How Iran aims to win the war

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 24 March 2026

   ​         The success or failure of the US-Israeli military operation in Iran hangs in the balance​.   It is very largely dependent upon how ​"success​" is finally adjudged.

Since February 28 the Iranian regime has sustained a massive armed offensive, and as a result its resources and its infrastructure have been substantially depleted.  US President Donald Trump has on several occasions detailed the vast losses Iran has ​incurred, and hinted that he is on the verge of declaring victory.  At other times he has indicated that he has considerably more in reserve by way of military power,​ including the possible use of American troops, to be used in loosening Iran’s grip on international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, and ensuring the unconditional surrender of the regime. 

Trump has been criticized for the apparent inconsistency of his various statements, which to some seem ill considered.  They are, however, just as likely to be a deliberate strategy aimed at keeping the enemy, and perhaps the world at large, guessing as to his calculated and detailed plans for the end-game.

Meanwhile Iran, far from seeking as early an end to the war as possible – on the face of it the obvious course to follow – is continuing to attack states that host Western military bases and to disrupt international shipping and thus the global oil market. On March 15 foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran had “never asked for a ceasefire”.

In fact the regime seems to be conducting what Eric Mandel, writing in the Jerusalem Post on March 16, calls “a war of attrition”.  The loss of its current leadership through targeted assassination is unlikely to affect this survival strategy.

The March issue of Foreign Affairs carries an article by Robert Pape, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, entitled: “Why Escalation Favors Iran”. 

In it Pape explains why Iran, despite its weaker conventional military power, paradoxically benefits from broadening and extending the current conflict. The core of his argument is that Iran is pursuing a strategy he calls “horizontal escalation” — namely, expanding the scope, geography, and duration of the conflict, in order to shift it from direct military contest toward political endurance and strategic costs.

Pape contends that Iran knows it cannot defeat a US-Israel alliance in a direct military confrontation. Instead, it is changing the nature of the conflict.  By using regional proxies, attacking economic targets and disrupting international commerce, Iran can vastly increase the political and economic costs borne by its stronger adversaries and their allies.

The strategy draws on historic precedents. One example is the Vietnam war.  The North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces out-maneuvered the US by escalating the war “horizontally” into the towns and cities in the south.  The US won every battle over 11 bloody years, but lost the war. 

Another is the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and America’s in 2001.  Both operations ended as classic “wars of attrition”, where the insurgent side wore down the occupier over time until domestic political support and strategic patience eroded.

The Soviets entered Afghanistan expecting a short stabilization mission, but were drawn into a decade-long counter-insurgency that Gorbachev later called a “bleeding wound,” with mounting casualties, economic strain, and political embarrassment.  The mujahideen, backed by Pakistan, the US, and others, used sanctuary, terrain, and time to ensure the conflict was prolonged and costly, rather than decisive.

The later US campaign similarly morphed into an open-ended effort against an adaptive insurgency – in this case the Taliban and its allies – that aimed to outlast Western domestic will and unity, rather than to defeat US forces tactically in set-piece battles. 

Finally both the Soviets and the US acknowledged defeat and withdrew their forces.

According to Pape, Iran’s current actions – rapid retaliatory strikes, disruption of regional infrastructure, and resilience even after leadership losses – are meant to demonstrate to their opponents and to the world in general that the regime can sustain a long conflict.

This strategy transforms the confrontation into a test of political will rather than battlefield superiority, a test the Iranian regime may believe it is capable of winning.  The longer it drags on, the more it works in Iran’s favor.  It disrupts energy markets, strains host-country tolerance for US bases, and erodes domestic and allied political support for an open-ended campaign. Unless Washington adjusts its strategy to account for these dynamics, Pape warns, the US and Israel may have “bitten off more than they can chew” and risk losing control of the war they initiated.

What is the slowly accumulating danger for the US-Israel alliance?  By broadening and prolonging the conflict, Iran could impose mounting costs and heavy political pressure on the alliance, and gradually wrest control of the war’s trajectory from its stronger opponents.  In short, continued escalation risks putting the US and Israel into a strategic trap. 

For example, the longer the conflict continues, the harder it becomes for rulers in the Gulf – and particularly Abraham Accord partners – to sustain their relationship with Israel without sacrificing legitimacy at home.

          A protracted war would also reshape American politics. Sizable elements of Trump’s political coalition have been wary of Middle Eastern entanglements, and have accused the administration of simply following Israel’s lead.  The longer US military operations continue, the greater the danger of fractures widening within Trump’s political supportive base – as exemplified by the resignation on May 17 of Joe Kent, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Transatlantic strains could also follow. The US could be in difficulties if, faced with the dangers of a prolonged and economically disastrous war, European states decided to limit their support or constrain the use of their territory.  US strategists would also obviously be factoring into their calculations the danger of the conflict escalating beyond the confines of the Middle East.

          Out of this complex military, political and economic maelstrom, there is a real danger that the US-Israel alliance could end by plucking defeat from the jaws of victory.  It would be a hollow victory indeed if, in the final analysis, the revolutionary regime remained in power in Iran.  It has to be swept away.


Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Political, economic pressures mount as US-Israel war with Iran continues", 24 March 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-890897

Revolutionary Iran must be toppled

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 17 March 2026

On March 8 Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Khamenei who was killed in a targeted strike on February 28, was announced as Iran’s new Supreme Leader.  He has not been seen in public from that day to this, and the speculation is he may have been badly wounded in that strike. His first address to the people was read for him by a TV news anchor.

If US President Donald Trump had been hoping that Iran’s new leader would be open to negotiate a better future for its people, he has been sadly disappointed.  Mojtaba Khamenei is very much his father’s son.  He is generally viewed as hardline and anti-West politically, and strongly aligned with the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). 

In short the regime’s elite has done its best to reconstitute itself and proceed on its quest to achieve the basic purposes of the Islamic revolution that, half a century ago, swept away Iran’s Pahlavi dynasty.  Ever since, most world leaders have been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to acknowledge the underlying motivation of its instigator, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.  They have also refused to accept that the same objectives have driven the regime ever since.

In his writings before the revolution, and in his speeches after, Khomeini affirmed repeatedly that the foundation stone of his philosophy was to impose Shiite Islam on the whole world by destroying Western-style democracy and its way of life.  To achieve this aim, he identified Israel and the United States (and also, at one time, Soviet Russia) as his prime targets.

“We wish to cause the corrupt roots of Zionism, Capitalism and Communism to wither throughout the world,” said Khomeini.  “We wish, as does God almighty, to destroy the systems which are based on these three foundations, and to promote the Islamic order of the Prophet.”

By this he meant his strict Shiite interpretation of Islam, for elsewhere he had declared that the holy city of Mecca, situated in the heart of Sunni Saudi Arabia, was in the hands of “a band of heretics”.

   Ever since 1979 the world could have recognized, if it had had a mind to, that the Iranian regime has been engaged in a focused pursuit of these related objectives – the destruction of democracy and the global imposition of Shiite Islam – quite impervious to any other considerations.  Instead, wishful thinking has governed the approach to Iran of many of the world’s leaders.

The administration of then US President Joe Biden maintained the tradition, inherited from his years as vice-president to Barack Obama, of seeking an accommodation with the regime. 

A clear-eyed look at the facts would have shown that the Iranian regime did not intend to become one of the comity of civilized nations.  To do so would have negated the revolution’s fundamental purposes, to which the ayatollahs remained unshakably committed. 

In the words of Khomeini, its founder: “We shall export our revolution to the whole world.  Until the cry 'There is no God but Allah' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

His successor, the recently deceased Khamenei, was a devout disciple.  Like Khomeini, he considered the revolutionary objectives so supremely desirable – even, perhaps, divinely approved – that any means were justified in furthering them, regardless of the human or political consequences.  Accordingly both leaders authorized a continuous succession of terrorist operations, most carried out by proxies to maintain the fiction of Iranian deniability.

Immediately following the revolution Iranian militants seized the US embassy in Tehran and held more than 50 people hostage for 444 days.  This was followed in 1983 by the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut, resulting in 63 deaths.  Later that same year Hezbollah bombed the US Marine Barracks in Beirut resulting in the deaths of 241 US and 58 French troops.

Bombing campaigns and hostage taking continued in the Middle East and Europe during the 1980s, and in the early 1990s Iran-inspired terror operations expanded to South America.  In 1992 Hezbollah bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires causing 29 deaths, following this two years later by bombing the city’s AMIA Jewish Community Center, which killed some 85 people.  Meanwhile Iran continued to supply funding, weapons, training, and operational guidance to sustain continuous Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi and militia attacks against Israel, Iraq, Syria, and Gulf states. 

As Hamas’s primary sponsor, the Iranian regime was undoubtedly complicit in its bloodthirsty attack into Israel on October 7, 2023. 

What explains the palpable failure by most of the world’s leaders to perceive what was plainly discernible?  The mistake was the same as the world made in the case of Adolf Hitler.  Few who read his Mein Kampf, first published in 1925, thought he meant what he said.

But the philosophy underlying Hitler’s political beliefs was there, in black and white, for years before he was in a position to implement it.  If politicians, or opinion formers, had taken it seriously, his rise to supreme power could have been thwarted.  He could have been prevented from maneuvering his way into becoming Germany’s Chancellor in 1933.

In the same way not enough scholars and political leaders bothered to look into the philosophy underlying Iran’s 1979 revolutionary leader, Khomeini, or to take seriously the burning religious conviction that motivated him, and subsequently the policies of the Islamic Republic.  The regime’s unceasing effort to acquire a nuclear arsenal was integral to its underlying purpose.  Whatever other strategic or political advantages nuclear arms might confer, it was only as a nuclear power that Iran could achieve its basic aim of eliminating Israel and confronting the Great Satan, America.

   If the Iranian regime is permitted to remodel itself under a new Supreme Leader, no amount of negotiation will dislodge it from its fundamental revolutionary purpose, as first propounded by Ayatollah Khomeini.  Nothing will induce it to reject the deluded vision of an Israel-free Middle East and an entire world subject to Shiite Sharia law.  That is why the future peace of the Middle East depends on Iran’s governing structure crumbling in the coming weeks under the sustained US-Israel aerial bombardment. Trump has demanded “unconditional surrender”.  He cannot declare total victory while Iran remains a theocratic dictatorship under the ayatollahs, led by a Khamenei.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Mojtaba Khamenei’s rise means Iran’s revolution is far from over," 17 March 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-890086

Iran’s tactical blunder

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 10 March 2026

            Justifiable though the February 28 US-Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran may have been on moral, humanitarian, strategic and political grounds, it was arguably not so strong in terms of international law. France has criticized it as illegal, while Spain has explicitly declared it a breach of that law.

          Which international law is the action presumed to violate?

          The UN Charter, binding on all member states, is generally regarded as the central component of international law. Article 2(4) bars a state from using force “against the territorial integrity or political independence” of another state, but elsewhere the Charter specifies two accepted routes to its legal application: Security Council authorization, and self-defense.

          The US-Israel strike did not receive Security Council authorization, and self-defense under Article 51 is permitted only “if an armed attack occurs.”

          When the US and Israel struck, therefore, Iranian strategists could have reasoned that their two great enemies had breached international law and laid themselves open to universal condemnation in the UN and in the court of world opinion.

          But blinded by their long‑standing doctrine of regarding US forward bases and regional hosts as part of the hostile “system,” they ignored the political potential of the situation. They sanctioned the launching of missiles and drones at Israel and at US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Inevitably some hit civilian areas.

          Iranian officials framed this onslaught as a “legitimate right and duty” of self‑defense and revenge. They explicitly declared “all US resources in the vicinity” to be lawful targets, warning that the operation would continue until the US and Israel were “definitively defeated.”

          The decision to strike US bases regardless of their location was a tactical error of major proportions. It could also, in the long run, prove existential for the regime. By attacking states that were not direct participants in planning or carrying out the February 28 strike, Iran has pushed them toward tighter alignment with the US and Israel, solidifying a broad anti‑Iran coalition. 

          Joint statements by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Jordan, Kuwait and the US have explicitly denounced Iran’s strikes. They “reaffirm our right to self‑defense,” signaling a willingness to treat Iran as a common threat and to act accordingly. The Gulf monarchies in particular host critical US infrastructure and missile defense networks. Having framed Iran’s attacks as aggression against their own territory and civilians, they can justify far‑reaching cooperation in a prolonged campaign against Iran’s military and economic base.

           By striking a range of Middle East states, Iran has turned Charter Article 51 – the “self-defense” justification for military action – against itself. Host states whose territory or US bases were attacked now clearly have their own self‑defense claims against Iran. Many of those governments publicly condemned Iran’s strikes as “blatant aggression” and “flagrant violations” of sovereignty. The UAE has severed diplomatic relations with Iran, closed its embassy in Tehran and withdrawn its ambassador and staff.

          For Western states with facilities and military personnel in those countries, Iran’s attacks strengthen the argument for continued, or even expanded, defensive action against Iranian launches. Even experts who were highly critical of the original US–Israeli raid affirm that once Iran widened the battlefield to third‑state territory not directly involved in the February 28 attack, its own self‑defense claim was weakened, and those of third states became correspondingly stronger.

          Iran’s broad regional retaliation has done a good deal of Washington’s coalition‑building work for it.

Tehran has realized the magnitude of its tactical mistake too late. Speaking on Iranian state TV on March 7, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized “on my own behalf and on behalf of Iran to the neighboring countries that were attacked by Iran… no more attacks will be made on neighboring countries, and no missiles will be fired, unless an attack on Iran originates from those countries."

          The eminent British lawyer Geoffrey Robertson conducted the inquiry into “arguably the worst crime since the Second World War” – the mass murder by the Iranian regime in 1988 of many thousands of political prisoners. Writing on March 5, he has suggested how the UN could act to provide some justification for the US-Israeli strike.

He points out that just two weeks before the invasion the state of Iran “murdered at least 15,000, and possibly upward of 35,000, of its own peacefully protesting citizens.”

          Many more, he reports, were crippled by a new form of torture carried out by Islamic revolutionary guards, namely shooting them in the face. This barbarism, he claims, was ordered by Ali Larijani, Supreme Head of Iran’s National Security Council, and came after government newspapers had urged a return to the “spirit of 1988”.

          Robertson suggests that the UN, without condoning or condemning a war that has divided its members, could act under Chapter VII of its charter. This gives it power – used before for wars in the Balkans, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone – to set up a war crimes court to investigate and indict those responsible for crimes against humanity prior to the war in question.

          “The work,” he writes, “could begin immediately in The Hague and the indictments made available to a new government when it emerges.”

          Agreeing with President Donald Trump that UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, “is not Winston Churchill”, Robertson says that Starmer at least respects international law. He suggests that Starmer could urge the UN to establish an international criminal court for Iran, to prepare indictments against those officials and military officers who over the past 47 years have committed international crimes against political prisoners and peaceful protestors.

          What of the immediate future? While Trump has clarified his war aim as “unconditional surrender”, the Iranian regime is struggling to reconstitute itself after the death of its Supreme Leader. Effective governance in Iran could be bombed out of existence. Russia could act to prevent regime collapse - media reports indicate that Russia is currently providing Iran with targeting intelligence on US forces and assets. Meanwhile a coalition of those states attacked by Iran is possible, but not assured.

          As for Iran’s tactical blunder, whether it actually becomes existential for the regime only time will tell.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Iran's tactical blunder:  Strikes on third-party states give the US, Israel more allies", 10 March 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-889311

If Iran falls, what follows?

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 5 March 2026:

                Speaking to reporters at Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina on February 13, US President Donald Trump said, unambiguously for the first time perhaps, that regime change in Iran is "the best thing that could happen". 

   Ever since late January the US administration has been building up a massive naval and military presence in the region, nominally to pressure Iran over its nuclear program, ballistic missiles, regional proxies, and internal repression. Trump has consistently tied the US military build-up to his insistence that Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons. 

            In his remarks at Fort Bragg Trump declined to specify whom he wanted to take over in Iran, but noted "there are people" who could.  One such, of course, is the late Shah’s son and heir, Reza Pahlavi, who has acquired significant support both within the country and among the Iranian diaspora as a potential future leader. 

US special envoy Steve Witkoff is reported to have met with Pahlavi at least once, but probably more often, in the past few weeks.

At the inaugural meeting of Gaza’s Board of Peace on February 19, Trump said that if the regime did not accept stricter limits “within days,” unspecified but “very bad” consequences might follow.  The latest round of US-Iranian negotiations in Geneva ended on February 26.  Unsatisfied with Iran’s delaying tactics, Trump ordered a military strike on the morning of February 28.

Speaking via his Truth Social medium, Trump was crystal clear about one major objective of the joint US-Israeli attack.  Addressing the Iranian people direct, he said:

“For many years, you have asked for America’s help. But you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let’s see how you respond. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”

 Trump has no plan for large‑scale US ground involvement or occupation.  He anticipates an internal uprising that would topple the government.  It is not an impossible scenario.  With the Iranian economy on life support, and the regime struggling to contain prolonged and persistent anti-government demonstrations, targeted military action by the US could cause the Islamic theocratic dictatorship to implode.

On February 25 AOL, the American web portal formerly known as “America Online,” published an article which stated “…the US has reportedly drawn up a target list of key regime stalwarts, such as the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his son, to be eliminated as part of a decapitation strategy aimed at achieving regime change in Tehran.”  This objective was achieved in the first strike on February 28.

The Iranian people, having endured nearly five decades of despotic rule, have made it abundantly plain over the past month or more that the sooner they see the back of the ayatollahs, the better.  However, the fall of the Iranian regime would have repercussions well beyond Iran – many of them highly desirable. 

For example, the widespread network of terrorist groups created and sustained by the Islamic Republic would suddenly find themselves without the financial and logistical support that has sustained their jihadist activities for decades. 

Shiite Hezbollah, a creature of the Iranian regime, would be critically weakened by its demise.  The Houthis’ ability to act at sea and against distant targets is very largely dependent on Iranian military supplies.  Sunni Hamas could look to Qatar and perhaps Turkey for some degree of support, but without Iran at its back could it withstand Trump’s demand that it disarms and dismantles its terrorist infrastructure?

Wider afield, Russia and China, which have forged trade and military partnerships with Iran in recent years, would see their global standing seriously diminished.

Iran has been supporting Vladimir Putin’s war effort in Ukraine by providing constant supplies of drones and ballistic missiles.  The sudden loss of this flow of vital ordnance would undoubtedly weaken Putin’s military capabilities in Ukraine and could hasten some sort of ceasefire.

China would also feel the pinch, since 90% of Iran’s discounted oil exports go to Beijing. A sudden loss of  cheap Iranian oil would have a significant effect on China’s economy.  Moreover, bearing in mind the 2021 Iran-China partnership pact, any leadership change in Tehran could have a negative impact on China’s strategically ambitious world-wide Belt and Road initiative, already signed by some 150 countries.

The first and only serious attempt to overthrow the Iranian regime occurred just eighteen months after the February 1979 Islamic revolution.  In September 1980 the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, fearing that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolutionary Shia Islamism would destabilize Iraq’s Sunni‑dominated Ba’athist regime, invaded. 

He hoped that a quick attack into Iran’s oil‑rich province of Khuzestan would trigger internal unrest and possibly a collapse of the new Islamic Republic.

A range of Western and Arab states, including the US, the UK, France, and Gulf monarchies, provided him with significant military, economic, and diplomatic support.  Iran’s revolutionary regime was seen by them as a greater threat to stability and Western oil interests than Saddam’s Iraq.  History had a different story to tell.

By mid‑1982 Iran had reversed Iraq’s initial gains, and for the next five years Iraq was largely on the defensive.  A series of successful Iraqi offensives in 1988, however, diminished Iran's hope for victory and induced a change of heart. In August 1988 both sides accepted a UN-brokered ceasefire and truce.

This time has Iran’s revolutionary regime reached the end of the road?   On February 28 Pahlavi issued his own video message to the Iranian people: 

“In these sensitive hours and days, more than ever we must remain focused on our ultimate goal: reclaiming Iran…Stay alert and ready to return to the streets for the final action at the appropriate time, which I shall communicate to you. Follow my messages through social media… We are very close to final victory. I hope to be with you as soon as possible, so that together we may reclaim Iran and rebuild it.”

          Will the dream eventually become reality?

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "What follows the fall of Iran?  A look at the widespread repercussions", 4 March 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-888758

Published in Eurasia Review, 11 March 2026:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/06032026-if-iran-falls-what-follows-oped/