INTREP360 INTELLIGENCE REPORT
04.15.2026
April 15th, 2026
Greetings!
Yesterday, President Donald Trump purportedly said, according to Maria Bartiromo, that the war in Iran was over. Today, as it turned out, during his interview with her, he actually said the war was “very close to being over.”
That’s a big difference.
It is also why it didn’t add up to what we were seeing — and thus, our caution here yesterday when we wrote, “not so fast.” Ahmad Vahidi, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) & a regime hardliner, still gets a vote.
AI image credit Grok. President Donald Trump (left) and Ahmad Vahidi, the head of the IRGC (right).
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Today, thanks to reporting by Barak Ravid for Axios, we now understand how a potential U.S.-Iran deal is coming together & where — more importantly — where it might fall apart in the coming days.
Ravid said that an unnamed U.S. official told him, “We want to make a deal. And parts of their government want to make a deal. Now the trick is to get the whole of government over there to make the deal.”
Key words being: ‘whole of government.’
As we’ve warned here repeatedly now — including yesterday — Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, and Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s Foreign Minister, are not the final decision makers.
Vice President JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner can talk to them all they want, but the Iranian politicos lack the authority — ditto the clout in Tehran — to finalize or agree to any peace deal.
Ahmad Vahidi, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and his fellow IRGC hardliners get the final say. It isn’t likely — in our view — that they will agree to ending the war until more U.S. military pressure is applied.
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Granted, as we noted yesterday in the New York Post, Trump’s decision to blockade Iranian ports is having a devastating effect on Iran’s economy. As one U.S. official put it to Ravid, “Iran has no money. They’re broke. We know it. And they know it.”
Nonetheless, we still are not seeing overt signs of regime collapse. Quite to the contrary, the IRGC & Basij — the IRGC’s street paramilitary enforcement force — command & control appears intact as evinced by Iranian efforts to dig out ballistic missiles, drones, and launchers that were buried in the so-called missile cities by U.S. & Israeli air strikes.
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Notably, earlier today, Fox News reported that Mohsen Rezai, a former military advisor to the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, claimed that U.S. naval forces enforcing the blockade of Iranian ports are now “under our missile launchers.”
Photo credit: Press Office of The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iranian military personnel participate in the “Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz” exercise in the Persian Gulf & Strait of Hormuz on February 16th, 2026.
Rezai added that, “We will sink them all. We will not allow a single one to escape us.” Granted, this is exaggerated rhetoric.
However, the threat is real — especially as oil tanker traffic to and from Iraq or the Gulf States begins to resume.
That’s why we’ve urged that it is imperative that Adm. Brad Cooper, the Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) secure the far side of the objective — meaning key coastal terrain inside of Iran — that directly threatens maritime and naval traffic transiting the narrow channels of the Strait of Hormuz.
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To be clear, we are not advocating for a ground invasion force. Rather, these would be covering forces for U.S. Navy assets operating in the Strait of Hormuz. Close air support — in the form of U.S. Air Force A-10 Warthogs and Army AH-64 Apache helicopters — would also be required to ensure mission success.
For now — and we get it — Team Trump likely doesn’t want to engage in this kind of covering operation yet, so long as the ceasefire remains in effect.
That said, it is significant that the U.S. continues to build combat power in the Middle East. The USS George H.W. Bush(CVN 77) carrier strike group — and its 6,000 sailors — continues rapidly steaming toward the region via Agulhas Passage off of the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa to avoid traveling through the Suez Canal.
Photo credit: U.S. Navy. The USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) transits the Atlantic Ocean on February 15th, 2026.
4,200 U.S. Marines — the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit — headed to the region on the USS Boxer Amphibious Ready Group combined with the sailors aboard the USS George H.W. Bush strike group will add 10,200 U.S. military personnel to the 50,000 Americans already on station in the Middle East.
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Elsewhere today, Tehran continued to look for other ways to counter Trump’s naval blockade of Iranian ports in southern & western Iran.
Tasnim News, a quasi-state affiliated news agency in Iran, quoted Maj. Gen. Ali Abdollahi, the commander of Khatam al-Anbiya Central HQ — the operational headquarters for Iran’s combined armed forces — as saying that, “The powerful Armed Forces of Iran will not allow any exports and imports to continue in the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, and Red Sea.”
He added that, “Iran will take powerful action to defend its national sovereignty and interests.” Effectively, it is a call for the Houthis to begin attacking shipping in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden & the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Thus far, the IRGC’s Axis of Resistance has largely left Tehran hanging, just as Iran largely did during Israeli attacks on Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis & other Iranian sponsored-proxies operating in Syria & Iraq.
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Late today, Trump announced on Truth Social that tomorrow the leaders of Israel and Lebanon will speak for the first time in 34 years. He noted that he’s “Trying to get a little breathing room” between the two countries.
Yesterday, as we noted here, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted a meeting between the Israeli & Lebanese ambassadors to the U.S.
The agenda?
Expelling Hezbollah from Lebanon, establishing a ceasefire & exploring the possibilities of normalizing diplomatic relations between the two countries. None of that is good for Iran. Especially since — if achieved — it would reverse decades of IRGC efforts to surround Israel with its Axis of Resistance proxies.
Ghalibaf — or whoever is posting his X posts — is alarmed. Earlier today, before Trump’s Truth Social post, he said that the U.S. must stop being “Israel First” and that the “United States must comply with the [ceasefire] agreement.”
He also added that “Resistance and Iran are one soul, both in war and in ceasefire.” Maybe so, but the new reality — whether Ghalibaf likes it or not — is that they are also one soul in defeat at the hands of the U.S. & Israel.
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China — late tonight — just cast their first vote & it isn’t one Vahidi or Team Iran is going to like. According to Al Jazeera News, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, urged Iran to restore “normal navigation” in the Strait of Hormuz.
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For now, Team Trump’s maximum pressure approach against Iran is continuing full steam ahead. Despite early reports that the U.S. had agreed in principle to extend the ceasefire by two weeks, Karoline Leavitt — Trump’s White House Press Secretary — issued a denial.
She said it was “not true at this moment” and that it was “bad reporting.” She did confirm that the U.S. is still actively “engaged in these negotiations, in these talks … and that these conversations are productive and ongoing.”
Maybe so, but as we close out this INTREP360 Intelligence Report, the million-dollar question remains — are the people Team Trump are talking to capable of entering into a comprehensive peace deal at this point in time.
We suspect not.
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PROGRAMMING NOTE!
Tomorrow, our weekly 7:00 AM ET national security column at The Hill in Washington, D.C., focuses on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Right on cue — as the U.S. is distracted in Iran — North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un is hitting the accelerator button & reminding Team Trump his country is already a nuclear power.
You can read it here when it goes live.
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Before we go, we owe a huge shout out to all of you. We received a notice today that INTREP360 with Toth & Sweet is the #4 Rising Substack in the International category.
We are truly humbled & grateful for your readership & support. We couldn’t — and wouldn’t — be there without you.
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Jon & Mark
Follow Jon on X at @JESweet2022 or on Bluesky at @JonSweet.bsky.social. Follow Mark on X at @MCTothSTL or on Bluesky at @MarkToth.bsky.social.
I wonder if the Iranian regime (whoever they are now) would rather they die as "martyrs" than surrender to the U.S.
Probably.