Earth Changes · Sep 18, 2026World War 3 Watch: Iranians rally in biggest show of defiance against US since war began

Earth Changes · World War 3 Watch · September 18, 2026 at 18:00 UTC

Key Facts

• Iranians rally in biggest show of defiance against US since war began (via Al Jazeera)^[1]
• What Can Be Done About Iran’s Closure of Hormuz? (via lawfaremedia.org)^[2]
• The Race to Build a World Beyond Hormuz (via oilprice.com)^[3]

Places mentioned: US, UAE, U.S., Iran, IRGC, Iraq, Oman, Mecca, China
Organizations/groups mentioned: UN, GCC, EEZ, MoU, STS, IEA, G20, EIA, ANF, IRGC

Iranians rally in biggest show of defiance against US since war began

Volunteers rallied through downtown Tehran to take part in a campaign highlighting ‘self-sacrifice’ for Iran. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have marched in a government-organised show of defiance in Tehran, pledging their readiness to take up arms.^[1]

What Can Be Done About Iran’s Closure of Hormuz?

On June 25, Iran attacked a merchant ship passing through Oman’s waters in the Strait of Hormuz. The attack happened after the U.S. and Iran had reached a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that was supposed to end the war.^[2]

The Race to Build a World Beyond Hormuz

Every actor with the power to end this war has instead spent September building permanent infrastructure to live around it. The House voted for a third time Tuesday to curb Trump’s war powers, passing the latest resolution 220-204, but there is little confidence it will make it through the Senate, and if it does, Trump would likely veto it.^[3]

Iranians rally by the hundreds of thousands in biggest show of defiance since war began

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians rallied Friday in a government-organized show of defiance after months of war, pledging their readiness to take up arms in the biggest such demonstration since the United States and Israel attacked in February. Iran’s government has sought to rally the people and stress national unity, even as the economy worsens under a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and new U.S. sanctions meant to increase Tehran’s economic pain.^[4]

US says Iran sanctions working, as Turkey, Oman suspend Mahan Air flights

The Trump administration stated that its “Operation Economic Outcast,” which aims to choke the Iranian regime’s revenue, is working, after Turkey and Oman announced cancellations of flights on Mahan Air, which the United States began sanctioning in 2011 for supporting the Islamic Republic. Mahan supports the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated terror organization.^[5]

References

1. Al Jazeera. Iranians rally in biggest show of defiance against US since war began. ↩
2. lawfaremedia.org. What Can Be Done About Iran’s Closure of Hormuz?. ↩
3. oilprice.com. The Race to Build a World Beyond Hormuz. ↩
4. nbcnews.com. Iranians rally by the hundreds of thousands in biggest show of defiance since war began. ↩
5. jns.org. US says Iran sanctions working, as Turkey, Oman suspend Mahan Air flights. ↩

Investigative methodology: this update was produced by scripts/ww3_monitor.py, a keyword-and-entity
heuristic (see scripts/significance.py) — not a language model. It quotes and links each source verbatim
and does not add analysis or interpretation.