Key Takeaways:
- On July 24, U.S. President Trump announced a halt to America’s bombing campaign against Iran in favor of a negotiated resolution. In response, Iran has ended its own military campaign against American military bases and its regional neighbors. However, the Iranian threat persists through its use of proxies and propaganda.
- Since the cessation of these bombing campaigns, Iranian proxies have continued to threaten the Middle East by attacking Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq, likely at the behest of the Islamic Republic.
- Tehran has also continued its propaganda campaign against the United States, most recently by threatening the lives of President Trump’s wife and son in a graphic and incendiary video clip.
The bombs may have stopped for now but the Iranian threat to the Middle East and the United States persists.
Over the past two weeks, the U.S. and the Islamic Republic engaged in a low-intensity conflict prompted by Iran firing on ships attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz along its southern coast. As the U.S. bombed Iranian military facilities in an effort to degrade Tehran’s use of force against international maritime traffic, Iran retaliated with attacks on American regional allies that are home to U.S. military bases, including Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and Jordan.
On Friday, July 24, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would hold off on unleashing greater military force against Iran in order to give another chance for negotiations between the two sides. Since then, neither the U.S. or Iran have officially attacked the other.
However, this does not mean that the Iranian threat to the Middle East and the United States has subsided. In fact, it appears that Iran may still be actively engaging in belligerent activities, just ones that are less overt as sending drones and missiles into neighboring countries.
One of the key ways in which Iran still threatens the Middle East is through the use of its wide Middle Eastern proxy network. By using its proxies to attack American bases and neighboring countries instead of directly attacking them, the Islamic Republic is able to claim plausible deniability while still keeping large swathes of the Middle East under the thumb of its terrorist regime.
Since the U.S. and Iran announced a few days ago that they were halting attacks, there have been drone strikes on Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq. Saudi Arabia accused Iran-backed militias in Iraq for this attack on its gas facilities.
While no one has claimed responsibility for the attacks on Iranian opposition forces in Iraq or on the Jordan-Israel border, it is highly likely that these were also committed by pro-Iran Iraqi militias.
The Houthis, an Iran-backed proxy in Yemen, have also attacked Saudi Arabia since the cessation of American and Iranian bombing, targeting oil facilities along the Kingdom’s Red Sea coast. While some may see this as the continuation of the local conflict between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, which ended with a ceasefire in 2022, it is likely that Iran has a hand in its proxy’s current belligerence.
According to reports, a July 13 flight between Iran and Yemen saw the arrival of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders and sophisticated weaponry to Houthi-controlled territory. With this influx of Iranian support, it is clear that the Islamic Republic has a hand in directing the Houthis and is using this proxy to harm a key American ally in the region while being able to deny any direct culpability.
Based on what has occurred since the United States and Iran stopped firing at each other, it is likely that Iran’s proxies have taken up the fight in order to strong-arm the United States into ending the conflict on terms that are beneficial to the Islamic Republic and in order to coerce Iran’s Gulf neighbors into accepting greater Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Aside from its use of proxies, Iran’s belligerence against the U.S. following the cessation of bombing has been observed through the use of propaganda targeting President Trump’s wife and son.
IRGC-aligned Tasnim News Agency recently released a short clip titled “Where to Kill Melania?!” In this seemingly AI-generated video, the Farsi narrator calls on “global freedom fighters” to assassinate the First Lady by detailing which luxury clothing stores she frequently shops at, signs that she is planning on visiting these shops, and which hospitals along the route would be able to provide valuable intelligence on her whereabouts.
The video ends with the chilling words, “Barron Trump, wait for us.”
This video, released by a media network that is closely aligned with the Iranian state, is an explicit call for the assassination of President Trump’s wife and son by the Islamic Republic.
As can be seen from the above, while Iran may have stopped directly targeting American military bases or its Middle Eastern neighbors, it is clear that the Islamic Republic has not stopped its attacks on regional and American interests. Rather, it has simply moved from the theater of direct confrontation to using proxies and propaganda to target its regional and global enemies.
Thus, media outlets should be wary of presenting the Islamic Republic as a trustworthy and sincere negotiating partner. Its plan for attaining regional hegemony has not changed — only the means by which it achieves this goal.
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© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
