Tick. Tock.
With the USS Tripoli just about to enter the theater and the 82nd Airborne on the way, the looming deadline for Donald Trump’s ultimatum to Iran on opening the Strait of Hormuz grows ever larger in the imagination. Iran’s regime remnants have received Trump’s 15-point plan to end the war, which amounts to a recapitulation of the terms of capitulation prior to the war’s initiation. The Iranians have responded by claiming that (a) no one’s negotiating with Trump at all, (b) they have rejected the proposal outright, (c) they have sent their response already that echoes their own pre-war demands, and (d) all of the above at the same time.
With less than 36 hours left on the deadline, Trump issued a warning on Truth Social this morning to the Iranian regime remnants. “They better get serious soon,” Trump declared, or else:
The Iranian negotiators are very different and “strange.” They are “begging” us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only “looking at our proposal.” WRONG!!! They better get serious soon, before it is too late, because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty! President DJT
Iran has a habit of using deadlines to test its enemies in these kinds of high-tension negotiations. For 46 years, it worked; their opponents would shrink back from threats and offer new concessions. Over the past year, however, Iran should have learned a lesson about Trump’s negotiating practices. They have loudly complained after the conflict in June that the US betrayed them by acting during negotiations, and they have griped about the same thing in this conflict. Both times, however, Trump made it publicly clear that he expected real movement on a limited timeframe, or else.
Trump does not allow his enemies to play him for time and leverage. He’s not playing the stall-and-tweak game with Iran any longer, and they know now that he’s not afraid to use military force either. He pushed off the ultimatum deadline for his own purposes, and with more robust assets coming into the theater, his purposes have been fulfilled.
Israel hasn’t sat on its hands during the interregnum, either. They made a bid to reopen Hormuz the old-fashioned way … by destroying its obstruction:
The elite Iranian navy chief who authorized the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was killed in an Israeli airstrike Thursday, Israel confirmed Thursday of the latest high-profile leader to be assassinated.
Alireza Tangsiri, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy commander, was eliminated in a strike on the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas, located on the strait, Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, confirmed.
Tangsiri, 64, is the latest high-profile official to have been killed after the assassinations of IRGC spokesperson Ali Mohammad Naini, the regime’s de facto leader Ali Larijani, and its anti-protest enforcer Gholamreza Soleimani.
Tangsiri not only gave the green light to close the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway that sees the shipment of 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, but vowed to keep it shut after an order from the Islamic Republic’s new leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.
The IDF confirmed Tansgiri’s death, and said it took out a large part of Iran’s naval leadership in the strike:
Later, the IDF confirmed the killing and said that in addition to Tangsiri, the strike also killed the IRGC Navy’s intelligence chief, Behnam Rezaei, and the rest of the Iranian Navy’s key leadership. The military did not immediately name other top commanders killed in the strike.
Tangsiri was targeted in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas while meeting with senior commanders of the IRGC Navy, according to the military.
“Over the years, Tangsiri was responsible for attacks on oil tankers and commercial vessels and personally threatened the freedom of navigation and trade in the Strait of Hormuz and the international maritime domain,” the IDF said. …
The IDF said the killing of Tangsiri and the IRGC Navy leadership “constitutes an additional significant blow to the command-and-control arrays of the IRGC and its abilities to orchestrate terror activities in the maritime domain against countries in the region.”
Will that damage Iran’s efforts to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed? It certainly degrades Iran’s ability to adapt around US-Israeli adaptations in the days ahead, even if individual units can operate independently for a short period. When armed escorts begin guarding convoys through the Strait, the ability to move materiel and men into position for new strategies may be crippled already. Plus, the fact that Israel can keep targeting leadership meetings means that the Iranians still haven’t fixed their opsec and may have to stop coordinating altogether just to survive the war.
And if things are bad at the top, it may be getting worse at the bottom. It appears that the IRGC may be mobilizing preadolescent boys to fill gaps in their forces:
JUST IN 🔴
IRGC official Rahim Nadali says Iran has lowered the minimum age for war support roles to 12 under the “For Iran” initiative, citing growing numbers of 12 and 13 year old volunteers.
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) March 26, 2026
Good Lord. If this is true, it’s a sign of impending collapse, and that is happening without a single infantry boot on the ground anywhere in Iran.
Tick tock, indeed.
Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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