Iran Update March 19, 2025
Katherine Wells, Alexandra Braverman, Carolyn Moorman, Kelly Campa, Andie Parry, Siddhant Kishore, and Brian Carter
Information Cutoff 2:00pm ET
The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) publish the Iran Update, which provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. CTP-ISW publishes the Iran Update every weekday.
Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations, and here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of the ongoing opposition offensive in Syria. These maps are updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
President Donald Trump’s March 5 letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei set a two-month deadline to reach a new nuclear deal, according to an Axios report.[1] Iran is very unlikely to agree to a new deal on a two-month timetable given its current policies on negotiations. Trump’s May 2025 nuclear deal deadline would expire one month before the E3’s (Germany, France, and Italy) reported June 2025 deadline to conclude a nuclear deal before the reimposition of snapback sanctions.[2] Prior negotiations, including the 2015 nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), have taken much longer and fell well short of the current US goals in negotiations. The JCPOA took 20 months to negotiate.[3] White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz stated on March 16 that Iran must ”hand over and give up” all elements of its nuclear program.[4] Khamenei has also repeatedly explicitly rejected negotiations with the United States given the US‘ current ”maximum pressure” campaign.[5] Iranian officials who previously supported and were involved in negotiations with the United States have since then echoed Khamenei’s rejection of negotiations.[6] The conclusion of a nuclear deal by June 2025 would require Khamenei to reverse his policy on negotiations even as his top military commanders and hardliner allies advocate against negotiations.[7]
Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have taken precautions to avoid Israeli strikes in Iraq after the United States reportedly repeatedly warned the Iraqi government to prevent attacks on Israel and US forces in Iraq. Iraqi Foreign Minister Faud Hussein also said that Israel had threatened to strike Iraq during an interview on March 17.[8] Multiple US officials, including the secretaries of state and defense, may have discussed these warnings during recent conversations with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani.[9] These warnings come amid renewed US airstrikes targeting the Houthis and new Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip. The Iranian-backed Iraqi militias initially began their October 2023 to February 2024 attack campaign targeting US forces in Iraq and Syria in response to Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip. Three militia-affiliated Iraqi sources told Qatari media on March 19 that multiple militias recently transferred weapons and personnel from militia positions to new positions throughout Iraq and at night, in coordination with the Iraqi federal government, "in anticipation” of Israeli strikes.[10]
Iranian-backed Iraqi militias could target Israel or US forces in Iraq and Syria in response to Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip or US airstrikes targeting the Houthis. A Shia Coordination Framework-affiliated politician told Iraqi media on March 19...
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