“Iran relied on two things to confront the United States navy. Block the Strait of Hormuz to bring the world to its knees through oil blackmail and survive any attack with invincible missile cities buried under the mountains. Now both things have turned against him. The blockade of Hormus is suffocating Iran itself, and the gates of those missile cities have been sealed from the outside.”
“According to Israeli intelligence, 800 missiles are trapped inside their own fortresses, and the United States did it with brute force and ingenious tactics. He didn’t destroy the mountains, he sealed the gates. From May 25 to 27, he repeatedly attacked Bandarabas, the gateway to those tunnels. It destroyed five Iranian drones in the air and razed the ground control station.”
“To understand this story, you must first understand what Iran has built in 30 years. Keshm Island is located 22 km south of Bandara Bas in a position overlooking the Strait of Hormuz. The island’s subsoil is composed of layers of salt, gemstone, stone, limestone and sedimentary rocks, a terrain naturally resistant to air attacks.”
“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has taken advantage of this geological feature for over 30 years, building a vast underground network that extends tens of meters below the surface. Within the network there are assembly areas, storage zones, command centers and automated rail systems that connect hidden exits.”
“The missile launchers are brought out of the tunnels, fired, and returned underground. This cycle is called exit, shoot, return. And the entire system depends completely on the output being functional. The arsenal is of an extremely serious magnitude. Nor and Cata 380 anti-ship missiles with a range of 1000 km. Silkworm and Gadir series ballistic warheads.”
“Everyone waiting, ready to be launched. This network is not limited to Keshm alone. Beneath the Bandarabas Mountains, along the Ormosgan province, there are dozens of facilities. Together they constitute Iran’s ability to close Hormus whenever it wants. The facilities are divided into three levels according to their depth.”
“Level 3 at 30 m is the most vulnerable. Level 2 at between 60 and 80 m is partially vulnerable. And level 1 at between 120 and 150 m is immune to even the most powerful bunker destroyers. However, Ormous’ coastal installations, including Kesm and Bandara Bas, are predominantly level two and three, because coastal installations were built for speed, to get out, fire, and return in a matter of minutes.”
“This concession in the design has always existed, and this concession is now costing Iran dearly. So how do you defeat something that can’t be reached from the air?”
“The response developed by the United States and Israel is extremely intelligent and perhaps constitutes the least understood, but most effective, dimension of this conflict.”
“You don’t destroy the bunkers, you destroy the connection between the bunkers and the outside world, the exits, the ventilation ducts, the supply corridors, the command nodes that tell the missiles where to go. I’m referring to the preparation areas just outside the tunnel entrances. There is no need to demolish the mountain. It is enough to collapse the mountain’s capacity to connect with the battlefield.”
“And this strategy is not an operation that belongs in the history books. He is currently still active. On May 25 and 26, the United States Central Command, Sent, attacked missile launch sites on Iran’s southern coast and naval vessels attempting to lay mines in the Hormuz region.”
“On May 27, between four and six Iranian attack drones were destroyed in the air and the ground control station in Bandarabas was eliminated with an air strike. Iran’s retaliation consisted of launching a ballistic missile at the US base in Cuit, but the missile was intercepted. Sentom called this an egregious violation of the ceasefire and within hours attacked Bandar AAS for the second time.”
“The United States is not only closing the tunnel exits, but is also preventing Iran’s attempts to create new real-time launch capabilities. However, the foundations of this strategy were laid much earlier. The United States demonstrated this concretely on March 17. Sentom confirmed that it used numerous 5,000-pound GBU 72 deep penetration munitions against fortified Iranian missile sites on the coast of Iran, near the Strait of Hormus.”
“The GBU72 is a precision weapon optimized specifically for tunnels and bunkers with a penetration capability of up to 30 m. It can directly reach level 3 facilities and collapse level 2 facility exit points. Israel’s operations in June 2025 were the first major implementation of this strategy.”
“In the operation that intelligence officials called Launcher Hunt, 293 active launchers were attacked, 95 of them buried under collapsed tunnels and conduits. According to subsequent Israeli assessments, around 200 launchers were destroyed, while about 80 were rendered unusable by the collapse of tunnel entrances. And the figure presented at the briefing by Israel’s national security advisor at LaESet reveals the magnitude of the situation.”
“Iran began the conflict with approximately 2,500 ballistic missiles. More than 500 were launched against Israel and it is estimated that some 800 missiles could be trapped in the damaged tunnel networks. 800 missiles not destroyed, not intercepted, completely trapped inside their own strongholds.”
“A single statistic redefines the entire debate, because the dominant assumption in Western media had a binary structure. Iran’s tunnels are either invincible or have been destroyed. But there is a third situation that is much more interesting from a military point of view: Sealed. And being sealed is in many ways worse than being destroyed.”
“Because a missile that is in a sealed tunnel with collapsed exit points, severed supply routes, and disrupted command nodes is not ready for use. It is an inaccessible inventory. This is a deterrent that cannot be deployed, and Iran has turned that missile city into a missile graveyard. The battle of May 7, 2026 was precisely the manifestation of this reality of sealing on the battlefield.”
“On that day, the United States Navy guided-missile destroyers USS Traxton, USS Rafael Peralta, and USS Mason were transiting from the Strait of Hormus into the Gulf of Oman. Iranian forces launched multiple missiles, drones, and speedboats without provocation. The result: zero damage on the American side. Not a single ship suffered a scratch, not a single drone managed to make contact.”
“SENCOM announced that it had eliminated incoming threats and attacked Iranian military facilities responsible for the attack, including missile launch sites, command and control centers, and intelligence nodes. Each facility attacked corresponded directly to a position that the IRGC had just exposed by using it.”
“So why did the IRGC launch this attack knowing it couldn’t win?”
“Because he was not acting with tactical confidence, but rather due to the reduction of his options. It was a desperate attempt to demonstrate that Iran’s naval power remained intact by using weapons it could still access, whose exit points were not yet completely sealed.”
“Doing nothing would have signaled that deterrence on Ormous had completely collapsed, and the command structure behind this attack makes the situation even more worrying. The commander of the IRGC naval forces, Tang Siri, the architect of the tunnels, the commander who led the propaganda tour in January 2026, who declared that Hormus was completely under Iranian control, had been neutralized in an Israeli operation in Bandarabas on March 26.”
“Intelligence chief Benamrea and other high-ranking officers also lost their lives in the same attack. In other words, the command structure that launched the May 7 attack was an architecture in which the chain of command had broken down to three levels below. Mid-level commanders who should never have been making strategic decisions.”
“They were attempting to operate weapons systems whose main exit points were partially sealed. This resembled an institutional reflex more than a military operation, a system that attacked not because it calculated it could win, but because it could not afford to do nothing. And an even more surprising detail: Iran had lost track of the mines planted in its own waters and could not fully open the strait even if it wanted to.”
“An army that cannot account for its own mines has lost the integrity of its command. An army that launches a coordinated swarm attack and achieves zero damage has lost its offensive capability. This is not an army at the height of its power playing a game of strategic patience. It is a controlled collapse that attempts to project a confidence it can no longer fully back up.”
“And here we must see the collapse of the swarm doctrine that the IRGC spent 30 years developing. Small boats with low radar profile and fast approach. The theory was that this saturation would exceed the tracking and combat capabilities of the Aegis system. On May 7, this theory was tested in actual combat and produced zero damage.”
“US forces deployed AO64 Apache and MH60 Seahawk platforms as counter- swarm tools, completely eliminating the asymmetric advantage of the threat. The gap between the emergence of a threat and the response to it, i.e., the basis of the entire swarm doctrine, was closed with the continuous air presence of the Apache. Trump’s words summarize this new reality.”
“US forces destroyed the attackers. If Iran does not sign an agreement soon, we will overthrow them in a much harsher and more violent manner. This is not the language of a power that sees its enemy as a serious threat. It is the language of a power that has concluded that the conflict has definitively tilted in its favor.”
“However, we must be fair here. The CESGRI RI is not completely defenseless. An organization that spent 30 years building these tunnels has also developed serious countermeasures to protect them. At a structural level, the tunnels were built with a high degree of redundancy. There are multiple exits, false entrances, internal compartments, and traps designed to absorb attacks.”
“In Kesm, the natural geology provides an additional advantage to this redundancy. Rock salt formations offer networks of natural caves, and combining them with artificial tunnels creates alternative exit points. At the operational level, SES Ri has assigned rapid repair teams. Satellite images show the debris removal work and the opening of tunnels.”
“Deception tactics, booby traps, fake tunnel entrances, and the pre-deployment of some missile stockpiles abroad are also used. The goal is to deceive US satellite monitoring and create uncertainty about which of the attacked exits are real and which are fake. At the technological level, in early 2026, the CGRY even announced underwater missile tunnels, that is, the ability to launch missiles from submarines.”
“It has not been confirmed whether these systems are operational, but the concept aims to completely circumvent the exit point problem. Electronic warfare capabilities are also at stake. Air defense and drone/ satellite jamming systems are being placed around the entrances. And by May 2026, according to the US intelligence assessment, Iran had restored access to 30 of the 33 sites on Ormus and still retained 70% of its stockpiles.”
“In other words, it wasn’t completely sealed. The King’s CG reopened some exits, but here is a critical distinction. Restoring access and returning to full operational capacity are very different things. Clearing debris from a tunnel entrance can take days. However, rebuilding damaged command infrastructure, placing experienced leaders to replace dead commanders, and rescheduling coordinated launch sequences takes much longer.”
“And this is the biggest obstacle. The United States has air supremacy. These repair operations are carried out in the open air and each repair is monitored by US satellites. When you open an exit, you are telling the United States, this is an active target. This situation traps the criminal.”
“If you don’t open the exit, you can’t use the missile. If you open it, they will attack you. And the economic crisis makes this equation even more difficult. Tunnel repair is expensive, requiring engineering equipment, heavy machinery, concrete, and steel. The regime’s oil revenues are zero. The budget has collapsed and the IRGC cannot even pay the salaries of its own soldiers.”
“Under these conditions, it is becoming increasingly difficult to cover the costs of repairing the tunnel infrastructure, and the regime faces a very painful prioritization decision. Will they repair tunnel exits, provide subsidies to a population struggling with 60% inflation, or increase security spending to suppress the internal civil uprising that has resulted in more than 30,000 civilian casualties? a regime that massacres its own people while simultaneously trying to repair collapsed tunnel exits.”
“On the other hand, it is conducting ceasefire negotiations through Pakistani mediators and seeking to project military credibility in the face of three carrier strike groups. It is operating at the absolute limit of its institutional capacity. And the problem with the tunnel network is not just military, it’s financial; it’s a problem of prioritization, and every day that those exits remain sealed is a day that Iran cannot repair the infrastructure that, in the first place, made its deterrence credible.”
“Now let’s look at the bigger picture, because the tunnel crisis is not just a military problem; it is a strategic transformation that directly affects all of Iran’s negotiating power, its regional influence, and the regime’s security. Iran started this conflict with 2,500 ballistic missiles. More than 500 were launched into Israel, 800 were trapped in tunnels, and hundreds were destroyed in surface attacks.”
“The remaining inventory is dwindling rapidly, and each missile used cannot be replaced because the Ormus blockade has also cut off arms imports. In the ceasefire talks mediated by Pakistan, Iran’s card on the table was based entirely on the existence of these weapons. The threat to close Ormous was a valuable card in the negotiations because 20 million barrels of oil pass through that strait every day.”
“But when US intelligence, British GCHQ, and Israeli signals intelligence systematically mapped and attacked the tunnels’ exit architecture for 10 weeks, Iran’s bargaining power was quietly undermined, and the global economy has been left hostage to this uncertainty. Brent crude oil surged above $16. Ship traffic through the strait fell to 5% of pre- conflict levels.”
“2000 ships were trapped in the Persian Gulf. According to Vitol’s chief executive, Russell Hardy, 1 billion barrels of oil production will be lost due to the war, and between 600 and 700 million barrels of losses have already accumulated. The global economy is not a prisoner of an arsenal that can be fired freely, but of uncertainty about how much of this arsenal can still be fired.”
“And this uncertainty is itself a form of leverage, perhaps the only form of leverage that Iran has left. The naval blockade also simultaneously triggered a food supply emergency in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries, whose caloric needs depend on the strait for more than 80%. By mid-March, 70% of the region’s food imports had been disrupted.”
“This is no longer abstract geopolitics. It’s the fact that families in Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain are paying emergency prices for basic foodstuffs, that American drivers are facing gas prices unseen in years, and that global aviation is burning extra fuel circling closed airspace. Secretary of State Rubio spoke very clearly.”
“We cannot tolerate a system in which Teerán decides who uses an international waterway. Uh, this defines the United States’ red line in definitive terms and the military means that enforce this red line. Three F35CE carrier strike groups, Aegis destroyers, Apache helicopters, bunker-piercing munitions, are all deployed and operational.”
“The question Iran must answer now is not whether its tunnels survived or not. They survived. The mountains are untouched. The weapons are intact. The real question is whether surviving without access is the same as deterrence. Iran built its missile cities to be impenetrable and somehow saw that the weapons inside were safe.”
“But the United States did not destroy the mountains, it sealed the gates, collapsed the exits, shut down the ventilation, broke the chain of command, and cut off the supply corridors. And a fortress whose gates are sealed from the outside is no longer a bastion, it’s a safe. A safe full of weapons that no one can reach.”
“It is not a military asset, it is the monument to a 30-year doctrine.”
