The Islamic Republic of Iran, enduring waves of US and Israeli military attacks, seeks to project confidence, continuity and defiance as it navigates its own survival through the most dangerous threat to its existence in its 47-year history.
That confidence is not bravado, analysts say, but deeply felt.
Politically, Iran’s embattled rulers and commanders moved smoothly to name an interim leadership council and are choosing a new supreme leader to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on Feb. 28 in the first wave of attacks.
Why do we write this?
American and Israeli leaders have made clear that they want regime change in Iran. But the Islamic Republic had prepared for this day, with a political succession plan and a battlefield strategy. The result so far is Iranian confidence, despite the existential threat of war.
On the battlefield, Iran’s top generals have also been killed. However, its retaliatory missile and drone strikes, although diminished, continue to target Israel, US forces and Arab Gulf states hosting US troops and interests.
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have made clear that they want regime change in Iran, along with the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program and its considerable missile arsenal, as they seek to dismantle Iran’s ability to project power.
“This was never intended to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are hitting them while they are down,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday. “We are accelerating, not decelerating. Iran’s capabilities are evaporating by the hour.”
The intensity of the attack was twice that of the US “shock and awe” attack on Iraq in 2003, he said, and seven times that of Israel’s 12-day air campaign against Iran last June.
Through its actions and pronouncements, Iran’s leadership seeks to reverse the narrative that it has been weakened – and therefore ripe for collapse – by two years of military coups, as well as widespread and corrosive popular discontent.
Iran “upping the ante”
“The main goal is the calculation in Washington that (Mr Trump and Israel) can just fight a war and then call a ceasefire, and things will go back to normal,” says Hassan Ahmadian, assistant professor of Middle East and North African studies at the University of Tehran, reached by phone.
Iran’s leaders “aren’t willing to give that to Washington, so they’re upping the ante,” he says, with retaliatory missile and drone strikes designed to deplete Israeli and American air defense interceptors, before attacking with Iran’s considerable remaining arsenal.
It is a race against time, with the United States and Israel aggressively pursuing Iran’s hidden missile and drone launchers and caches, to avoid precisely that outcome.
In the first five days, the United States attacked more than 2,000 targets in Iran and Israel attacked more than 600.
Since Saturday, Israel said Thursday, Iran has launched about 200 missiles and more than 120 drones, causing 10 “significant hits.” Hundreds more have been fired on Gulf countries, although often at shorter range.
The Pentagon said late Thursday that Iran’s ballistic missile launches had dropped 90% since the first days of fighting, and drone launches were down 83%.
Much of Iran’s missile arsenal remains, even though Israel says it destroyed 200 of Iran’s estimated 400 launchers last June. Less than 20% of the 3,000 missiles that Israel estimated Iran possessed at the time were used against Israel in the June war.
The June conflict, which followed nearly two years of fighting between Israel and Iran’s regional allies, began with a surprise Israeli attack that killed a swath of Iran’s nuclear commanders and scientists. Added to this were the US attacks on bunkers against Iran’s nuclear program.
“After that, the Iranians built, built, and prepared,” says Dr. Ahmadian. “The (ruling) system is projecting power, in terms of its institutions. (And) with its leader and commanders gone, it is standing up and fighting hard against aggression.”
Institute for the Study of War and Critical Threats Project of the AEI
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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
The late Mr. Khamenei prepared Iran’s current response based on the lessons of the June war. Israel had begun to run out of missile interceptors and Iran’s subsequent attacks, although fewer, were more destructive.
The supreme leader named several candidates for his successor, in case he were assassinated. He also ordered senior commanders to appoint three-level officers to intervene if they too were killed.
The Iranian manual
“In their heads, it is an existential struggle. The mentality is: we resist or we will be martyred while we try,” says an Iranian analyst with close access to Iran’s political circles, who asked not to be identified.
“What we are seeing now is the manual, drawn up if an all-out war were to break out… A very detailed contingency plan,” he says. “The key objective here was to keep the military command operational. (In the event) that certain parts of this chain were disrupted – due to communications being cut, undermined or compromised – the different elements could work autonomously.”
“I think they are pretty confident that they can handle this (leadership) transition, on the one hand, but also the military campaign, on the other,” the analyst says.
“It is a big question whether the calculation lives up to the realities of Donald Trump and his presidency,” he adds. “And what if the dynamics of the situation change? Can the pre-planned military campaign and response be slowed down? Or is it on autopilot such that it cannot be stopped?”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said this week that Iranian military units had begun a decentralized “mosaic defense” and had become “independent” and “isolated” while carrying out general orders issued in advance.
On Tuesday, two buildings were destroyed in Tehran and in the Shiite holy city of Qom, where the 88-member Assembly of Experts normally met to elect a new supreme leader. Israel says any new leader will be a target.
“Obviously, the key will be how far the Israeli elimination operations go,” says the analyst. “We received a clear answer… that they will try to eliminate them all.”
Iran’s television narrative
Despite frequent airstrikes, the narrative transmitted from Tehran is rich in bombast.
“They (US forces) will be completely uprooted from the region,” predicted Mohammad-Hassan Ghadiri-Abyaneh, a former Iranian ambassador.
“They are in our sights… They will beg us for a ceasefire,” he told state television. “Fortunately, people are standing firm and opposing a ceasefire. People are saying, ‘Just hit them.'”
Iranian television is filled with patriotic songs, religious recitations and hymns celebrating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, with a split screen showing Iranian missile hits against regional targets. The “constant fear” that Israel feels about Iran’s weapons prowess stands out.
Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters
“Iran will defeat the United States. Time will tell,” Mohammad Marandi, a professor at Tehran University with close ties to the regime, told Britain’s Channel 4.
“Our drones that are being fired are very old drones. Our missiles… are very old missiles. They are very cheap. And the Americans are using very expensive air defense systems,” Dr. Marandi said.
“The Iranians know exactly what they are doing,” he added. “We haven’t even started using our latest technology and most of Iran’s underground bases haven’t even been used yet.”
After the protests
Part of the US reckoning on the regime’s vulnerability arises from the deadly crackdown on street protests across the country in January, which resulted in more than 7,000 confirmed deaths in just two days. Afterwards, some Iranians say they welcome the foreign intervention.
“Of course, there are many who are dissatisfied with the (government) system,” says Dr. Ahmadian of Tehran University. “But the other part is that there are also millions who support the system. They are willing to fight for it and they don’t want to see their country invaded.”
A wild card is emerging along Iran’s western border, an ethnically Kurdish region where US and Israeli airstrikes have been concentrated against Iran’s security forces and border posts.
The attacks are an apparent attempt to pave the way for an armed incursion by Iranian Kurdish rebel fighters based in Iraqi Kurdistan. Some groups – which for years have waged a marginal insurgency from Iraq – have reportedly received fresh weapons and training from the CIA in recent months.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Intelligence Ministry warned leaders of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government that they would make a “decisive, extremely severe and regret-inducing” response if any “terrorist group” crossed the border into Iran.
“The flag rally, at least among people who strongly support the (government) system, is happening,” Dr. Ahmadian says. “And those who the Americans and Israelis believe will support the invasion either oppose the aggression or stand aside and wait to see what happens.”
An Iranian researcher contributed to this report.
