The Next Six Months

Today, August 28, 2026, marks exactly six months since the United States and Israel launched the joint campaign to dismantle Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure. This morning’s brief walked through what those six months have cost the five Gulf capitals. This evening’s essay is the assessment I owe premium members at the half-year mark: where the war stands, what the next six months will decide, and the twenty-five fronts the coalition has to manage between now and February. The opening and Part I are open to every reader. Parts II through V are for premium members, and every Forum donor reads them with the Forum’s compliments.

The Next Six Months

Six months in, the shock is over and the attrition has begun. Twenty-five fronts the coalition has to manage between now and February.

Today, August 28, 2026, marks exactly six months since the United States and Israel launched the joint kinetic campaign to dismantle Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure. As Executive Director of the Middle East Forum, my assessment of the next six months is clear: the initial phase of shock and awe is over, and we are now grinding through a brutal, multi-domain war of attrition. Washington planned for a short war; instead, we are witnessing a fundamental realignment of the Middle East’s security architecture.

The record of the first six months is not in dispute. The Islamic Republic lost its supreme leader on the first night and its navy and air force in the weeks after. It answered by closing the Strait of Hormuz, firing more than 6,700 drones and missiles at the Gulf states by mid-May, and turning the Houthis on Saudi shipping. Washington answered with a naval blockade that, since it was reimposed in July, has stopped every laden crude tanker from leaving, a June memorandum that collapsed in three weeks, and, since Monday, what the Treasury Secretary calls the greatest financial offensive ever marshaled against an adversary. Tehran’s year-on-year inflation stands at 84.4 percent, its currency has crossed two million to the dollar, and its vice president admitted on Thursday that the country cannot import the fuel it no longer produces in sufficient quantity.

At the Forum, we do not deal in wishful thinking. If the United States and its allies intend to secure Western dominance and permanently neutralize the Iranian threat, here are the twenty-five most pressing strategic issues we must ruthlessly manage between now and February 2027.

1. Enforcing the UAE trade freeze. On August 18, Abu Dhabi announced that “all trade, commercial exchanges, and financial transactions” with Iran were halted until further notice. The partner it cut off supplied 30.6 percent of Iran’s imports, $21 billion in 2024. The pressing issue is whether the Emirates will enforce that freeze against the Iranian front companies in Dubai, or quietly cave to commercial pressure. Ten days on, no implementing regulation has been published, and the announcement is silent on the free-zone shell companies through which Treasury says 71 percent of Iran-linked shadow-banking funds moved in 2024. Washington has sanctioned 353 UAE-linked entities for Iran-related conduct, more than any jurisdiction but China. Tehran’s security chief has already threatened to treat any neighbor that joins the economic war as an enemy. We must hold Abu Dhabi to its word, and help it carry the cost of keeping it.

2. Sustaining the naval blockade. The counter-blockade of Iranian ports must remain airtight. On the crude side it already is: the United Against Nuclear Iran trackers have not seen a laden crude tanker clear the blockade line since July 12, while a handful of LPG carriers have slipped through. CENTCOM’s own figures as of Thursday: 75 vessels redirected, three disabled, two boarded since mid-July. The threat to that record is diplomatic, not naval. Iran wants 5 to 7 percent of cargo value for passage; Oman has floated about 3 percent; Washington’s position is zero, and Secretary Rubio has said it in plain terms: “No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway.” Any compromise that lets Tehran collect a “transit fee,” under whatever name a mediator invents, is a capitulation to extortion. Treasury’s August 24 alert already treats payments to the regime’s strait authority, including “charitable donations,” as sanctionable. That line must not drift.

3. The shadow fleet and Chinese complicity. Iran relies on ghost ships and Chinese compliance to survive the blockade. Chinese purchases of Iranian crude have fallen to about 530,000 barrels a day, less than half the pre-war rate, but 80 million barrels of Iranian oil still sit in floating storage beyond the blockade line, half of it off Malaysia, and every one of them will be sold. We must transition from sanctioning these vessels to interdicting them. The precedent exists: between April and June the Navy boarded five Iran-linked tankers on the high seas, from the Arabian Sea to a right-of-visit boarding halfway between Malaysia and Sri Lanka. That campaign should now be aimed at the Malaysian anchorage and the ship-to-ship hubs that feed Shandong’s refineries. Monday’s designations reached Hong Kong tanker owners and Dubai brokers; they did not yet reach a Chinese bank. The President’s answer when asked why not, “Who said I’m not?”, is the right answer. It needs a date.

4. Protecting the Yanbu bypass. Saudi Arabia has kept its oil moving through the 7-million-barrel East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea; in April and May every barrel of the kingdom’s seaborne crude left from there. Yanbu’s berths can lift about four million barrels a day, and since the Houthis extended their blockade to the northern Red Sea on July 20, liftings have fallen by roughly a third. On August 24 a Houthi ballistic missile struck the 320,000-ton Saudi tanker Amzan 63 nautical miles off the port. The bypass itself is now the target. The air defense over that coast includes one Greek Patriot battery, in place since 2021, which has intercepted seven targets since March and which Athens is now weighing whether to bring home. Protecting Yanbu, its berths, its refinery, and the tankers that call there, is a tier-one imperative for the coalition, and it cannot depend on a single allied battery whose government is reconsidering.

5. The Houthi resiliency. Six months in, the Houthis remain a highly resilient challenger. Between July 13 and August 14 they carried out 16 attacks on Saudi assets, seven on oil facilities and six on tankers; on August 6 they killed dozens of Yemeni government soldiers in a single day, and on August 12 they killed six crew on an Egyptian ship in Bab al-Mandab, the first seafarer deaths of their campaign since the war began. Their resupply is visible: Iranian Mahan Air flights into Sanaa and Hodeidah in July preceded the escalation. The only strikes on record against their launch infrastructure this summer are Saudi ones, at Hodeidah and Kamaran in late July. We must shift from a defensive posture of intercepting drones to offensively dismantling their launch sites and their port access, with American enablers behind a Saudi-led effort, because a blockade of Iran that leaves Iran’s Red Sea proxy free to blockade Saudi Arabia is only half a blockade.

“Attrition is won by the side that refuses to get tired, and every one of these twenty-five fronts is a test of that refusal.”

The Long View continues below for premium members: Parts II through V, twenty more fronts. Every donor to the Middle East Forum receives premium membership with the Forum’s compliments; if your invitation has not arrived, write [email protected].