Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, attacked Gulf neighbors with drones and missiles, and triggered global economic disruption. None of this surprised U.S. intelligence agencies - all three scenarios appeared in prewar assessments presented to President Trump, who dismissed them, The Atlantic reports.
National security correspondent Shane Harris details how one prediction after another materialized exactly as analysts had warned, "Hvylya" reports, citing The Atlantic.
The 2025 public threat assessment from the U.S. intelligence community stated plainly that "Iran's large conventional forces are capable of inflicting substantial damage to an attacker, executing regional strikes, and disrupting shipping, particularly energy supplies, through the Strait of Hormuz." When Trump's military advisers warned him about the strait scenario specifically, he appeared to shrug them off, telling them Iran would probably capitulate first and that the military could handle it, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Iran did not capitulate. It now controls the strait, where it charges vessels a toll and governs global flows of oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and chemicals. After threatening to bomb Iran if ships were not allowed to travel freely, Trump reversed course and said other nations should bear the burden. "The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won't be taking any in the future," he said in a primetime address. "We don't need it." Oil prices rose after his remarks.
Trump has also claimed that no one warned him Iran would strike Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and other Gulf nations. "They weren't supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East," he said on March 16. "Nobody expected that. We were shocked." But officials from two Arab countries had told Trump and his aides before the war that they feared exactly such counterattacks, Politico reported. One of America's closest intelligence-sharing partners in Europe also concluded, through its own war-gaming, that a major U.S. attack would compel Iran to hit Gulf countries and try to close the strait.
Even Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth acknowledged the response was not entirely unforeseen. "I can't say that we anticipated necessarily that's exactly how they would react, but we knew it was a possibility," he said at a press conference on March 10. Before the war, a senior Qatari official told The Atlantic's Harris that a conflict could make it impossible for Qatar to produce and ship liquefied natural gas - the foundation of its economy. That is exactly what happened.
Earlier, "Hvylya" reported how the Iran war pulled U.S. military assets from around the globe while China watched closely.