The US and Israel are waging war on an Iran they think they know. The reality is very different | Ali Vaez
Is the Islamic Republic a messianic theocracy or a brittle dictatorship? It’s neither – as those attacking it are finding out, says Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group
When the US and Israel launched coordinated strikes against Iran on 28 February, the campaign was structured like a textbook air war: destroy defences, degrade retaliatory capabilities and decapitate leadership. Iranian air defences – already battered in last summer’s war – were further dismantled to secure uncontested skies. Missile factories, drone infrastructure and naval assets were hit to erode Iran’s ability to retaliate. And a steady cadence of precision strikes removed senior commanders in what amounted to a sustained attempt to disorient Tehran’s decision-making.
From a purely operational perspective, the advantages have been stark. Once skies are open, the war becomes cheaper: plentiful, relatively inexpensive munitions can replace the long-range systems that defended airspace typically demands.
The decapitation element reflects a familiar military concept: get inside the enemy’s decision loop. If seasoned leaders are constantly “knocked off”, the thinking goes, the system becomes consumed by succession, suspicion and internal coordination. Decision quality degrades; response time slows; coherence frays. Turbulence at the top becomes a weapon in itself.
But a command of tactics does not guarantee strategic clarity. And the deeper risk in this campaign lies in the assumptions that animate it – assumptions about how Iran behaves under pressure, and what pressure produces.
For decades, US policy has oscillated between two caricatures of Iran: a messianic theocracy impervious to cost; or a brittle dictatorship one hard shove away from collapse. The reality of Iranian governance has always been less theatrical and more enduring. Ideology is central to Iran’s self-conception, but it has never functioned independently from the regime’s instinct for survival.
Under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Tehran repeatedly demonstrated that revolutionary posture could coexist with pragmatic choice. The 2015 nuclear agreement was the clearest case. Khamenei could call the US the “Great Satan” in public and still authorise direct negotiations in private when sanctions pressure threatened economic stability and, by extension, political durability. The regime was not experiencing an ideological conversion. It was making a strategic calculation.
Even after Washington withdrew from the agreement and Israel intensified its shadow campaign – from cyber-operations to covert assassinations and sabotage –against Iranian assets, Tehran kept channels partially open. Confrontation and negotiation were not contradictions in Iran’s approach. They were parallel tools – applied with a cold logic that was always tethered to regime preservation.
This history matters because it undermines a core premise now circulating in some policy circles: that sufficient military pressure will cause the Iranian system to capitulate, splinter or collapse in predictable ways. Perhaps it will, but it is hardly preordained. Survival is the regime’s narrowest – and most reliable – definition of victory. Last year’s 12-day war inflicted serious damage on Iranian capabilities, yet Tehran framed the outcome as a success because it endured.
A famous fresco in Isfahan depicting the 16th-century battle of Chaldiran, fought between the Turkish-Ottoman and Persian-Safavid empires, offers the template: in the painting, the Persians appear triumphant, having shattered their Turkish adversary. The historical record says otherwise: Chaldiran was a decisive Ottoman victory. It is not an attempt to erase defeat so much as to reframe it – less a tale of loss than an ode to endurance, to heroic resistance against an enemy that outnumbered and outgunned them. Defeat can be recast into proof of valour, and endurance can be sold as triumph.
Unable to match US and Israeli military power symmetrically, Iran has adopted a strategy designed to stretch the conflict in time and space. Its drones and missiles have struck not only Israel but also US bases and commercial infrastructure across the Gulf. The strikes are often limited – sometimes a handful of drones rather than waves – but their intent is cumulative. Tehran is not only seeking damage, it is seeking friction: forcing its adversaries to defend multiple fronts, testing the resilience of regional politics and gradually raising the economic and psychological cost of staying the course.
This measured tempo reflects another calculation. Iranian planners likely understand that their missile and drone production facilities are prime targets and may not survive prolonged bombardment. Thus, the imperative becomes to avoid a spectacular but exhausting burn of weapon stocks. Preserve a residual capability; pace the fight; keep escalation options in reserve. In a long war, restraint can be a form of preparation for the next phase. The conflict, then, is a contest between opposing timelines. Iran is betting on endurance. The US and Israel are betting on overwhelming force – an aerial surge meant to collapse Iran’s capabilities before attrition, market anxiety and regional blowback take hold.
And what if the campaign does in fact succeed in degrading the regime? It may not deliver the political outcome some appear to expect. The idea that sustained strikes will trigger an internal uprising or fracture the state reflects a limited appreciation of the system’s resilience – and of the society that sits uneasily beneath it.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not simply a military institution. It is an economic empire, a political actor and an ideological pillar. Targeting its headquarters and security organs may complicate repression; it may even create openings for future protest. But dismantling an institution so embedded in the state’s architecture – through airpower alone – has rarely succeeded as a theory of change.
Nor is Iran’s internal landscape as neatly divisible as outside observers sometimes imagine. Ethnic minorities have real grievances, but most are wary of scenarios that lead to national fragmentation. Even many Iranians who oppose the regime and wanted foreign military intervention to topple it are reluctant to see the state collapse entirely, fearing the chaos that might follow. There is a difference between wanting the system to change and wanting the country to break. Reports that Kurdish militants on Iran’s western borders, backed by the US and Israel, are preparing for a ground assault against the central government play into these fears.
Should the state begin to fail, the regional implications would be profound. Iranian instability could spill into Iraq’s already fragile political order and sharpen tensions with Turkey, which views Kurdish autonomy anywhere in the region as an existential threat. A strategy premised on internal unravelling risks exporting disorder to a neighbourhood already saturated with it.
But as essential as it is to study the fresco in Isfahan to understand the Iranian psyche, or look at the resilience of a system that absorbed nearly half a million casualties during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and trillions of dollars in economic damages over many years of suffering from sanctions, it is key to understand that its besieged leadership is prone to miscalculation. Iran could run out of ammunition or its ability to access its firepower before Israel and the US. Unlike Ukraine, it has no external supporter to continuously resupply it. Its policy of scorching the rest of the region could soon make its neighbours go from defence to offence, burning bridges for years to come. It has a regime that is broadly detested and has brought the country’s economy and environment to the brink of collapse.
It is not clear whether this war will break Iran. But it could. Either way, Tehran, its neighbours and even its assailants stand to lose.
Ali Vaez is Iran project director and senior adviser to the president at the International Crisis Group