Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi described voices in Tehran warning against overplaying Hormuz.
Push the fees and seizures too far, they argue, and the Gulf accelerates pipelines and alternate routes until the one winning card loses its value.
Others answer: the alternatives get built either way, so squeeze while the dependence lasts.
His counter cut deeper, what's left for Iran the day after that card expires?
On the escalation, his read was pointed.
The funeral shattered the war's founding assumption, that Iranians would greet intervention as liberation, and even Trump admitted surprise at the crowds.
Then, within 24 hours, strikes changed the subject.
He doesn't think that sequence is coincidence.
He also explained the map of Iran's responses.
Bahrain and Kuwait absorb the retaliation while the UAE goes untouched, and the reason is simple: an estimated half a TRILLION dollars of Iranian investment sits in the Emirates. Some targets cost too much to hit.
The gesture that stuck with me: carrying the body through Najaf and Karbala, where the Iraqi turnout stunned even him.
The IRGC said today new fronts open if this continues.
That procession route may have been the preview.
