ANALYSIS: Iran isolated but still defiant after the American response

Introduction: a regime alone, and a regime that refuses to admit it

Defiance as the last resource of a weakened power

In the days following the American strikes of July 11 to 12, 2026, against roughly 140 targets linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran's public posture has remained one of unbroken defiance: the announced closure of the Strait of Hormuz, continued strikes against Gulf states hosting American forces, and rhetoric from Tehran suggesting the regime remains fully capable of sustained confrontation. Beneath that defiant surface, however, lies a country more isolated, diplomatically, economically and internally, than at almost any point since this crisis began in February.

This analysis argues that Iran's isolation and its defiance are not contradictory, they are two faces of the same strategic reality. A regime with genuinely fewer reliable options tends to rely more heavily on demonstrative acts of resistance, precisely because quieter forms of leverage, alliances, economic partnerships, internal cohesion, have grown thinner than the rhetoric admits.

Why isolation and defiance reinforce each other here

Understanding this dynamic requires looking past the daily headlines of strikes and closures toward the structural position Iran now occupies: a regime whose most powerful rhetorical allies offer only words, whose economy depends heavily on a single customer buying its oil at a discount, and whose own succession crisis at the top of its leadership structure remains, weeks after Supreme Leader Khamenei's death, genuinely unresolved.

The loudest defiance often comes from the weakest position, not the strongest one. Watching Tehran's rhetoric against the backdrop of its actual strategic isolation, that pattern feels unmistakable here.

Russia and China, allies in words but not in deeds

Rhetorical solidarity that stops well short of material support

Russia and China have both offered rhetorical support to Iran throughout this crisis, statements condemning American and Israeli strikes, calls for de-escalation framed in terms sympathetic to Tehran's position, and general expressions of solidarity within the broader framework of opposition to Western-led international order. What neither country has provided is any meaningful military or financial backing capable of altering the actual balance of power on the ground.

This gap between rhetoric and material support is not incidental, it reflects each country's own strategic calculations. Moscow, deeply absorbed by its own war in Ukraine and now facing setbacks in its African proxy operations as well, has neither the resources nor the appetite for a costly new commitment in the Gulf. Beijing, for its part, has built a business model around benefiting from Iranian isolation, buying discounted oil, rather than around ending that isolation through costly direct support.

Allies of convenience, not allies of substance

This pattern, sympathetic statements without material commitment, defines what might be called an alliance of convenience: a relationship that provides Iran with useful rhetorical cover at the United Nations and in international forums, without providing the kind of concrete backing, weapons transfers, direct financial bailouts, military intervention, that would meaningfully change Tehran's strategic position.

Iranian officials surely understand this distinction better than anyone. But acknowledging it publicly would undercut the very narrative of a broader anti-Western coalition that Tehran relies on domestically to justify the costs its own population continues to bear. So the fiction of robust alliance persists in official rhetoric, even as its practical hollowness becomes harder to disguise with each passing week of this crisis.

An ally who sends statements but not shipments isn't really an ally, it's a spectator with good manners. Iran deserves more honest allies than that, and it isn't getting them.

The Gulf's silence, isolation by omission rather than by declaration

No condemnation, but no support either

Gulf states struck by Iran in early July, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, have responded with measured restraint rather than open escalation, a posture consistent with each state's individual strategic calculations discussed elsewhere in this crisis's coverage. But this restraint should not be mistaken for sympathy toward Tehran's position. It reflects caution about further escalation, not agreement with Iran's actions or objectives.

This distinction matters enormously for assessing Iran's actual regional standing. The absence of open Gulf hostility is not the presence of Gulf support, and Tehran's regional isolation is arguably deepened, not eased, by a crisis that has left even historically more accommodating states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE maintaining careful public distance rather than offering any gesture of solidarity.

Even Saudi Arabia's 2023 opening has not translated into support

Saudi Arabia's 2023 diplomatic normalization with Iran, brokered by China after years of open hostility, represented a genuine, if limited, regional opening for Tehran. Yet that normalization has not translated into anything resembling active Saudi support during the current crisis. Riyadh's studied silence throughout the strikes and counter-strikes of recent months illustrates the limits of that rapprochement: normalized relations, yes, meaningful backing during an active military confrontation with the West, no.

This gap between diplomatic normalization and substantive support during crisis illustrates a broader pattern running through Iran's regional relationships: normalized does not mean allied, and Tehran's recent diplomatic gains across the Gulf have proven far more fragile under real pressure than they appeared in calmer times.

Normalization on paper and solidarity under fire are not the same thing. Iran is learning, in real time, just how far that distinction actually extends.

An economy propped up by a single customer

China as the buyer of last resort for sanctioned Iranian oil

Iran's economy has become heavily dependent on selling oil to China at a significant discount under Western sanctions, a commercial relationship that provides Tehran with critical revenue but that also concentrates enormous economic risk in a single relationship with a single buyer, whose interests do not necessarily align with Iran's own strategic priorities over time.

This dependency gives Beijing substantial indirect leverage over Iran's economic survival, leverage it has, so far, chosen not to exercise overtly, preferring the steady economic benefit of discounted oil purchases over the diplomatic complications that would come with either abandoning Iran or more actively backing it. China benefits most from the current equilibrium, discounted oil, minimal exposure, and has correspondingly little incentive to change it in either direction.

What single-customer dependency means for Iranian resilience

An economy this dependent on one trading partner has limited capacity to absorb further shocks, whether from additional sanctions specifically targeting the financial networks around figures like Mojtaba Khamenei, from further disruption to Iran's own oil export infrastructure, or simply from a Chinese decision, made for its own domestic economic reasons unrelated to Iran, to reduce its purchases of discounted Iranian crude.

This economic fragility rarely features prominently in Tehran's public rhetoric, which emphasizes resistance and self-sufficiency, but it represents one of the most concrete, quantifiable dimensions of Iran's current isolation, a vulnerability that no amount of defiant messaging about the Strait of Hormuz can actually offset.

A regime that depends this heavily on one customer for its economic survival is not in a position of strength, no matter how loudly its official statements insist otherwise.

The succession crisis, an internal fracture with external consequences

Mojtaba Khamenei's absence, a signal too loud to ignore

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's death on February 28, 2026, and his burial in Mashhad in early July after an unusually extended six-day funeral, exposed a succession process considerably less settled than Iranian state media has suggested. The notable absence of Mojtaba Khamenei, long considered a leading candidate for succession, from the public ceremonies has fueled intense speculation about internal power struggles at the very top of the regime.

Whatever the precise internal dynamics driving that absence, unconfirmed and likely to remain so for some time, the succession crisis itself represents a genuine vulnerability at a moment when Iran can least afford internal fracture: managing an active multi-front military and economic confrontation with the West requires exactly the kind of decisive, unified leadership that an unresolved succession struggle actively undermines.

New sanctions targeting the son's network, a direct response to this vulnerability

The United States moved quickly to impose new sanctions specifically targeting financial networks and individuals associated with Mojtaba Khamenei, a targeting choice that reflects American intelligence assessment of his continued importance within the regime's power structure, succession outcome notwithstanding. This targeted pressure adds another layer of difficulty to an already fragile internal transition, potentially deepening whatever fracture already exists within the regime's upper echelons.

A regime managing external military confrontation while its own succession remains genuinely contested is a regime with less capacity for consistent, coordinated decision-making than its public statements project, a vulnerability that both regional adversaries and Western strategists are watching closely.

An unresolved succession crisis at the very moment your regime faces its greatest external pressure in years is not bad luck, it's a compounding vulnerability that deserves far more attention than it currently receives.

Hormuz's closure as the economic weapon of a militarily weaker actor

Why closing the strait signals limitation, not strength

Iran's decision to announce the closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the July American strikes should be read less as a demonstration of overwhelming strength and more as an acknowledgment of the limits of Iran's conventional military options against American and allied forces. Closing Hormuz imposes real economic costs on the West and on Gulf states, but it is fundamentally a defensive, asymmetric tool, precisely the kind of weapon a militarily weaker actor reaches for when direct conventional confrontation offers little realistic hope of success.

This is not to minimize the closure's real impact, insurance premiums spiking, nearly 2,000 ships affected, oil markets thrown back into volatility after a brief period of relative calm. But the choice to rely on this specific tool, rather than any form of direct, sustained conventional military response, tells its own story about Iran's actual assessment of its conventional military options against the United States.

A weapon that also damages the wielder

Closing Hormuz does not come free for Iran either. The same disruption to oil markets that pressures the West and Gulf producers also complicates Iran's own already-strained economic position, particularly given its heavy reliance on oil exports to China even amid the broader sanctions regime. This is a weapon that inflicts real cost on its target, but at a real cost to the country wielding it as well, a trade-off that only makes sense for a regime with genuinely limited better alternatives.

The International Energy Agency's warning about global oil stocks potentially falling below 2.3 billion barrels by December 2026, a level unseen since 2003, underscores how seriously this specific tool disrupts global markets. But it disrupts them precisely because it is a blunt, costly instrument, not a precise or sustainable long-term strategic option for a regime seeking to rebuild its position rather than simply inflict pain.

Choosing to strangle a shipping lane instead of fighting on more conventional terms tells you something honest about how a regime actually assesses its own strength, whatever its public statements claim.

Nuclear reconstruction, fueling distrust that deepens isolation

Satellite evidence that undermines Iran's diplomatic credibility

Satellite imagery analyzed by the Institute for Science and International Security, documenting reconstruction activity at sites linked to Iran's historical nuclear weapons research, does more than raise proliferation concerns, it actively undermines Tehran's diplomatic credibility at precisely the moment it most needs international partners willing to take its stated positions at face value.

Every piece of evidence suggesting Iran is quietly rebuilding capacity it claimed to have abandoned makes it harder for even sympathetic international actors, including Russia and China, to publicly vouch for Iran's stated intentions without risking their own credibility. This dynamic compounds Iran's isolation in a way that goes beyond simple military or economic calculation, it erodes the basic trust that any future negotiated settlement would require.

A distrust that will outlast this specific crisis

Even if the current round of strikes, closures and counter-strikes eventually subsides into another fragile pause, the deficit of trust generated by this pattern, activity, denial, subsequent discovery, repeated across multiple rounds of this crisis since February, will likely outlast any specific ceasefire agreement. Future negotiations will proceed, if they proceed at all, against a backdrop of accumulated skepticism that makes durable resolution considerably harder to achieve.

This should worry Iranian officials more than it appears to. Isolation driven by military setbacks can potentially be reversed through negotiated settlement. Isolation driven by a credibility deficit accumulated over multiple documented instances of dishonesty is considerably harder to undo, regardless of how favorable the underlying strategic circumstances eventually become.

Trust, once spent, doesn't come back at the same exchange rate. Every new satellite image documenting quiet reconstruction spends more of it, and Iran doesn't seem to have much left in reserve.

The population bears the cost that leadership rhetoric obscures

Inflation, shortages, and a war fought partly on ordinary Iranians' backs

Behind the geopolitical analysis of alliances, oil markets and strategic calculations lies a more immediate reality: ordinary Iranians continue absorbing the direct cost of this prolonged confrontation, through inflation, shortages, and the broader economic strain of sustained sanctions and military conflict. This cost accumulates regardless of which specific narrative, Iranian defiance or Iranian isolation, dominates international coverage in any given week.

This human cost rarely receives the attention it deserves amid coverage focused on strategic and military dimensions of the crisis. But it represents perhaps the most consequential, if least visible, dimension of Iran's current isolation: a population increasingly bearing burdens created by decisions made far above their own influence or control.

A generational gap that regime rhetoric struggles to bridge

Reporting on Iranian domestic sentiment throughout this crisis suggests a widening gap between official regime rhetoric, emphasizing resistance, sacrifice and ultimate vindication, and the lived experience of younger Iranians, who have grown up under sanctions their entire lives and who show increasing signs of disconnection from the ideological framework that regime messaging relies on to justify continued confrontation.

This generational disconnect represents a slower-moving but potentially more consequential form of isolation than anything happening on the battlefield or in oil markets, isolation between the regime and its own population's younger generation, whose patience for sacrifice justified by ideological confrontation with the West shows real signs of erosion over time.

The most important isolation in this entire story might not be Iran's isolation from the world. It might be the growing distance between the regime's rhetoric and its own younger citizens' patience.

Western unity on firmness, division on method

A shared resolve that masks real tactical disagreement

Western powers have remained broadly united in their basic firmness toward Iran throughout this crisis, no major Western government has publicly broken from the position that Iran's nuclear ambitions and regional destabilization efforts must be constrained. But this shared resolve masks genuine disagreement about method, between the Trump administration's preference for maximum pressure and direct military action, and the more cautious, negotiation-oriented instincts of several European governments.

This tactical division does not undermine the basic Western consensus that Iran represents a genuine security threat requiring sustained attention. But it does complicate the coordination of a fully unified Western strategy, creating openings that Iranian diplomacy, however constrained by its broader isolation, has attempted to exploit where possible.

Trump's approach, a necessary firmness with real costs attached

President Trump's consistently firm posture toward Iran throughout this crisis, declaring the Islamabad memorandum "over" following renewed Iranian strikes, ordering the July 11 to 12 strikes against roughly 140 IRGC-linked targets, reflects a necessary willingness to impose real consequences that a purely diplomatic approach might have struggled to achieve on its own. Sustained, credible pressure has, at minimum, denied Iran the extended breathing room a less firm posture might have provided.

This firmness carries real costs and real risks, including the possibility of further escalation that a more gradual approach might have avoided. But given Iran's documented pattern of exploiting pauses in pressure to quietly rebuild capacity, as the nuclear reconstruction evidence suggests, a posture of sustained firmness appears, on the available evidence, more likely to constrain Iran's options than an approach reliant primarily on trust and negotiation alone.

Trump's approach carries real risk, and I won't pretend otherwise. But watching how quickly Iran moved to rebuild capacity during the last pause, sustained pressure looks less like recklessness and more like a necessary correction to a pattern that kept failing.

Historical parallels, and their real limits

What isolated authoritarian regimes have historically faced

History offers examples of authoritarian regimes whose combination of external isolation and internal fracture eventually contributed to significant instability or collapse, though the specific mechanisms and timelines in each historical case varied enormously and rarely followed a predictable script. Drawing direct parallels to Iran's current situation requires real caution: every regime's specific circumstances, resources, and sources of internal cohesion differ substantially.

Iran retains genuine sources of internal cohesion, ideological commitment among core regime supporters, security apparatus loyalty, and a historical narrative of resistance to external pressure that has sustained the regime through previous periods of isolation and sanctions dating back decades. These are not nothing, and they should caution against any simplistic prediction of imminent regime collapse based solely on current isolation.

Why this crisis differs from simpler historical analogies

What makes the current moment distinct from some historical parallels is the combination of factors converging simultaneously, external military pressure, economic dependency on a single unreliable partner, and genuine internal succession uncertainty, rather than any single pressure point in isolation. Regimes have historically proven more resilient against single-dimension pressure than against multiple, simultaneous, reinforcing pressures of the kind Iran currently faces.

This observation should be stated with appropriate humility about the genuine unpredictability of how authoritarian systems respond to sustained multi-dimensional pressure. Iran may prove more resilient than this convergence of pressures suggests, or it may prove considerably less so. Honest analysis requires acknowledging that uncertainty rather than projecting false confidence in either direction.

I'm wary of confident predictions about regime collapse, history is full of authoritarian systems that outlasted every reasonable expectation of their demise. But the specific combination of pressures facing Iran right now is genuinely unusual, and that deserves honest acknowledgment.

Iran's gamble that the West will eventually tire

A strategy built on outlasting Western attention and resolve

Much of Iran's strategic calculation throughout this crisis appears to rest on a specific bet: that sustained Western attention and resolve will eventually fatigue, that domestic political pressures within the United States and European countries will eventually force a shift toward accommodation, and that Iran's own capacity for sustained resistance, however costly domestically, will outlast Western patience for continued confrontation.

This is not an unreasonable strategic bet in the abstract, Western democracies do face real domestic political pressures that can shift foreign policy priorities over time, and sustained international crises do sometimes fade from public attention as new priorities emerge. Iran's leadership has some historical basis for believing that outlasting Western attention is, at minimum, a viable strategy worth pursuing.

Why the evidence so far contradicts that specific bet

Five months into this crisis, however, the available evidence suggests Western resolve has not meaningfully weakened. The Trump administration's willingness to declare the Islamabad memorandum "over" and order substantial new strikes rather than tolerate continued Iranian provocations suggests a threshold for action that remains firmly intact rather than eroding under sustained pressure. European governments, while favoring different methods, have not broken from the basic consensus that Iran's behavior requires continued constraint.

This does not guarantee Western resolve will remain intact indefinitely, predicting political will years into the future carries its own uncertainty. But the specific bet that Western patience would fatigue within the first five months of this crisis has not, so far, been vindicated by the actual pattern of events.

Iran is betting on Western exhaustion. Five months in, that bet looks considerably worse than it probably did back in February.

Qatar and Oman, indispensable but insufficient mediators

Why mediation alone cannot resolve Iran's deeper isolation

The continued mediating efforts of Qatar and Oman, essential to whatever diplomatic progress this crisis has achieved, including the now-collapsed Islamabad memorandum, address the immediate symptoms of confrontation, active strikes, closed shipping lanes, without resolving the deeper structural isolation described throughout this analysis. Mediation can produce pauses and frameworks, as it did in June, but it cannot by itself rebuild the alliance relationships, economic diversification, or internal cohesion that Iran's current position actually requires.

This is not a criticism of Qatari or Omani diplomacy, which has repeatedly proven more durable and useful than either side's own direct engagement might have produced alone. It is simply an observation about the limits of what skilled mediation between hostile parties can achieve when the underlying imbalance driving the hostility remains structurally unaddressed.

What would actually need to change for Iran's isolation to ease

Genuinely reducing Iran's current isolation would require developments considerably more fundamental than another negotiated pause: verified, sustained compliance with nuclear non-proliferation commitments that rebuilds international trust, economic diversification beyond dependency on a single discounted-oil relationship with China, and a resolved, stable succession at the top of Iran's own leadership structure. None of these appear imminent based on the evidence available as this analysis is written.

Until some combination of these deeper changes occurs, Iran will likely continue cycling through the same pattern documented throughout this crisis: periods of strikes and closures, followed by mediated pauses, followed by renewed escalation once the underlying sources of confrontation reassert themselves. Mediators like Qatar and Oman will keep doing essential work within that cycle, without being able to break it entirely on their own.

Qatar and Oman deserve real credit for keeping this crisis from spiraling further than it already has. But even the best mediators can't fix a structural imbalance that both sides, for their own reasons, keep choosing not to resolve.

The broader authoritarian axis, and Iran's place within it

China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, a loose alignment against Western order

Iran's position within this crisis increasingly reflects its broader membership in what many Western analysts describe as a loose, informal axis of authoritarian and revisionist powers, alongside China, Russia and North Korea, united less by shared ideology than by a common interest in constraining Western-led international order and mutual, if limited, diplomatic and economic support during moments of confrontation with the West.

This alignment provides Iran with rhetorical cover and, in Beijing's case, meaningful economic support, but as this analysis has documented throughout, it does not provide the kind of concrete military or financial backing that would fundamentally alter Iran's strategic position during an active confrontation. The axis functions more as parallel, mutually reinforcing resistance to Western pressure than as genuine collective security arrangement.

Why this framing matters for understanding what comes next

Viewing Iran's current crisis through this broader lens helps explain both its persistent defiance, drawing confidence from membership in a broader anti-Western coalition, and its underlying isolation, since that coalition provides far less concrete support than its rhetoric implies. Iran is neither the fully isolated pariah that some Western commentary suggests, nor the well-supported member of a genuinely functional alliance that Tehran's own rhetoric projects.

Understanding this nuanced middle position matters enormously for how Western policymakers should calibrate their own strategy going forward: neither assuming Iran can be pressured into total capitulation through isolation alone, nor overestimating the durability of the external support Tehran can actually count on if this crisis continues to escalate.

Iran isn't alone, but it isn't well-supported either. That specific, uncomfortable middle position is harder to describe than either extreme, and that's exactly why it deserves more careful attention than it usually gets.

Every time I look closer at this so-called axis of authoritarian solidarity, I find less substance than the rhetoric promises. Iran is discovering that the hard way, one unmet expectation at a time.

What Western strategy should take from this moment

Pressure that is sustained, but calibrated to actual vulnerabilities

The specific vulnerabilities documented throughout this analysis, economic dependency on China, internal succession uncertainty, eroding domestic legitimacy among younger Iranians, eroded international credibility from documented nuclear reconstruction, suggest that Western strategy going forward should focus pressure precisely on these structural weak points rather than relying primarily on military strikes alone, however necessary those strikes have proven at specific moments.

Targeted financial sanctions against networks tied to figures like Mojtaba Khamenei represent exactly this kind of calibrated approach, pressure applied at a point of genuine internal vulnerability rather than broad, undifferentiated pressure that risks strengthening regime cohesion through a shared sense of external siege rather than weakening it through targeted internal strain.

Maintaining unity without pretending away real tactical differences

Western strategy also benefits from acknowledging, rather than papering over, the genuine tactical differences between the Trump administration's preference for maximum pressure and European governments' more negotiation-oriented instincts. These different approaches can be complementary rather than contradictory, sustained pressure combined with genuine diplomatic openings, provided Western governments coordinate deliberately rather than allowing the differences to fragment the underlying shared objective.

The mediating work of Qatar and Oman remains valuable precisely because it provides a channel for the diplomatic half of this combined approach, without requiring Western governments themselves to compromise on the sustained pressure that the evidence suggests has been necessary to prevent Iran from simply outlasting Western attention, as its own strategic bet appears to assume it eventually will.

The smartest Western strategy here isn't choosing between pressure and diplomacy. It's applying both, deliberately, at the specific points where Iran's isolation is most real and least able to withstand it.

Conclusion: an isolation that defiance cannot indefinitely disguise

What this analysis has documented

Iran's current position combines genuine, well-documented isolation, rhetorical-only support from Russia and China, dangerous economic dependency on a single customer, an unresolved internal succession crisis, eroding domestic legitimacy among younger citizens, and eroded international credibility from documented nuclear reconstruction, with a public posture of continued defiance that closing the Strait of Hormuz and striking Gulf states is clearly meant to project. These two realities are not contradictory. The defiance is, in significant part, a response to the isolation, not evidence against it.

Western resolve, while occasionally divided on method between the Trump administration's firmness and European governments' preference for negotiation, has not meaningfully weakened over five months of sustained crisis, contradicting Iran's apparent strategic bet that Western attention would fatigue faster than its own capacity for resistance. Mediators like Qatar and Oman continue essential work narrowing the immediate symptoms of confrontation, without being able to resolve the deeper structural imbalance driving it.

What remains genuinely uncertain going forward

Whether Iran's documented vulnerabilities eventually force a genuine strategic recalibration in Tehran, or whether the regime continues cycling through strikes, closures and mediated pauses indefinitely, remains a genuinely open question that this analysis cannot resolve with false confidence. Historical parallels offer some guidance but no reliable prediction, authoritarian regimes have proven capable both of adapting to sustained multi-dimensional pressure and of eventually buckling under it, and Iran's specific trajectory remains to be determined by choices not yet made, in Tehran, in Washington, and in the mediating capitals still working to prevent this crisis from escalating further.

What can be said with confidence is that the gap between Iran's defiant public rhetoric and its documented structural isolation has grown, not shrunk, since this crisis began in February, and that gap, more than any single strike or ceasefire announcement, will likely shape how this confrontation eventually resolves.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

What I know and what I don't

This article is a geopolitical analysis column, based on facts drawn from international news agencies, specialized analysts, and recognized nuclear proliferation experts. The passages introduced by an editorial comment reflect my personal opinion as a columnist and do not claim additional factual authority; they are clearly identified as such throughout the text.

Certain elements discussed here, notably the precise internal dynamics of Iran's succession crisis and the degree of Chinese economic leverage actually exercised over Tehran, remain genuinely difficult to verify independently and are presented with the caution their sourcing requires.

Method

This article draws on cross-referencing of several primary and secondary sources published between June and mid-July 2026, alongside verifiable general knowledge of the conflict's timeline since February 2026. No fact reported here has been invented; documented uncertainties have been flagged as such throughout.

Sources

Primary sources

Al Jazeera live blog on the IRGC's declared closure of the Strait of Hormuz — July 12, 2026

Reuters on Khamenei's sons appearing at the funeral, not his designated successor — July 5, 2026

Iran International on developments in the crisis — July 10, 2026

CNN on the text of the US-Iran war memorandum of understanding — June 17, 2026

Secondary sources

Khaleej Times on Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan intercepting Iranian missiles and drones — July 2026

Malay Mail on mediators trying to salvage diplomacy after the US-Iran escalation — July 12, 2026

Foreign Policy, coverage of the Gulf and Iran crisis — July 2026

The Guardian on Iran's defiance and the six-day funeral for its supreme leader — July 3, 2026