Iran could launch fall strikes on ships and Gulf targets, analysts warn

Iran could launch military strikes as early as this fall, targeting a list of high-value assets to shatter increasing U.S. economic sanctions, national security analysts warned Thursday.

The warning came as the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, or ADNOC, reported that two vessels were struck transiting the Strait of Hormuz, according to the United Arab Emirates’ state-run WAM news agency.

ADNOC said there were no injuries and the situation was under control, according to Reuters, and as the UAE foreign ministry condemned the Iranian attacks.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also said Thursday that Washington was preparing to take unprecedented economic action against Iran.

“Watch this ⁠space for more announcements ​coming next week because we ​are going to apply measures like have never been seen in ​the history of economic ​isolation on a country,” Bessent said in ‌an ⁠interview on Newsmax.

Iranian forces could shift to guerrilla-style hit-and-run attacks to exploit the U.S. troop buildup in the Gulf. (Photo by AFP via Getty Image)

Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that Tehran is likely to step up military pressure as Washington intensifies sanctions.

“Come early fall, what we can expect is for them to kinetically push back against Trump’s economic policy,” Taleblu said. “If the president is re-embracing economic pressure as a management approach, just like we saw in 2019, then the regime will use kinetic pressure to try to find a way to break out of that economic containment.”

Ben Taleblu said shrinking oil revenues and the U.S. naval blockade could also drive Tehran to expand its target list across the region.

Iranian ballistic missiles are displayed during the ceremony of joining the Armed Forces. Sources are now saying Iran has sent these missiles to Russia. (Iran’s Presidency/WANA/West Asia News Agency/Handout/REUTERS)

“This means they would embrace the kinetic tool, and that’s how they would get out of the economic containment regime that the U.S. seems to be defaulting to want to put on them,” Taleblu added. “I would say more attacks on ships, potentially more attacks on U.S. bases, potentially more attacks on Arab infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, and certainly the regime would create a tiered list of targets of what is of immediate value versus what has greater economic value versus what might lead to the U.S. directly or indirectly responding.”

The warnings come amid a deadlock in talks between Washington and Tehran.

So far, there have been no discussions about extending the U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement, a senior Iranian source told Reuters Aug. 12.

Tehran has insisted Washington return to the pact and set a definitive timeline to meet its obligations.

The interim memorandum of understanding, signed in June, called for the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts.”

Tehran sent an unprecedented ‘whole-regime’ team to the US deal talks which signals one priority, a counterterrorism expert said (URS FLUEELER/Pool via REUTERS)

The agreement later unraveled, with Trump declaring on July 7 that the pact was “over.”

Under the framework, both sides had an extendable 60-day window to negotiate a final agreement addressing key security concerns, including Iran’s nuclear program.

That deadline expires Aug. 17, with control of the Strait of Hormuz remaining a major sticking point.

Hossein Taeb, the newly appointed head of Iran’s Basij paramilitary force, said Thursday that the Strait of Hormuz remains “under Iran’s control and management.”

His comments conflicted with Trump’s assertion a day earlier that the U.S. held “total control” over the vital waterway.

A view of commercial cargo vessels and crude oil tankers are anchored in the Gulf of Oman, off the coast of Muscat, Oman, on June 21, 2026, as they prepare to transit through the critical Strait of Hormuz. Maritime traffic along this vital global trade corridor experienced severe disruptions following heightened geopolitical tensions between the United States and Iran that escalated earlier in February. Following a diplomatic memorandum of understanding reached in mid-June, the strategic waterway is expected to fully reopen to international shipping and energy transit. (Shady Alassar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The regime is relying on tried and true tactics here, which is, you know, a knife in the back and a handshake in the front to many of America’s traditional Gulf partners,” Taleblu said. “It looks like Iranian escalation, Iranian diplomatic pressure, Iranian diplomatic finesse is trying to back the Trump administration into the MOU again.”

“The regime definitely does not want to grant the Trump administration the optics of victory, and to that end, they’re quite keen to hold on to the Strait of Hormuz,” he added.

Taleblu said Trump has described the sanctions-driven strategy as a “low-key” approach.

“These are high-impact tools,” he concluded. “I think part of the escalation that we saw in the summer of 2019 — part of that past could be a prologue.”