The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a formal statement on Friday 24 April declaring "our self-restraint has come to an end" and describing the corps as "at peak readiness and determination to continue the fight, prepared for a decisive, certain and immediate response to any threat or renewed aggression"1. The statement warns neighbouring countries hosting US forces, a category that includes Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar. The IRGC is Iran's parallel armed force, constitutionally separate from the regular army and the direct instrument of Supreme Leader authority.
Hours later, foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei told the weekly press briefing in Tehran that Iran has "no plans for the next round of negotiation, and no decision has been made"2. He rejected any short-term ceasefire as "a short pause for reorganisation and the commission of new crimes; no rational person would accept this." The IRGC broadcast closed any narrow diplomatic opening the Foreign Ministry might otherwise have kept ajar.
Abbas Araghchi called the maritime blockade "an act of war" on Day 53; at that point the IRGC had not formally tied the state to the same framing. Since General Ahmad Vahidi took operational control of the Guard's hardliner faction on 22 April, the corps has moved from ambient threat to codified posture. Civilian diplomacy and military doctrine now run on the same script rather than the three separate tracks Tehran held during the early weeks of the war.
Previous IRGC escalation ran through the strait of Hormuz itself, where three vessels have been seized since Wednesday 22 April. Extending explicit threat language to states whose ports host US assets transfers the risk surface from the waterway to the basing network, where retaliation would hit host-nation politics before it hits US forces. Saudi Arabia still sits off the Northwood coalition paper for precisely this reason.
