Why Did Iran Launch A Surprise Attack On U.S. Bases In Jordan?

By Trita Parsi|Zeteo

Photos: YouTube Screenshots|Wikimedia Commons

The Iranian strike on U.S. bases in Jordan during Volodymyr Zelensky’s and Benjamin Netanyahu’s visits to Washington caught American decision-makers off guard. The timing alone guaranteed that the attack would be interpreted as a dramatic escalation. The prevailing explanations followed a familiar pattern: Tehran was overplaying its hand, hardliners were sabotaging diplomacy, Iran was probing Donald Trump’s resolve, or the strike was retaliation for recent U.S.-Saudi operations against Iraqi militias.

Each of these interpretations may capture part of the picture. None, however, likely explains the broader strategic logic driving Tehran’s calculations.

From the Iranian perspective, the central problem is that the current situation serves Washington better than it serves Tehran. The de facto ceasefire that has emerged in recent weeks has lowered oil prices, easing one of the principal economic pressures on the Trump administration while leaving most of the sanctions and military pressure on Iran intact. In Tehran’s view, an informal pause in fighting allows Washington to reap the energy market benefits of de-escalation without making any political or diplomatic commitments in return.

That asymmetry has become increasingly unacceptable to the Iranian leadership.

A second objective was to signal something more consequential: Iran’s willingness to conduct preemptive military action rather than simply retaliate after being attacked. Iranian officials privately argue they acted on intelligence indicating that the United States was preparing military operations against Iran, citing the movement of additional American military assets into the region. Whether that intelligence was accurate matters less than the strategic message Tehran intended to send. Iran wanted Washington to understand that it no longer assumes the first strike must come from the United States.

Consequently, the immediate target was not simply American military infrastructure: It was the strategic assumptions underpinning current U.S. policy.

But most importantly, the strike appears intended as a warning against a broader American escalation that Tehran believes Netanyahu – and perhaps Zelensky as well – were advocating during their meetings in Washington. There is an obvious paradox here. Attempting to prevent American escalation by attacking American forces risks producing precisely the escalation Iran says it seeks to avoid. Yet from Tehran’s perspective, allowing Washington to believe it could escalate without facing immediate costs may be even more dangerous.

The overarching Iranian message is that an informal ceasefire is not a ceasefire at all.

Unless there is a formal agreement that clearly commits both sides to halting hostilities, Tehran assumes military confrontation remains only temporarily suspended rather than genuinely contained. As long as there is no formal ceasefire, Iranian policymakers believe the United States retains maximum flexibility to resume military operations whenever it considers the political moment favorable.

For that reason, Iranian officials appeared to fully expect an American military response to the strike in Jordan. The immediate retaliation itself is not necessarily what concerns them most. The more important question is what follows. Will Trump seek an enduring ceasefire or keep the option of returning to war open at his convenience?

The answers matter because they reveal Tehran’s envisioned path to peace.

Iran’s Risky Strategy

Iranian decision-makers appear increasingly skeptical that diplomacy alone can produce durable results with the current administration. That skepticism reflects several factors: Trump’s unpredictability and lack of discipline, his willingness to abandon previously negotiated agreements, uncertainty about his ability to sustain negotiations in the face of domestic political pressure, and persistent doubts about whether he is both willing and able to resist pressure from Israel and the broader foreign policy establishment in Washington.

More fundamentally, Tehran increasingly appears to have concluded that an agreement with Washington will not prevent a larger war, but rather, Trump will only pursue an agreement with Iran – and stick to it – once all military options are deemed too costly or unfeasible. This helps explain the emerging logic behind Iran’s recent behavior.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that the conflict thus far has been restrained and that, if necessary, the United States could still launch a much larger campaign capable of defeating Iran. Tehran seems to have reached the opposite conclusion: the only way to dissuade Washington from pursuing such an option is not by demonstrating restraint, but by convincing the White House that Iran is fully prepared for a much broader war—and willing, if necessary, to strike first rather than wait for American action.

In other words, Iran increasingly appears to believe that deterrence now requires demonstrating a willingness to accept the risks of total war in order to prevent such a war from occurring.

This represents an extraordinarily risky strategy. It seeks to compel diplomacy by increasing the perceived costs of military escalation. Yet it simultaneously raises the probability of the very conflict it is designed to prevent.

Trump will almost certainly face intense pressure to respond forcefully, particularly given that the attack occurred while Netanyahu was in Washington. Even if the president privately prefers to avoid a much wider war, domestic political dynamics may narrow his room for maneuver. Actions intended to restore deterrence on both sides could instead reinforce a cycle of reciprocal escalation.

A Potential Opening

Then there is the unresolved issue of the governance of the Strait of Hormuz.

Here, the two sides remain far apart. Iranian officials reject the Omani proposal to involve Gulf Cooperation Council states directly in managing the Strait since most GCC states do not possess territorial waters in the Strait itself, making direct participation in its administration difficult to justify, in Tehran’s view. If the criterion is who depends on the Strait for commerce, Tehran maintains, then major energy consumers such as China would have at least as compelling a claim as several GCC members. That doesn’t prevent Oman from sharing revenue from the Strait with other GCC states, but Tehran insists they cannot be formally included since they don’t have territorial waters in the Strait.

There is, however, one potentially significant opening.

According to Iranian sources, resolving the Strait dispute is not a prerequisite for reaching a formal ceasefire with Washington. Tehran appears prepared to separate the two issues. A region-wide, formal ceasefire is considered more urgent than achieving a final settlement over the Strait’s future governance.

If accurate, it suggests the principal obstacle to avoiding a wider regional war is not the unresolved dispute over Hormuz itself, but the absence of a credible framework that convinces both Washington and Tehran that military restraint will outlast the next crisis.

Iran’s latest strike appears intended to force that choice into the open: either continue drifting toward a larger war that neither side claims to want, or replace an unstable, informal pause with a region-wide ceasefire that fully closes the door to any return to kinetic action.

The central question is no longer whether Iran is prepared to run this risk – it clearly is. The question is whether Tehran has accurately assessed Trump’s threshold for escalation, or whether both sides are now locked into a dynamic in which efforts to strengthen deterrence instead make a much larger war increasingly unavoidable.

Trita Parsi, an Iranian-American relations expert, is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute and an award-winning author. Read more of his writing on his Substack.