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Iran War Enters More Dangerous Phase as U.S. Promises Heaviest Strikes, Hormuz Remains Choked, Powers Harden Positions

Edited by IndianRepublic.in - Location: New Delhi, Delhi, India

✍️ Written by Saket Suman

The war between the United States, Israel and Iran has moved into a more dangerous and more systemically disruptive phase, with Washington promising its “most intense” day of strikes yet inside Iran, Gulf states reporting fresh drone attacks, and the Strait of Hormuz still effectively frozen despite U.S. threats of military escorts. What is now emerging is a conflict that is steadily fusing air war, energy coercion, maritime disruption, evacuation logistics, diplomatic realignment and information manipulation into one expanding regional crisis. 

Iran War Enters More Dangerous Phase as U.S. Promises Heaviest Strikes, Hormuz Remains Choked, Powers Harden Positions
Image Source: US Central Command
The clearest signal of escalation came from the Pentagon. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that “today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran,” while the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said Iranian missile attacks had fallen by about 90%, presenting the new bombardment as part of a campaign to break Tehran’s remaining capacity to sustain the war. 

That claim came as the broader casualty count continued to rise across the region, with at least 1,230 people reported killed in Iran, at least 397 in Lebanon and 11 in Israel, according to officials in those countries. 

At the same time, Iran showed that it still retains the ability to spread pressure across the Gulf. The United Arab Emirates said nine drones struck its territory and reported two additional deaths. Bahrain said an Iranian attack killed one person and wounded eight. Saudi Arabia said it destroyed two drones over its eastern oil region, while Kuwait’s National Guard said it shot down six drones. 

The pattern matters as much as the numbers because Tehran’s attacks are a sustained effort to keep Gulf infrastructure, allied capitals and energy routes under constant strain even while its own missile fire has dropped as per Washington. 

That, in turn, explains why the Strait of Hormuz has become the central strategic nerve of the war. President Donald Trump warned again that if Iran lays mines in the waterway and does not remove them “IMMEDIATELY,” the military consequences would come “at a level never seen before.” 

But for all the rhetoric, the White House was forced to clarify that no U.S. Navy tanker escort has yet taken place, despite a misleading public claim from the U.S. energy secretary that was later withdrawn. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said escorting vessels remains an option, not a present reality. 

That gap between warning and execution is now one of the most important facts of the war. Washington is threatening overwhelming force to keep Hormuz open but commercial confidence has not returned. The administration is instead relying, for now, on a $20 billion rolling ship-reinsurance backstop through the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. to help vessels operate in Gulf waters. 

Even with that support, a huge number of oil and product tankers remain idle in the Gulf while only isolated movements have taken place through the strait. In practical terms, the market is still behaving as though the corridor is blocked, and that means the energy shock remains embedded in the conflict. 

The war is therefore now being measured by what it is doing to the world economy in real time. With shipping stalled, navigation interference reported off Ras Al Khaimah, and traders struggling to distinguish genuine vessel movement from spoofed tracks, the Gulf is becoming a theatre of commercial uncertainty. Kpler said Iran has restarted limited crude exports from the Jask terminal, which is its only major outlet capable of bypassing Hormuz, but described that route as only a narrow “release valve” because its capacity remains far below Iran’s normal export needs. That means the broader pressure on supply, insurance, freight and price formation remains intact. 

The market consequences are already shaping political behavior far beyond the Gulf. Oil surged after Iran installed Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader, and Washington’s mixed messaging, Trump calling the war a possible “short excursion” while also threatening overwhelming escalation if Hormuz is targeted, has fed volatility in both commodity and equity markets. One reason the administration is so publicly invested in reopening shipping is domestic as Trump’s political case at home is tied to energy affordability, and a long disruption in Gulf oil flows threatens that argument directly. Now, ongoing surveys are beginning to show that more Americans may be opposed to Iran war than those supporting it.

Military pressure is being matched by diplomatic crowding. Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke again with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday and, according to the Kremlin, reaffirmed Russia’s “principled position” in favor of the earliest possible de-escalation and a political settlement. India also kept its diplomatic channel open, with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar saying he had a “detailed conversation” with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and that the two sides agreed to remain in touch. China, meanwhile, continued to frame the war as an illegal and destabilizing rupture, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi telling Gulf counterparts that the top priority must be to stop military operations immediately and return to dialogue and negotiation. 

The significance of those moves lies in what they reveal. Let us be clear that we are now seeing even states not aligned with Iran increasingly trying to prevent the conflict from crossing another threshold. Kazakhstan condemned missile and drone attacks from Iranian territory on the UAE. The EU’s Antonio Costa said a multipolar world requires multilateral solutions and that “freedom and human rights cannot be achieved through bombs.” The Maldives condemned both the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran and Iran’s attacks on Gulf states. 

The emerging diplomatic map is thus of governments trying to contain a war that they increasingly see as capable of outgrowing the intentions of its original architects.

The battlefield is also widening outward through allied military positioning and civilian extraction. A statement released by the British Ministry of Defence said a ground-based British counter-drone unit destroyed a drone in Iraqi airspace headed toward coalition forces, that British pilots have now logged more than 230 hours on defensive missions protecting people, bases and partners, and that RFA Lyme Bay has been brought to heightened readiness for possible maritime tasks in the eastern Mediterranean. 

Another British defense statement said RAF Typhoons, F-35B jets, Voyagers, Wildcat and Merlin helicopters remain active, while U.S. bombers have been forward-positioned at RAF Fairford after London agreed that British bases could be used for strikes connected to Iran’s missile program. Those are still framed as defensive or limited-support moves, but they show how secondary powers are being drawn deeper into the war’s operating architecture.

Canada’s posture shows the civilian side of the same reality. A statement from Foreign Minister Anita Anand said that from March 4 to March 8, more than 4,300 Canadians, permanent residents and family members reached Canada by direct and indirect routes from the Middle East and Gulf. Ottawa said it had facilitated visas for border crossings, secured accommodations and onward travel, block-booked hundreds of seats on commercial flights, organized buses to safe third countries and operated at least one charter flight, with more possible if needed. 

The statement added that call volumes to Canada’s emergency response center had fallen sharply from nearly 1,400 a day to just over 600 in the previous 24 hours, and suggested that partial commercial reopening is beginning to take pressure off emergency evacuations, even if the region remains volatile.

The United States itself is seeing a similar pattern. The State Department said it has organized more than two dozen charter flights carrying thousands of Americans from the region to the United States or Europe, but also said most of the more than 27,000 people who sought help declined government assistance when offered, choosing instead to stay, travel commercially or use more convenient routes. 

The department confirmed that emergency funds normally reserved for diplomatic crises have been used to support the operation, and said current charter flights are running at less than 40% occupancy on average. That matters because it shows the war’s logistical picture is uneven as air travel remains disrupted, but not uniformly shut; governments are still evacuating, but increasingly around the margins of a partially functioning civilian transport system.

Even beyond bombs, ships and diplomacy, the war is now increasingly an information contest. Iran’s internet blackout has reached 240+ hours, according to NetBlocks, which makes it one of the most severe government-imposed nationwide shutdowns on record. Araghchi accused U.S. officials of posting “fake news to manipulate markets.” 

MarineTraffic reported new satellite-navigation interference near Ras Al Khaimah that created the false appearance of vessels moving toward Hormuz when they were not. In other words, this war is now also being fought in the physical battlespace, the energy market, the digital sphere and the public-information space all at once.

The biggest picture emerging after nearly two weeks of war is that the campaign has not produced a clean military end state, even if Washington says Iran’s missile and drone capabilities have been sharply reduced. Instead, it has produced a layered crisis. The United States can hit harder. Iran can still spread pain. Gulf states remain exposed. Shipping has not normalised. Outside powers are edging closer without wanting full entry while the global economy is reacting to uncertainty faster than diplomacy is moving to contain it. 

That is what makes this phase more dangerous than the opening one because the war is now escalating in the number of systems it is destabilizing at the same time.

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Read a Note on how we are covering the Iran War.

(Saket Suman is Editor at IndianRepublic.in, and the author of The Psychology of a Patriot.)

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