SDG NEWS DEFENSE BRIEF
The reported role of Iranian hard-liners in derailing diplomacy with Washington raises a larger question for Iran deterrence: can governments deter, or negotiate with, a state when responsibility for escalation is increasingly difficult to identify?
A new account of the breakdown of U.S.-Iran diplomacy is drawing attention to one of the most consequential uncertainties surrounding the conflict: how military authority is exercised inside Iran.
The New York Times reported that a hard-line faction carried out attacks against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz in early July without the knowledge of senior Iranian political leaders, or even the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, helping undermine an interim agreement with Washington. The Times linked the faction to Hossein Taeb, an influential security figure and former IRGC intelligence chief.
The account cannot be independently verified from Iran’s opaque national-security system. But senior U.S. officials were also describing the attacks at the time as the work of a “rogue faction” of Iranian hard-liners trying to sabotage the ceasefire, while Iran maintained that its leadership remained unified.
If the Times account is accurate, the significance goes well beyond another failed diplomatic effort.
The challenge facing governments may no longer be simply determining what Iran wants, but which institutions have the authority to act, and how reliably political decisions are translated into military behavior.
The Iran Deterrence Problem
Iran has long had multiple political and security centers, but the war has altered the balance among them. Since the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the IRGC and Supreme National Security Council have assumed greater influence over military strategy and major political decisions.
That does not mean Iran’s command structure has fractured. Reuters found earlier in the conflict that, despite differences within the leadership, wartime decision-making remained broadly cohesive around powerful security institutions.
The emerging risk is subtler.
A security-dominated system may remain strategically coherent while still allowing individual institutions or commanders significant operational latitude. If so, diplomacy becomes harder because political agreement at the top may not always translate cleanly into behavior on the ground.
The July attacks illustrate the potential consequences. A relatively limited maritime incident quickly contributed to renewed military strikes and further deterioration of the diplomatic opening.
Attribution Is Becoming Strategic
For governments, attribution is therefore no longer simply an intelligence question.
It is becoming central to escalation control.
If an attack is genuinely unauthorized, retaliating against Iran as a whole could target leaders who did not order it while failing to deter those responsible. The reverse is also possible: Tehran could characterize an authorized action as rogue behavior in an effort to limit escalation or preserve diplomatic flexibility.
That creates an attribution gap between an incident and confidence over who ordered it. The longer that gap remains unresolved, the greater the risk that military decisions will be made under uncertainty.
What Governments Should Watch
Delegated military authority. Intelligence services will need to understand what operational powers are held by IRGC naval, missile and regional commanders, particularly whether potentially escalatory actions require higher political approval.
Political intent versus military execution. Governments will need to assess whether an agreement is supported across the institutions responsible for implementing it, not simply by the officials negotiating it.
Domestic signaling. Military actions may sometimes serve internal political purposes as well as external ones. Understanding who an operation is intended to influence may therefore become increasingly important to interpreting its strategic meaning.
Implications for Future Diplomacy
Future agreements with Tehran may require more than written commitments. They could need direct military communication channels, procedures for rapidly investigating incidents, clear maritime rules and mechanisms allowing time to establish responsibility before retaliation begins.
Governments may also need greater clarity over which Iranian institutions must support an agreement for it to be durable.
In effect, verification may increasingly need to include command relationships and military behavior, not simply compliance on paper.
Hormuz Remains the Pressure Point
Nowhere is this problem more consequential than the Strait of Hormuz.
The waterway carried roughly one-fifth of globally traded oil and natural gas before the war, making sustained disruption capable of quickly affecting shipping, energy prices and inflation worldwide.
Renewed regional instability has pushed oil above $100 per barrel, while Gulf governments have sought their own channels with Tehran to reduce the risk of prolonged disruption.
Those efforts remain difficult. A planned meeting between Iran and Gulf states in Oman over management of Hormuz was postponed on September 13 because of a lack of regional consensus.
That underscores why uncertainty surrounding Iranian decision-making is no longer only a U.S.-Iran issue.
It is a direct security and economic concern for Gulf states and, through energy markets, for governments worldwide.
The Defense Brief Takeaway
The Times investigation should therefore be viewed as more than a story about Iranian political infighting.
For defense officials, it raises three broader concerns: Iran’s wartime decision-making has become increasingly concentrated in security institutions; uncertainty over responsibility can complicate Iran deterrence and escalation management; and future diplomacy may need mechanisms capable of surviving military incidents rather than simply agreements designed to prevent them.
Iran deterrence does not fail simply because Tehran has lost control of its armed forces, and there is not enough evidence to conclude that it has.
The more important possibility is subtler: Iran may remain strategically coherent while becoming harder for outside governments to read operationally.
That distinction could determine whether the next incident in Hormuz remains contained, or triggers another cycle of regional escalation.
Follow SDG News on LinkedIn
