The Wall Street Journal dropped a report Thursday night that should have led every newscast in America: Israel shared intelligence with the United States revealing a fresh Iranian plot to assassinate President Donald Trump. The ceasefire, already crumbling, is now effectively gone. And the world’s most critical energy chokepoint has ground to a near-standstill.
These three facts are connected. Most of the coverage treats them as separate stories. They are not.
Start with the assassination intelligence. Israeli officials briefed their U.S. counterparts on what they described as a new and active Iranian plan to kill Trump. This is not the first time Tehran has made such a threat. Iran has publicly vowed retaliation for the January 2020 U.S. strike that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. At the funeral this week for assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, mourners chanted for Trump’s death and held banners reading “We Will Kill Trump.”
Trump acknowledged the threat directly at the NATO Summit in Ankara on Wednesday. “They want to take out the U.S. leader. I’m on every single one of their lists,” he told reporters. “These are evil, sick people. And we have to root out that cancer. You know what you do? You’ve got to cut out cancer early.”
On July 8, Trump declared the ceasefire “over” after Iran violated it with fresh attacks. The U.S. launched new strikes. Oil prices vaulted higher again. And by July 9, the Strait had gone nearly silent. Ship tracker Lloyd’s List reported that “no vessels above 10,000 dwt have transited the so-called Southern Highway with their AIS switched on since July 7,” though at least two ships are believed to have crossed “dark,” meaning with their tracking systems disabled. The UK Maritime Trade Operations confirmed Friday that the security threat in the Strait remains at its highest level.
Six thousand seafarers are now stranded aboard hundreds of vessels. The UN has warned of widening fallout.
Here is what the mainstream outlets are not connecting: the assassination plot and the Hormuz standstill are two instruments of the same pressure campaign. Tehran is not a cornered regime scrambling to survive. It is conducting a multi-front operation: threatening the president’s physical safety to deter escalation, strangling the energy artery that feeds the global economy, and trying to outlast an American administration it believes will eventually flinch.
Iran is betting that the economic pain from $100-plus oil, combined with the political pressure of a president under constant threat, will eventually force the U.S. back to the negotiating table on terms favorable to Tehran. It almost worked. The ceasefire nearly held.
The strategic picture around Iran has grown more complicated this week. Netanyahu, who has pushed for sustained military pressure, reportedly launched a public campaign against Trump’s apparent willingness to sell advanced F-35 fighters to Turkey. The Jerusalem Post described Turkey as “now furiously jockeying to replace Iran as the region’s dominant power.” Iran’s foreign ministry, meanwhile, accused NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte of “willful complicity” in the war after Rutte called Trump’s most recent strikes “absolutely necessary.”
So: the ceasefire is broken, the Strait is frozen, Iran is actively plotting to kill the American president, Turkey is angling for regional dominance, and NATO is taking sides. The president, for his part, spoke with Netanyahu on Thursday and the two agreed to continue coordination. No deal with Tehran appears imminent.
What does all of this mean for Americans at home? Energy prices, which had briefly retreated toward pre-war levels, are climbing again. Markets are rattled. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” agenda that Republicans are trying to push through Congress was designed for a period of relative calm. It was not designed for a second-round war with Iran, $80-plus Brent crude, and an assassination threat against the sitting president.
