For years, Iran’s leaders believed time was on their aspect.
After america withdrew from the 2015 nuclear settlement, generally known as the Joint Complete Plan of Motion (JCPOA), Tehran successfully adopted what later got here to be described as a “strategic persistence” method. Fairly than instantly counter-escalating, Iran selected to endure financial strain whereas ready to see whether or not diplomacy may very well be revived.
The logic behind the technique was easy: finally, Washington would recognise that confrontation with Iran was in opposition to its personal pursuits.
Right now, that assumption lies shattered.
The collapse of diplomacy and the outbreak of struggle have pressured Iran’s management to confront a painful actuality: their perception that the US would finally act rationally might have been a profound miscalculation.
If Iran survives the present battle, the teachings Iranian leaders draw from this second might inspire them to pursue a nuclear deterrent.
The technique of ready
After the primary Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA and launched its “most strain” marketing campaign in 2018, Tehran initially averted main counter-escalation. For practically a 12 months, it largely remained throughout the deal’s limits, hoping the opposite signatories, notably Europeans, might protect the settlement and ship on the promised financial advantages regardless of US sanctions.
When that failed, Tehran started steadily growing its nuclear actions by increasing enrichment and lowering compliance step-by-step whereas nonetheless avoiding a decisive break.
The tempo accelerated after Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament handed a legislation mandating a big improve in nuclear actions, within the wake of the assassination of prime nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. The shift was strengthened additional by the 2021 election of conservative President Ebrahim Raisi.
The last word objective was to rebuild negotiating leverage, as Tehran believed that broader geopolitical and regional developments had been steadily shifting in its favour. From its perspective, China’s rise, Russia’s rising assertiveness, and widening fractures throughout the Western alliance recommended that Washington’s capability to isolate Iran indefinitely would possibly weaken over time.
On the identical time, Iran pursued a technique of lowering tensions with its neighbours, looking for improved relations with Gulf states that had beforehand supported the US “most strain” marketing campaign. By the early 2020s, many Gulf Cooperation Council nations had begun prioritising engagement and de-escalation with Iran, culminating in strikes such because the 2023 Saudi-Iran rapprochement brokered by China.
Towards this backdrop, whilst tensions rose, Tehran continued to pursue diplomacy. Years of negotiations with the Biden administration aimed toward restoring the JCPOA finally produced no settlement. Subsequent diplomatic efforts below Trump’s second presidency additionally collapsed.
Underlying this method was a elementary assumption: that the US finally most well-liked stability to struggle. Iranian officers believed Washington would finally conclude that diplomacy, reasonably than infinite strain or a serious struggle, was essentially the most sensible and least expensive path ahead.
The joint US-Israeli assault on Iran has now uncovered how deeply flawed that assumption was.
The return of deterrence
Whereas Tehran based mostly its technique on mistaken beliefs concerning the rationality of US international coverage, Washington, too, is misreading the state of affairs.
For years, advocates of the utmost strain marketing campaign argued that sustained financial and army strain would finally fracture Iran internally. Some predicted that struggle would set off widespread unrest and even the collapse of the regime.
To date, none of these predictions has materialised.
Regardless of the large pressure on Iranian society, there have been no indicators of regime disintegration. As a substitute, Iran’s political base — and in lots of instances broader segments of society — has rallied within the face of exterior assault.
Moreover, Iran spent years reinforcing its deterrence capabilities. This concerned increasing and diversifying its ballistic missile, cruise missile and drone programmes and growing a number of supply programs designed to penetrate refined air defences. Iranian planners additionally drew classes from the direct exchanges with Israel in 2024 and the June 2025 struggle, enhancing focusing on accuracy and coordination throughout completely different weapons programs.
The main focus shifted in direction of making ready for a chronic struggle of attrition: firing fewer however extra exact strikes over time whereas making an attempt to degrade enemy radar and air defence programs.
We now see the outcomes of this work. Iran has been capable of inflict vital injury on its adversaries. Retaliatory assaults have killed seven Individuals and 11 Israelis, putting a rising pressure on US and Israeli missile defence programs, as interceptors are steadily depleted.
Iranian missile and drone strikes have hit targets throughout the area, together with high-value army infrastructure corresponding to radar installations. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has despatched world power markets into turmoil.
Aside from the immense value of struggle, the US determination to launch the assault on Iran might have one other unintended consequence: a radical shift in Iranian technique.
For many years, Supreme Chief Ali Khamenei maintained a longstanding spiritual prohibition on nuclear weapons. His assassination on the primary day of the struggle might now inspire the brand new civilian and army management of the nation to rethink its nuclear technique.
There might now be fewer ideological reservations about pursuing nuclear weapons. The logic is straightforward: if diplomacy can not ship sanctions reduction or completely take away the specter of struggle, nuclear deterrence might seem like the one viable different.
Iran’s actions on this battle recommend that many leaders now see persistence and diplomacy as strategic errors. These embrace the unprecedented scale of Iranian missile and drone assaults throughout the area, the focusing on of US companions and important infrastructure, and political selections at house that sign a more durable line, most notably the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme chief.
The selection of Khamenei’s son breaks a longstanding taboo in a system based on the rejection of hereditary rule and displays a management more and more ready to desert earlier restraints.
If a extra zero-sum logic of deterrence takes maintain throughout the area, changing dialogue because the organising precept of safety, the Center East might enter a much more harmful period wherein nuclear weapons are considered as the last word type of deterrence and nuclear proliferation can now not be stopped.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
