An IRGC general issued a 30-day ultimatum on 3 May 2026 demanding that the United States end its port blockade of Iran, and the Majlis national security Commission ruled the same day that Project Freedom would be considered a violation of the ceasefire.1 The two actions, taken together, give Tehran a calendar trigger of approximately 2 June and a formal parliamentary rationale for a second-stage response.
The IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is the ideologically aligned branch of Iran's armed forces; it is constitutionally distinct from the regular Artesh military and reports to the Supreme Leader's office rather than the cabinet. The Majlis is Iran's parliament. Its national security Commission is the body that ratified a 12-article Hormuz sovereignty law on 2 May barring Israeli ships permanently. The IRGC declared full standby on 2 May with 60 per cent of its small attack-boat fleet intact. Both actions sat behind the 3 May ultimatum.
The ultimatum's mechanics matter. A blockade-end demand from the IRGC, rather than the foreign ministry, signals that any enforcement action will run through the Guards' command rather than the Artesh; small-boat operations, mining, and limited-range missile fires sit inside that authority. The 30-day clock places the trigger date in the same week the Murkowski AUMF, if filed on 11 May, would be moving through committee. The Majlis's "ceasefire violation" finding pre-positions a procedural justification: any second-stage response can be framed domestically as a defensive answer to a US violation rather than an Iranian initiation.
The sequence creates two parallel clocks. The diplomatic clock, set by the Pakistan-channel written exchange, runs as long as paper continues to move. The kinetic clock, set by the IRGC, expires on 2 June. Brent Crude is currently pricing the diplomatic clock as the binding one, with the price down to $101.70 from the $123 30 April high. The market has not yet repriced the kinetic clock; one small-boat contact would change that.
