spokesmen will immediately interpret them in their favor, whatever they turn out to be. Neither those interpretations nor talk of a "soft war" should be trusted. The real yardstick will be far more prosaic.
Kharg Island, through which about 90% of Iran's oil exports passed in peacetime, has seen no loadings since August 25. The first tanker to leave its berths with Iranian oil without being stopped by an American destroyer will say more about a deal than any speech in parliament. As long as the tankers sit idle, the ball remains where it has been for eight months: at the bottom of the strait.