Sirens have not sounded, and no missiles have yet been fired. But inside Tehran’s corridors of power, Iran is behaving as if war with the United States is no longer a distant possibility but an approaching reality. Senior commanders are on heightened alert, missile units are being repositioned, and security forces are preparing for unrest at home.
According to senior Iranian officials cited by The New York Times, the armed forces have been placed on the highest level of alert. Ballistic missile launchers have been repositioned along Iran’s western frontier with Iraq, within striking distance of Israel, and along its southern coastline on the Persian Gulf, where US bases and naval assets are concentrated. In recent weeks, Iran has periodically closed its airspace to conduct missile tests and has staged naval drills that briefly disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of global oil passes.
