Israeli Analyst Says Gulf Energy Sites Face Strikes After U.S. Vote

Danny Citrinowicz spent more than two decades as an intelligence officer in Israel's military and now studies Iran at the Institute for National Security Studies. He said renewed fighting between the United States and Iran after the Nov. 3 midterm elections appears almost certain, and he named the targets he believes a third round would strike: Gulf energy facilities, civilian infrastructure, and internet cables beneath the Strait of Hormuz. "A renewed war seems almost inevitable," he said.

The two countries have fought Iran twice in 18 months. The first war opened in June 2025 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, ran 12 days, and stopped under a fragile ceasefire. Fighting resumed in February after a large U.S. military buildup, and Israeli strikes that round hit senior Iranian leadership including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Citrinowicz had predicted before those strikes that attacking the Islamic regime would not produce regime change and would pull the region into a wider conflict, a call events largely confirmed. He said that judgment still holds and that Donald Trump has "only bad and worse options" in the Persian Gulf.

Since the summer truce fell apart, neither side has struck the other's bases or territory. The pressure has moved elsewhere. The United States has blockaded Iranian ports, and Iran has kept hitting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which has lifted global energy costs. On Thursday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Iran is trying to inflate oil prices before the midterms and is "making up fake hits, mines and everything else." A report from the Critical Threats Project and the Institute for the Study of War read the ship attacks the same way: as pressure on Washington to meet Iranian demands. Those demands cover sanctions relief, reparations for earlier strike damage, release of billions in frozen assets, and the right to keep enriched uranium. Mediators from Pakistan and Qatar have spent weeks trying to restart talks without success.

Citrinowicz also raised a land option. Iran could send part of its large army into limited attacks against Gulf states that host U.S. bases, among them Kuwait and Bahrain, with the aim of hitting the American economy hard. Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution said the war has probably pushed Iran's leadership to double down on the ideology behind the regime, and she pointed to retaliation through proxies such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon that could strike soft economic sites like airports. Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said Trump lacks a clear goal and that no military "knockout punch" will force Iran to capitulate.

The dead already number in the thousands. Western NGOs report more than 7,000 deaths in Iran, and Lebanese media report over 4,000 in Lebanon. Twenty-one U.S. service members have been killed, mostly in Iranian strikes on Gulf bases, along with more than 70 Israelis. Deaths have also been recorded in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Yemen. The New York Times and other U.S. outlets report the Pentagon is drafting a new battle plan, though it is unknown whether Trump would approve it.

Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken openly of "finishing the job" and bringing down the Iranian regime. He faces voters in coming days in a race that could be very close. Citrinowicz said a widening crisis could help him stay in power by enabling an emergency unity government with opposition members, and he named the danger: political calculation meeting an Iranian development Netanyahu may inflate, producing an unnecessary attack. Sadjadpour said diplomacy is not dead but narrowed by Trump's maximalist aims, and that Iran's government would compromise only under existential economic pressure paired with a clear, limited diplomatic exit. "If you're asking them to change their identity, that's not going to succeed," he said.