Congress moves again to check the war as Tehran strikes Bahrain, Jordan and Iraqi Kurdistan and drags the Houthis deeper into the fight.
Intelligence Lead
President Trump told Axios on 24 July that he is "close to making a decision" on a "massive attack" against Iran, one he described as "bigger than ever before," as U.S. Central Command confirmed a 13th consecutive night of strikes aimed at degrading Iran's ability to threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran retaliated with drone and missile strikes against U.S.-linked facilities in Bahrain and Jordan, while suspected Iranian-linked drones were intercepted near Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan. The widening confrontation has pushed global oil prices above $100 a barrel and prompted UN Secretary-General António Guterres to warn the region is being pulled toward "the edge of the unimaginable."
Situation Report
U.S. forces conducted their 13th straight night of strikes against Iranian targets tied to the country's capacity to threaten maritime traffic through Hormuz, continuing a campaign that began after the collapse of a June interim ceasefire. Iranian state media reported explosions overnight in Qeshm and Bandar Abbas, both sited along the strait. Trump's Axios remarks, describing a potential "massive attack... bigger than anything before," came as oil markets absorbed the prospect of a sharp escalation beyond the current nightly strike tempo.
Iran's army confirmed it carried out drone strikes against U.S. military facilities in Bahrain and Jordan in direct retaliation for the latest American attacks. Jordan's air defenses shot down three of four inbound missiles; Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, said it had thwarted the attack on its territory. Kuwait, also hosting U.S. forces, has featured in Iran's wider retaliatory targeting pattern through the preceding weeks of the campaign.
The conflict's geographic footprint continued to expand on secondary fronts. Yemen's Houthi movement, an Iranian-aligned proxy, struck Saudi tankers in the Red Sea near Bab el-Mandeb, prompting Trump to threaten "major military punishment" against the group. Separately, security forces in Iraq's Kurdistan Region shot down explosive-laden drones near Erbil's international airport, which hosts U.S.-led coalition troops; the airport closed briefly before resuming normal operations. Iran issued no claim of responsibility for the Erbil strikes, though armed Kurdish-Iranian opposition bases in the region have been a recurring target of Iranian and Iranian-backed attacks.
On the political track, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a War Powers resolution for the second time seeking to end American involvement in the Iran war, a direct rebuke to the administration's continued strike campaign. Newly installed Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, who met Trump in Washington this week, pledged after a visit to Tehran not to allow Iran to launch attacks from Iraqi soil and committed to intensifying efforts against Iran-backed Iraqi militias.
Background & Context
The current war traces to strikes initiated by the United States and Israel against Iran on 28 February 2026. A June memorandum of understanding intended to end hostilities collapsed after Iran began threatening and attacking commercial vessels transiting Hormuz, seeking to compel shipping onto Iranian-dictated routes and fee structures; attacks on three vessels on 6–7 July triggered the current cycle of U.S. strikes and Iranian retaliation.
The strait's centrality — a chokepoint for a substantial share of global seaborne oil — explains both Iran's coercive strategy and the market's sensitivity to any signal of further escalation, including rhetorical signals such as Trump's Axios remarks. Gulf states hosting American forces, principally Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, have absorbed the brunt of Iranian retaliation precisely because of that hosting relationship, placing them in a structurally exposed position between Washington and Tehran.
The renewed House vote is the second War Powers effort since the war began, underscoring persistent, if so far ineffective, congressional resistance to unilateral executive escalation. Diplomatic and commercial actors are independently signaling risk assessment: the United Kingdom has temporarily withdrawn diplomatic staff from Iran, and Qatar Airways has suspended flights to Bahrain, Kuwait and Erbil through the end of July.
Analysis & Assessment
Trump's "massive attack" framing is most plausibly read either as preparation for a strike against additional Iranian military or energy infrastructure beyond the current nightly tempo, or as a pressure tactic intended to force Tehran back toward negotiation. The rhetoric has already moved oil markets on its own; absent a matching operational shift, it risks eroding the credibility premium the administration would need for any future de-escalation offer, while doing little to alter Iran's demonstrated tolerance for sustained retaliatory losses.
The extension of Iranian and Iranian-aligned activity to the Red Sea and Iraqi Kurdistan indicates Tehran is distributing pressure across proxy and asymmetric channels rather than relying solely on direct missile exchanges with U.S. forces. This diversification complicates coalition air-defense coordination across multiple theaters simultaneously and raises the probability that a strike attributed incorrectly, or a proxy action outside direct Iranian control, triggers escalation neither Washington nor Tehran intended.
Congressional War Powers action, though a second formal rebuke, is unlikely on its own to constrain the executive absent a veto-proof majority, a bar it has not cleared. The more consequential variable is Gulf host-nation tolerance: repeated strikes on Bahraini and Jordanian territory, even when successfully intercepted, test the political sustainability of hosting arrangements that underpin the broader U.S. containment posture toward Iran, and a shift in any host nation's posture would carry disproportionate strategic weight relative to battlefield developments.