The Bill Comes Due in Tehran: What Lies Behind the Revolutionary Guards’ Threats?

Hormuz Continues to Produce Images of Power, Even as the Facts Remain Incomplete

The morning began with another forceful statement from the Revolutionary Guards. According to the wording published by IRNA, two tankers caught fire after entering routes designated as prohibited, switching off navigation equipment, and striking mines, one east of the strait and the other inside it. This was followed by a warning that any vessel cooperating with the U.S. military or deviating from the rules Iran is seeking to impose could be hit. It can be established with certainty that the statement was issued and that the Revolutionary Guards are portraying the incidents as part of an Iranian enforcement regime. What cannot be established from the available material is whether the tankers actually behaved as described. No vessel names, flags, full location data, Automatic Identification System records, or confirmation from an operator, insurer, or other maritime authority have been published.

The strategic significance of the statement is considerable even without full verification of every detail. For weeks, Tehran has been trying to portray Hormuz not merely as an arena of confrontation, but as a space in which it determines which routes are permitted and which are prohibited, which vessels are considered “violators”, and which are allowed to pass under conditions acceptable to Iran. This is an attempt to turn a temporary state of emergency into a new rule. For the domestic audience, the message is that American pressure has not deprived Iran of its ability to exercise coercive power. For shipping companies and Iran’s adversaries, the lack of complete information actually increases uncertainty: if it is unclear who may be hit, under what circumstances, and according to what mechanism, every passage becomes a risk calculation.

But that same ambiguity can also work against Tehran. A maritime incident that is not fully documented could be interpreted in Washington as a deliberate action broader than Iran intended to portray, or used to justify further action in the name of freedom of navigation. Hormuz therefore remains both an asset and a risk for Iranian policy: the more Tehran expands its coercive power in the strait, the greater the chance that a single incident will dictate the pace of events faster than mediators can.

The Debate Over Negotiations Returns, but the Question Is What Would Bring the United States to the Table

Inside Iran itself, the debate over diplomacy returned to the forefront this morning. ISNA published a position arguing that diplomacy does not replace deterrence but complements it, while former parliamentarian Ezzatollah Yousefian-Molla called on Pezeshkian to use the powers granted to him and pursue negotiations as vigorously as possible. There has been no announcement of a new channel or the start of a new round of talks, but the very fact that such calls are receiving space in a major news agency shows that the argument in favor of engagement is no longer being confined to the margins.

At the same time, the disagreement is not really between those “in favor of talks” and those “against talks”. Increasingly, it concerns what needs to happen before talks can succeed. Part of the moderate camp argues that deterrence should create room for an agreement before domestic erosion deepens. On the other side is the argument that continued use of force is the only way to bring the United States to the table on terms Tehran would consider reasonable. Hossein Mozaffar articulated this tension sharply when he warned that a state of “neither war nor peace” could be worse than war itself, yet the solution he proposed was not gradual compromise but forcing a decision through power.

This is an important distinction. Almost everyone now agrees that the interim situation cannot continue indefinitely. The disagreement is over whether to escape it by reducing risk or by increasing it until the other side moves first.

At the same time, the discussion of national unity is also taking on a more domestic dimension. Mohammad Mohajeri warned against actors who, in his view, undermine unity by disparaging officials, while Kayhan continues to link issues such as the hijab to the war effort. This creates a boundary the system is trying to maintain: negotiations, performance, and the cost of the war may be debated, as long as criticism does not become, in the government’s view, a challenge to cohesion itself during a confrontation.

The Executions Link the External Enemy to Domestic Protest

The harshest domestic development of the morning came from the judiciary. Mizan announced that Hassan Diyouband, Hamid Kazemi, and Reza Zanganeh had been executed after being convicted, according to the state’s account, of operational activity on behalf of Israel, the United States, and hostile actors. The statement linked at least some of their actions to the January protests in Karaj and to damage to electricity infrastructure. The executions themselves are established on the basis of a direct announcement by the authority that carried them out. What cannot be verified from the publicly available material is the full body of evidence on which their convictions were based, because the complete judgments and evidentiary material are not publicly available.

Human rights sources outside Iran present a different picture. They described at least some of the three as detainees linked to the protests and cited relatives or associates who rejected some of the security-related allegations. Here too, there is no basis for automatically treating the organizations’ account as proven fact. But the gap between the two narratives is important: the state portrays them as part of an Israeli-American enemy network, while external sources emphasize their connection to the protests and the lack of transparency.

The political significance of the executions extends beyond the three cases themselves. They narrow the distance between external security and internal opposition. When people linked to protests are also portrayed as having acted on behalf of a foreign enemy, it becomes more difficult in public discourse to distinguish between protest, violence, sabotage, and espionage. For the establishment, this is a way of arguing that the internal and external fronts are effectively one and the same. For its critics, that is precisely why greater judicial transparency is necessary.

As the State Expands Deterrence, the Cost of Money Rises

The most notable economic figure this morning is the rise in the interbank interest rate from about 24 to about 34 percent. Donya-e-Eqtesad presents the increase as part of a shift away from a policy under which the cost of money was kept artificially low, but it also warns that interest rates alone cannot stop inflation if the public lacks confidence in economic policy and liquidity continues to grow. For the government, this creates a dilemma: higher interest rates can cool demand and credit, but they also make financing more expensive precisely for businesses already struggling with energy, imports, raw materials, and uncertainty.

The strain is also visible outside the banking system. An official from the Chamber of Commerce estimated that existing credit facilities cover only about a quarter of businesses’ actual needs and claimed that many workers are being forced to take second jobs. This is an estimate from an interested party rather than an official nationwide statistic, so it should be treated as evidence of pressure rather than an absolute measurement. But it fits well with a broader picture in which both businesses and workers are seeking additional sources of financing simply to maintain their current level of activity.

The state is trying to respond by allocating an additional 400 trillion tomans in credit to small and medium-sized businesses. On the surface, this is a lifeline. But it comes precisely as interest rates are rising. The result is a two-track system: those who receive preferential financing will be able to continue operating under more reasonable conditions, while those left in the regular market will face much more expensive money. Rather than solving the credit problem, the government may replace a general shortage with competition for preferential channels.

Workers employed through manpower companies also continue to illustrate the gap between a decision and its implementation. A member of parliament’s Social Affairs Committee said that regularizing their status had already been approved, but the government had yet to implement it. Under normal circumstances, this might look like a bureaucratic dispute. At a time when wages, job security, and purchasing power are eroding, the delay becomes a much more fundamental question: is the state capable of keeping its promises precisely to the workers it is asking to bear the burden of the emergency?

Medicines, Rain, and Women’s Rights Bring the Crisis Back Into Everyday Life

Even without the war, this would have been a difficult morning for Iranian citizens. A heavy weather system continues to affect several provinces, with snow in the Alborz and Zagros mountains and disruptions to infrastructure and transportation. The reported deaths occurred in previous days, so they should not be attributed to this morning itself, but the continuing weather system once again exposes the vulnerability of infrastructure and transportation even to events unrelated to security.

In the healthcare system, the government is trying to reduce the perceived severity of the situation. According to a spokesperson for the Food and Drug Administration, supply difficulties affect fewer than 40 of approximately 700 essential medicines. This is not a complete shortage, and the official figure is intended, to some extent, to reassure the public. But the very need to publish the number demonstrates how sensitive the issue of availability has become. When households are living with high inflation and imports are facing currency and shipping difficulties, even a relatively limited shortage can become a serious problem for anyone dependent on a specific medication.

Etemad, meanwhile, raised a different question about the healthcare system through the testimony of a woman who claimed that her emergency surgery was delayed until her husband’s consent was obtained. The newspaper itself qualified the report and did not claim to have sufficient material to establish broader legal responsibility, so the case should not be treated as representative of the entire country. But the question it raises is particularly important when Kayhan continues to frame the hijab and women’s discipline as part of national security: does the state view women’s autonomy as a basic right of a citizen within the public system, or as something still subordinate to family and social structures that the state is in no hurry to change?

These two debates, over medicines and medical autonomy, may appear far removed from Hormuz. In practice, they concern the same question of resilience. A state can demonstrate its ability to strike a tanker or expand missile ranges, but for the public, resilience is also measured by the ability to obtain medicine, get to work in bad weather, receive medical treatment on time, and feel that the law protects them within the most basic public services.

The Nuclear Situation Has Not Changed Technically, but the Language of Deterrence Continues to Expand

No new technical development in the nuclear arena was reported this morning. There is no new enrichment figure, no new IAEA decision, and no official announcement of renewed nuclear negotiations. Here too, therefore, the story is primarily political. The discussion of diplomacy is taking place alongside statements that Iran has removed geographical restrictions from its response and continues to expand missile ranges. These are statements intended for deterrence, not independent proof of a new capability.

At the same time, an interesting critique of Tehran’s partners is emerging in the reformist press. Mohsen Mirdamadi argued that Russia may benefit from continued tensions, while China has a greater interest in reducing them. This is political analysis, not intelligence about Moscow or Beijing, but it challenges an assumption that has become almost automatic in parts of Iranian discourse: that if Russia and China oppose Western pressure, they necessarily want exactly the same outcome as Iran.

If this debate expands, it could also turn the question of negotiations into one of strategic dependence. Is Tehran managing the crisis according to its own interests, or is it relying on partnerships whose members, in some cases, pay a far lower price than Iran for the continuation of the confrontation?

Desk Conclusion: Iran Is Raising the Deterrence Threshold, and Therefore the Threshold of Expectations as Well

The picture this morning is not one of de-escalation. The tankers, executions, and statements about expanding the range of Iran’s response are intended to demonstrate that the state remains in control, punishes violations, and does not allow its adversaries to interpret internal debate as weakness. But on those same pages, another question appears that is becoming increasingly difficult to suppress: how much longer can this situation be sustained?

Interest rates are rising. Credit is becoming more expensive. Businesses say they do not have enough working capital. Contract workers are still waiting for a decision that has already been made. Some medicines are becoming harder to obtain. And more and more voices within permitted public discourse are explicitly saying that a state of “neither war nor peace” is not stability, but prolonged erosion.

The debate over negotiations, therefore, is not simply evidence that the moderate camp is gaining strength. It is a debate over the definition of victory.

The security establishment wants the adversary to feel enough pressure to move first. More moderate voices want the power already accumulated to be translated into a diplomatic process before the domestic cost becomes heavier.

The more Hormuz is presented as proof of strength, the greater the demand will become to show what that strength has achieved.

Not another burning tanker, but less risk of war. Not another statement about missile ranges, but greater stability. Not merely control over a maritime route, but also a business that can obtain credit, a worker who has job security, and medicine that is available at the pharmacy.

Without that conversion, the gap between the image of power abroad and the bill at home will only continue to widen.