Bombshell WSJ Report Reveals Iran’s ‘Secret Plan’ to Expand War With Trump: ‘Main War Has Not Yet Begun’

Jacquelyn Martin/AP photo

The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report detailing how, behind the scenes, Iranian hardliners dug in this summer to prepare to escalate the war with the U.S. amid negotiations to resolve the conflict, which they viewed as a delay tactic by the Trump administration.

The report by Benoit Faucon and Summer Said titled, “Iran’s Secret Plan to Escalate the War,” is based on intercepted communications between Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, which raised alarm within Arab intelligence agencies in the region. The Sunday evening report dropped just hours before Trump threatened more strikes on Iran as the current memorandum of understanding is set to expire.

The report details how, after Trump signed the memorandum of understanding in mid-June to take steps to resolve the conflict, “Iran’s hard-line leaders huddled in Tehran and came up with a different plan, according to Iranian and Arab officials.”

“In their view the pact was likely just an attempt by the U.S. and Israel to take pressure off the global economy and buy time for a bigger attack down the road. Instead of putting faith in talks, they took the past two months to prepare for a bigger fight,” continued the report before detailing the steps Iran took to widen the conflict:

Their efforts include giving the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps more control of the country’s regular army, appointing hardened veterans of the war with Iraq and past internal crackdowns to key posts, expanding domestic counterintelligence operations and ramping up production of missiles and drones. The leadership quickly seized the initiative, attacking ships to tighten Iran’s grip on Hormuz and expanding the battlefield to the Red Sea, which Saudi Arabia has used to get around Iran’s chokehold on the Persian Gulf.

The report added that the Vice President JD Vance-led peace talks led to a “strategic shift inside the country’s hard-line leadership to get their forces ready to widen the war and raise the costs for the U.S., officials familiar with the findings say.”

“Their overriding goal is to inflict enough pain to ensure the kind of attacks Iran has endured with the 12-day war last year and the continuing conflict aren’t repeated,” added the WSJ, later in the article noting:

The Revolutionary Guard used the calm created by the memorandum of understanding to lay the groundwork with allied militias around the region to step up attacks if needed, sending advisers to Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon to discuss the plans, the officials familiar with recent Arab intelligence findings said.

Mohammad Hassan Sangtarash, a Tehran-based defense analyst linked to the Iranian government, told the WSJ, “There is also a widespread view in Iran that the main war has not yet begun.”

“What we have seen so far is increasingly interpreted through the lens of ‘salami-slicing’ tactics—limited, incremental escalation designed to weaken capabilities before a larger confrontation,” added Sangtarash.

The WSJ added that Iran may even go so far as to conduct ground incursions into nearby countries as part of its plan to escalate the war and prolong global economic instability.

“The Revolutionary Guard—an armed force nearly 200,000 strong—has devised new plans for further escalation including pre-emptive strikes, according to Iranian officials and public statements. Among the options: sabotaging internet cables in the Persian Gulf, creating political unrest in countries with Shia communities such as Kuwait and Bahrain, and potentially even ground operations in Kuwait,” added the report, noting that Kuwait takes the threat seriously and is making contingency plans for such an event.

Read the full report here.

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