Wall Street Journal: Arab intelligence officials have picked up evidence—including communications between Iran and militia allies in countries such as Yemen and Iraq—of 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. Alarming weaker Gulf countries like Kuwait, Iran’s leaders are increasingly talking about offensive operations on enemy territory.
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.
“There is also a widespread view in Iran that the main war has not yet begun,” said Mohammad Hassan Sangtarash, a Tehran-based defense analyst close to the Iranian government. “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.”
The Iranian preparations point to an enormous gulf between how Washington and Tehran are perceiving this stage of the war…