Will Washington Strike Iran Again?

This morning’s Long View explained the systems the Forum has built and the discipline they run on, including the rule that a judgment carries a stated likelihood and the reason for it. This afternoon’s edition applies that rule to the question readers put to me more than any other: whether the United States will strike Iran again, and whether Israel will. Both editions go to every reader today, free and premium alike. What follows separates what we observe from what we assess, and every assessment names its place on the scale.

Will Washington Strike Again? The Odds, Read From the Record.

The President says he is weighing whether to “go in and annihilate” Iran’s regime. Tehran has sent its conditions through Doha. Riyadh intercepted a Houthi ballistic missile on Saturday. How the Forum sets the odds of renewed American and Israeli strikes between now and the end of the year, and what would move them.

The facts of the week come first, each linked to the outlet that reported it.

The war is in its 30th week. It began on February 28 with the joint American and Israeli campaign that killed Ali Khamenei in its opening strikes. The 60-day negotiating window under June’s Islamabad memorandum expired on August 17 with no deal and no extension. The naval blockade, first imposed in April and resumed on July 14, still holds.

Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of Central Command, said on Saturday that more than one billion barrels of Gulf crude have left through the Strait of Hormuz in the last couple of months with his forces’ support, and that “Iran has exported zero barrels thanks to our ironclad blockade.” Independent trackers put the figure above zero and far below normal: Kpler estimates Iranian loadings at about 255,000 barrels a day in August, down from 1.83 million in March.

Strikes have not stopped. On September 1 American forces struck Iranian coastal radars, air-defense sites, and mine-laying units, and Iran answered with missiles and drones aimed at American bases in Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, and Iraq. Between September 5 and 8, after the Revolutionary Guard fired ballistic missiles at American warships, Central Command struck Iranian oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and near Kharg Island, 10 of them by the Institute for the Study of War’s figure. Iran fired 20 ballistic missiles at the air base in Jordan that hosts American aircraft, and Jordan intercepted 18.

On Thursday, September 17, the President put the choice in his own words to Axios: “I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them or do I not?” The same day his State Department approved the sale of 48 F-35 fighters to Saudi Arabia, a $24.3 billion package now before Congress.

On Friday he signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which extends the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996 through 2031. Also on Friday the Pentagon told Congress that the war had cost $43.6 billion as of September 3, plus $1.5 billion in additional fuel.

The same Friday, hundreds of thousands rallied in Tehran in a government-organized parade of volunteer fighters, the largest such demonstration since the war began, with participants pledging to take up arms. On Saturday, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, told Al Jazeera that Qatar had carried Iran’s conditions to Washington and that Tehran was waiting for the President’s answer. He named three: an end to the war on all fronts, release of frozen Iranian funds, and an end to the naval blockade. In a separate post on X he put the number of conditions at seven.

Rezaei added that Iran’s nuclear doctrine is unchanged, but that “we do not know what will happen in the future,” and that any withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty depends on Washington’s conduct. This follows the International Atomic Energy Agency board’s September 9 vote to report Iran to the Security Council, the first such report since 2006. Inspectors have not returned to the bombed enrichment sites since June 2025.

Also on Saturday, Saudi air defenses intercepted a Houthi ballistic missile aimed at Riyadh, the first time the Houthis have targeted the Saudi capital since their war with the kingdom resumed in July. A jet-fuel depot at King Khalid International Airport burned the same morning in what the Wall Street Journal reported as an air attack; the coalition’s statement does not mention the fire.

The Crown Prince called the President twice on September 10 and urged American strikes on the Houthis, and the President declined. American support remains intelligence and targeting data for Saudi aircraft. “No offensive strikes,” a US official told CNN in reporting that predates the Riyadh attack.

The President left Camp David a day early on Saturday evening, and the White House gave no reason. Israel Hayom, citing a CNN analyst, reported that the Camp David session reviewed options for strikes in Yemen. The State Department issued security alerts across the region that day, warning that the Houthi conflict “has the potential to escalate rapidly.”

In Jerusalem, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on September 9 that Israel has struck Iran twice and “when necessary, we will strike it a third time.” On September 17 he wrote that the campaign is not over and that Israel still has “important goals” to achieve against Iran. Al-Akhbar, the pro-Hezbollah daily in Beirut, read the same signals this weekend under the headline that Israel does not accept the war’s outcome and that the bet on toppling the regime is alive.

That is the record. The question comes next.

“Renewed strikes” is four different questions, and each has a different answer. A forecast that does not separate them predicts the wrong thing and is then graded on it.

The first is whether the United States strikes the Houthis in Yemen with its own aircraft and missiles, ending the “no offensive strikes” policy Washington has held while Riyadh absorbs missiles.

The second is whether the United States conducts limited strikes on Iranian territory, of the September 1 kind, in response to specific Iranian actions. That is not a forecast. It is the current state of the war, and the base case is that the limited exchanges continue.

The third is whether the United States resumes a sustained air campaign against Iranian territory on the scale of March and April: multi-day, aimed at leadership, missile forces, and economic infrastructure. This is what the President means by “go in.”

The fourth is whether Israel strikes Iran on its own initiative and at scale, the “third time” Katz has promised, with or without Washington’s participation.

The Forum’s forecast log, described this morning, holds narrow questions with dates for this reason. Five questions are entered in it as of today: the first and the fourth of those above, the third split in two at the American election, and a fifth on the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Each will be graded when its date arrives.

The signals that point toward escalation arrived within 72 hours of each other, and they belong together.

The President’s language has hardened. “Finish them off” has been his phrase since May, usually in the same breath as an offer to deal. Thursday’s formulation was starker: annihilate or not. He said in the same interview that the Iranians still want a deal, and he told NewsNation a day later that “right now, they want to make a deal.” The early return from Camp David, the reported review of Yemen options, and a security alert that warns of rapid escalation are the signs that accompany a decision window. They do not show that a decision has been made.

Tehran’s terms read as an opening and function as a refusal. An end to the fighting on all fronts, the release of funds, and the lifting of the blockade each ask Washington to surrender a working instrument before talks begin. The speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on Sunday that there will be no return to negotiations until Iran’s conditions are met. Rezaei wrote on X that the United States “must accept Iran’s rights and conditions.” A President who has said for four months that Iran will deal or be finished is being told in public that it will not deal on his terms.

The nuclear file has moved. The atomic agency’s board has reported Iran to the Security Council. Rezaei paired an unchanged doctrine with “we do not know what will happen in the future,” and the hardline daily Kayhan put the sentence in a headline. A campaign inside Iran’s parliament to leave the treaty is growing, and the chairman of its national security committee said on Sunday that withdrawal is on the table.

The Institute for Science and International Security reported on September 17 that Iran is rapidly rebuilding the Taleghan 2 site at Parchin, where the regime once tested the explosives a nuclear device requires. The President’s red line has not moved: he said again in Dublin on September 12 that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

The Saudi front is merging with the Iranian one. A ballistic missile aimed at Riyadh raises the political cost of American inaction, and the F-35 sale signals that Washington intends to keep the kingdom inside its security architecture. AFP reported on Saturday, in a dispatch carried by Asharq Al-Awsat that cites Houthi military sources, that Revolutionary Guard specialists visited the Bab al-Mandab area last week to oversee tunneling in the hills above the strait and to discuss radar sites.

An American strike on the Houthis would open a front Washington has so far kept closed. Tehran’s own press treats Yemen and Hormuz as one theater. “He wanted to open Hormuz; the second strait was closed too,” Kayhan’s Sunday front page said of the President.

Israel has stated its intent on the record. Katz’s “third time” is a standing declaration. His September 10 warning named Iran’s “central energy facilities” as the price of any attack on Israel. The Prime Minister said on Thursday, at a ceremony honoring Shin Bet employees: “first and foremost we will defeat the regime in Iran. We will bring it down.”

The other side gets equal weight, because the record demands it.

The election is 44 days away. The Marquette Law School survey published September 16 found 13 percent of Americans saying the United States has achieved its goals in the war and 87 percent saying it has not; in April the figure was 21 percent.

The Senate passed a war powers resolution 50 to 48 on June 23 with four Republicans in favor, the first time both chambers had done so in this war. On September 15 the House passed another, 220 to 204, with seven Republicans, and the Guardian reported that three of the seven were voting that way for the first time. Reuters reported on September 2 that the President’s aides want the war kept quiet until November. A President who declined the Crown Prince’s request for Yemen strikes is weighing the same domestic politics.

The instruments short of bombing are working. Central Command says Iranian exports are at zero, and the independent trackers put them at a fraction of the spring’s. Inflation reached 84.4 percent in August by the central bank’s figure, and the rial, which passed two million to the dollar in late August, trades near 2.3 million.

Turkey’s banking regulator revoked the license of Bank Mellat’s Istanbul branch, as Washington presses other governments to tighten the pressure on Tehran. A five-year extension of the sanctions law, signed the day after the President spoke of annihilation, is the act of an administration investing in the slow instrument. Sanctions and blockade are the cheaper campaign, and the cost of the expensive one is now public.

The President has said when he expects the war to end. “I think it will be, probably, right after the midterms,” he told reporters in Dublin on September 12. “They are trying to hold out as long as they can to complicate the election.”

Axios reported on Thursday that he held off on resuming major combat operations in early August after Saudi Arabia and Qatar raised concerns about retaliation against Saudi oil and gas facilities, and that he and Secretary Hegseth have ordered American force levels in the region held through the end of the year. Two American carriers, the George Washington and the George H.W. Bush, remain on station, and no surge has been announced.

The diplomatic channel is live and has a date. The conditions went through Doha, not through a speech. The President meets the six Gulf governments, at the level of leaders or foreign ministers, in New York on Tuesday on the margins of the General Assembly, and he told Axios that he wants to hear from them before he decides.

The Gulf states have absorbed Iranian fire for nearly seven months, and their interest is an outcome, not a new phase. Egypt is unlikely to offer military help in Yemen, AP reported after the Crown Prince’s visit to Cairo. A President who wanted a strike before Tuesday would not have scheduled Tuesday.

On Yemen, Washington has been talking to the Houthis. American officials met Houthi representatives in Muscat on the weekend of September 12, and the Houthis told them they had no intention of attacking American vessels. The President said that Saturday that the Houthis had contacted the United States and “don’t want to fight with us.”

Tehran presents its posture as defensive. The regime billed the largest rally of the war as a mobilization to defend the country, and the Institute for the Study of War assesses that Iranian decision-makers believe they can outlast the American will to continue the war. A regime that believes Washington wants out has less reason to hand it a pretext for a full campaign, even as it keeps firing at American ships.

Then there is the pattern of this presidency, which this newsletter laid out on August 31. It killed Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 and chose no military response after the attack on Abqaiq in September 2019, and in this war it has struck when talks were refused and paused when they opened. The conditions are an opening with terms, and the President’s practice at openings has been to test them, loudly, before deciding whether they are refusals.

Serious people read the same facts and conclude that the President is trapped. The Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group, which polled 1,000 Americans in August, describes a President “trapped at home and abroad by a war that no one is winning and that has no clear off-ramp.” The Guardian’s August analysis ran under a headline calling him “stuck.” That reading has the polls on its side. It has the President’s conduct at every prior decision point of this war against it.

Each judgment below uses the likelihood scale of Intelligence Community Directive 203, which runs from “almost no chance” through “very unlikely,” “unlikely,” “roughly even chance,” “likely,” and “very likely” to “almost certain.” Each carries a separate statement of confidence and the reason for it. The percentages are the Forum’s, entered in the forecast log today.

Six developments in the next 14 days would move these numbers.

Tuesday’s meeting in New York. The President addresses the General Assembly the same day. If the Gulf governments leave with a joint statement on Hormuz and Yemen and the President speaks of a “framework,” Questions 2 and 3 fall. If the meeting ends without a statement and the Saudi delegation briefs reporters on American reluctance, the pressure on Washington to act in Yemen grows, and Question 1 rises.

The President’s answer to the conditions. He has not given one in public. A dismissal in his own voice would raise Questions 2 and 3. An instruction to his envoys to test the terms would lower them.

Carrier and bomber movements, which become public within a day. Two carriers are on station now, and a third is due to relieve one of them. A relief is not a surge. An order that keeps three in the region would move Question 2 by 10 points on its own.

Riyadh. A second attack on the capital, or a ballistic missile that gets through, would make the American refusal hard to sustain in both capitals.

The atomic agency and any Iranian statement on treaty procedure. A notice of withdrawal starts the three-month clock under Article X, and the notice itself would be the event.

Jerusalem. Katz’s language has been consistent since July. A statement from the Prime Minister that names a target class or a timeline would be new, and it would move Question 4 toward “very likely.” He addresses the General Assembly on Thursday.

“Relief for Tehran is earned by what it delivers, not by what it signs.”

Framework: Hormuz Mandate. Reciprocity Standard.

The Forum’s position through this war has been that relief for Tehran is earned by what it delivers, not by what it signs, and that American ships keep the strait open, not Iranian promises. Measured against that standard, the conditions fail. Every one that Rezaei chose to publish asks Washington to give up an instrument that is working in exchange for the start of a conversation. That is a request for relief before delivery. The Reciprocity Standard says no, and it says no whether or not a strike follows.

That is the point I want to leave with you. The question this essay set out to answer, whether the bombs fall again, is the right one to forecast and the wrong one to organize policy around. The instruments that are working are the blockade, the sanctions law, and the daily pressure on a regime that has lost a third of its gas capacity heading into winter. A sustained campaign would be a judgment that those instruments have stopped working or that the nuclear clock has overtaken them. Neither is true on September 20.

The Forum’s assessment is that Washington’s most likely course through the election is to hold the pressure, act against the Houthis, keep the exchanges with Iran limited, and test the Doha channel in public. After the election the odds shift, and between Israel’s vote on October 27 and the end of the year, Jerusalem’s calendar may set the date as much as Washington’s.

Serious people disagree, and I have named them. On December 31 the log will show who read the record correctly. That is what it is for.

Both of today’s editions are free for every reader. The premium Long View, the full archive, the quarterly threat briefings, and reply access are for premium members: $12 a month or $100 a year. Every MEF donor reads free; if your invitation has not arrived, write [email protected].

Days from today to the American midterm election on November 3. Israel votes seven days earlier, on October 27. Two of the five questions the Forum entered in its forecast log today resolve on or before the American election, and three resolve on December 31, after both.

This morning’s edition, The Forum Is Building Something, explains the forecast log and the rules behind these numbers. The daily brief returns this week. For the longer view of the war, premium members can read The Next Six Months. New readers can orient with the Field Guide; the MEF Dispatch, our summary of new articles and analysis from meforum.org, is one click: Subscribe to the MEF Dispatch.

Clear this afternoon. When it should not be, write [email protected]; corrections run here, in print.

Every figure and quotation in this edition was checked against the outlet that reported it before it reached you. Readers pay for the analysts who do that checking and who will grade these five forecasts in public. If the odds were worth your afternoon, fund the next set. And forward this edition to one person who is sure of what happens next.

Reply question: which of the five numbers is most wrong, and in which direction? Replies land in my inbox; the sharpest dissents run in the next mailbag.

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