Reports say Iranian hard-liners launched the Hormuz attacks without authorisation, sinking the US deal

Iranian hard-liners launched attacks in the Strait of Hormuz in defiance of the country’s leadership, undermining a deal with the United States, according to reporting carried by the Times of Israel². The New York Times account describes how Iran’s hard-liners prevailed and sabotaged the peace deal, and records that Iranian forces opened fire on three commercial ships in the strait⁴. Firstpost reported that a rogue faction of the Iranian military, controlled by a former spymaster, derailed the deal in defiance of President Masoud Pezeshkian and Revolutionary Guard chief Ahmad Vahidi⁶.

The chain of command described is unusually explicit. Pezeshkian rushed back to Tehran and angrily telephoned Vahidi to demand answers². One summary of the reporting puts it plainly: the president did not know, the Guard chief did not authorise it, a hardline faction staged its own campaign in the strait, and nobody has claimed Saturday’s strike⁷. A separate account describes a security official resurfacing to sabotage the deal and push the war toward escalation, and notes that Pezeshkian had travelled to Iraq for a week of mourning ceremonies for Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former supreme leader, who was killed⁵.

Who is in charge is itself contested. Questions about who directs Iran’s government are intensifying while Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei remains absent from public view and hard-liners expand their influence³. Opposition-linked reporting describes pension protests, an oil dispute and calls for a nuclear test deepening the crisis amid factional infighting, with an official tied to the supreme leader’s publication office attacking former president Hassan Rouhani¹.

Why it matters to investors

Markets price negotiated outcomes on the assumption that a signatory can deliver its own side. These accounts say that assumption did not hold: the attacks that broke the deal were not ordered by the president or by the Guard’s own chief^6,7. Any future agreement on Hormuz therefore carries an execution risk separate from its terms, because a faction outside the chain of command can void it with a single strike^2,4.

What to watch

The first marker is attribution. No one has claimed the most recent strike, and until responsibility is established, deterrence has no address⁷. The second is whether Pezeshkian’s demand for answers produces any visible consequence inside the Guard^2,6.

The third is the vacuum at the top. With the supreme leader unseen in public and hard-liners gaining ground, the question of who can bind Iran to anything remains open³. The internal pressures reported alongside it, from pension protests to calls for a nuclear test, point the same way¹.