FT: Iran sets its price to end the war

Key topics:Trump claims US war with Iran ends on his terms, “in his bones”Iran signals protracted war, demands guarantees before any ceasefireRevolutionary Guards sustain missile attacks, threaten Strait of Hormuz.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Andrew England in London and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran.Donald Trump has said the US’s war with Iran will end when he decides — when, as he put it, “I feel it, feel it in my bones”.But it will not only be up to the US president. Over the past week, as the conflict has escalated and sent shocks through the global economy, Iran’s leaders and military commanders have signalled that — far from a quick capitulation — the Islamic republic plans to silence its guns on its own terms.“Everybody is fixated on the vacillations of Trump, but it’s completely missing the fact there’s a massive country with its own agency,” said a western official. “What is at play is pretty much the whole raison d’être of the regime, which is to survive and resist.”Iran views the conflict as an existential threat, is desperate to restore its deterrent and wants to ensure its foes are not willing to pay the price of future attacks, a person close to the regime, diplomats and experts said..Read more:.FT: 'Crisis of his own making’ — Donald Trump weighs another war with Iran.All this suggests it is digging in for a protracted war of attrition, they said, and will only stop if it receives guarantees as part of any ceasefire deal that the US and Israel will not resume attacks in future.“Iran says, ‘we need a guarantee and won’t retreat even if the war continues for one year,’” an Iranian close to the regime said. “If Iran is destroyed, the whole region is destroyed.”Spearheading the regime’s retaliation is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the 180,000-strong elite force, which has spread chaos around the region with missile and drone attacks on US military bases, Gulf infrastructure and international shipping.“The guards are ideologically motivated, they are not scared to die,” the Iranian said. They are “convinced this was regime change and if they agree to a ceasefire [the US and Israel] will come back”.That means, if Trump was to declare “victory” and halt the US’s bombardment of Iran, the danger is Tehran could keep up its attacks on Israel and the Gulf even in a battered, weakened state and continue holding shipping hostage in the Strait of Hormuz.Trump, who described Iran’s military as “decimated”, said at the weekend that Tehran wanted to hold talks but he has not made a deal “because the terms aren’t good enough yet”.But Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, shot back, describing claims that the republic wanted a truce or negotiations as “delusional”. Araghchi also denied a report that he had reopened a channel of communication with US envoy Steve Witkoff, saying the claim was designed to calm rattled energy markets.Regional officials say there is no movement on diplomatic efforts to end the war from either side. And Israel’s killing on Tuesday of Ali Larijani, a conservative but pragmatic regime veteran, is expected to further set back hopes of a resumption of talks. He would have been integral to any diplomatic process, a regional diplomat said.The diplomat said he expected Iran would stop its attacks on US targets if Trump withdrew from the conflict, enabling Tehran to claim it had forced America’s retreat.But he believed it would continue hitting Israel, which it blames for the war. There would also be the risk that the Strait of Hormuz would be “partially weaponised” with Iran determining which ships could and could not pass through, the diplomat added.Israeli officials too have said they are ready to continue the conflict for as long as required, but Israel’s dependence on the US for military support means it would be expected to follow Trump’s lead.The regional diplomat said the challenge is that the US and Iran are unlikely to stop without a deal. But he did not expect Tehran would agree to a temporary ceasefire of the sort struck between Hamas and Israel last year, following which Israel has continued striking Gaza even as the foes negotiate.“There’s no clarity [on what a deal would look like],” the diplomat said. “Once talks start on a deal, it will be very difficult.”Sanam Vakil at Chatham House said it was not in Iran’s interest to stop unless the regime had the assurances it seeks and sanctions relief as part of any postwar deal.“These are both very hard outcomes,” she said. “If they don’t get sanctions relief and guarantees that [attacks] will never happen again, they’re not going to stop.”As the conflict approaches its third week, the Islamic republic’s leaders are making the case to Iranians that the regime is prepared for a long war.“The US doesn’t know how to start or to finish a war in this region,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is close to the Revolutionary Guards and one of the republic’s top leaders. “We are not going to sit here and let the Zionist regime [Israel] and the US establish a new order.”Speaking to state television this week, Ghalibaf, who is the speaker of parliament, said there must be “no threat of war anymore” before Iran stops. “This is our clear and definite demand,” he said. “We don’t accept a ceasefire and then go back to war in five months’ time.”The US and Israel have vowed to destroy Iran’s missile capability and have pounded the republic day and night since February 28. The Pentagon has said it has hit almost 8,000 targets, with Israel saying it launched a similar number of strikes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to “destabilise the regime and allow for change”.Rob Malley, a former US official who served as then-president Joe Biden’s Iran envoy, said Tehran has two calculations. One is the desire to end the war because of the massive costs to the regime’s infrastructure and military, which could over time undermine its internal security.But it also “wants to make sure the US and the world economy pay a sufficient price so they will think twice about resuming the war”, Malley said.Iran’s most potent weapon has proved to be its ability to in effect close the Strait of Hormuz, through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally passes.While Iran had previously threatened to close the strait, the western official said, “they never knew [they could] until they tried it”.“Now they know, and it’s pretty effective,” the official said. “The risk is they will keep holding the world hostage.”If the US ends the war, Tehran could face pressure to halt attacks from regional countries and traditional allies such as Russia and China, which rely heavily on Gulf oil and gas and are the prime buyers of Iranian crude, Malley said.But, the western official said, “I can’t see there’s a future for a successful Islamic republic [and] don’t know what it will take for the regime to say, ‘let’s down tools, stop and rebuild’.”“I’m not sure they can rebuild, which leads you to a very dark place.”The Iranian close to the regime said the Revolutionary Guards were behaving more like a militant group in their effort to take on the world’s most sophisticated and powerful armies — abandoning their bases and scattering in order to reduce the risk of being hit while launching retaliatory attacks.“The Guards know asymmetrical warfare very well and this is what they are doing — you cannot defeat partisans with air strikes,” he said, comparing their tactics to those of Hizbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.The person insisted Iran was still producing missiles and launchers at hidden locations, often deep beneath the ground, despite being pounded by thousands of American and Israeli strikes. He added that it was calibrating its rate of fire to ensure it does not run out and can sustain a “long war”.However, the US and Israel said they have severely diminished Iran’s drone and missile capacity, with the volume of fire down 90 per cent or more from the start of the conflict.But Tehran continues to launch daily salvos. “You can hurt Dubai with one missile every month,” the Iranian close to the regime said.Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea over the past two years revealed how disruptive the threat of attacks can be over a lengthy period.Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s national intelligence director, on Wednesday said, “Iran and its proxies remain capable of and continue to attack US and allied interests”.“If a hostile regime survives, it will seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its missiles and [drone] forces,” she told the US Senate’s intelligence committee.The western official said it was “really hard” to put a timeframe on how long Iran could sustain its missile and drone fire..Read more:.Trump officials’ mixed messages on US-Iran war prompt more market volatility.“It’s not surprising Iran is lashing out, what’s more surprising is they kept going,” the official said. “We know more about Iran’s capability than we did, and it’s better. I wouldn’t say earth-shatteringly better, but it’s better.”Rather than US or Israeli bombs, the official suggested, the core factor in determining the future of Iran would be “the dynamic between the regime and its people,” the official said. “That dog is not barking at the moment — the Iranian people are absolutely keeping out of this.”.© 2026 The Financial Times Ltd.

FT: Iran sets its price to end the war

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