One of the most troubling revelations of the weekend was not the number of countries struck or the height of oil prices — it was the degree to which Iran’s military appeared to be operating beyond the control of the country’s elected civilian leadership. Iran’s president publicly apologized to Gulf neighbors and pledged to halt strikes against them, only for the military to continue its operations hours later, sending oil prices above $100 and demonstrating the limits of civilian authority in Tehran.
Israeli strikes on oil storage facilities near Tehran killed four workers and blanketed the capital in black smoke. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards threatened to push global oil to $200 per barrel and launched strikes against Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait — a campaign that continued regardless of the president’s diplomatic overtures.
Saudi forces intercepted 15 drones, Bahrain’s desalination plant was hit, two Saudi civilians died, and a US service member succumbed to wounds from an Iranian attack, the seventh American killed in the conflict. Reports of Russian intelligence support for Iranian targeting operations raised the stakes further.
The clerical assembly’s appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader may or may not resolve the disconnect between civilian and military leadership. His hardline background suggested he would be more likely to endorse the military’s expansive approach than to rein it in — a prospect that provided no comfort to oil markets watching crude prices climb steadily higher.
Washington pledged not to target Iranian oil infrastructure and predicted brief supply disruptions. But with Iran’s military operating beyond its own government’s apparent control, the path to any negotiated de-escalation was harder to chart than ever before.
Oil Prices Climb as Iran’s Military Operates Beyond Presidential Control
