Confronting Jihad’s Forever War

Executive Summary

Iran’s air force, navy, nuclear infrastructure, and senior military command have been severely degraded by U.S. and Israeli strikes. Yet the Islamic Republic continues to fight. To Western eyes, this defies rational military logic. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan — arguably the most ideologically committed fighting forces of the twentieth century — surrendered when confronted with comparable devastation. Iran has, and will not, surrender under the same conditions. Iran’s persistence is not a military anomaly but a theological design: the doctrine of jihadi “forever war,” rooted in Shiite Islam’s Karbala Paradigm and refined over four decades by the Islamic Republic’s founders and successors into an explicit civilizational mission. Understanding this distinction is the prerequisite for defeating it. History is instructive. The United States has confronted seemingly implacable ideological enemies before — and won. The lessons of Hiroshima, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Reagan’s Cold War strategy point to a common principle: overwhelming force, credible will, and the imposition of unsustainable costs ultimately prevail. They will prevail again.

I. The Paradox: Why Is Iran Still Fighting?

By any conventional military measure, Iran should have stopped fighting weeks ago. The United States and Israel have demolished the Islamic Republic’s air force, devastated its navy, destroyed 90% of its missile launchers, eliminated its Supreme Leader and senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and intelligence commanders, and rolled back decades of investment in its nuclear program. The last time a state sustained this level of structural military degradation was Nazi Germany in the final months of World War II and Imperial Japan in August 1945. Both collapsed. Both surrendered.

Iran has not surrendered. Its proxies continue to launch missiles and drones. Its new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, known to be seriously injured in the February 28 assassination of his father Ali Khamenei, has vowed to escalate the conflict. Its parliament invokes jihad. Its state media celebrates the fallen as Islamic martyrs. This is not the behavior of a regime calculating military losses. It is the behavior of a regime that does not process war through the same conceptual framework as does the West.

The question policymakers must answer is not why Iran keeps fighting — but what kind of pressure will finally make continued fighting more costly than stopping.

To understand Iran’s persistence, one must understand that the Islamic Republic was not designed to win wars in the Western sense. It was designed to endure them — and it has been saying so, loudly and explicitly, for nearly half a century.

II. Decades of Declaration: Iran’s Leaders Have Told Us Exactly What They Believe

One of the most consequential failures of Western strategic analysis has been treating the Islamic Republic’s rhetoric as theater. It is not. From Ayatollah Khomeini to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s leadership has articulated — with remarkable consistency, across four decades — a vision of global, divinely ordained, open-ended struggle against Western civilization. They have not been subtle about it. Since 1979 Iran’s Islamic Republic has called “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” – the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan,” respectively.

Ayatollah Khomeini: Founding the Forever War

The Islamic Republic was conceived as a revolutionary project with global ambitions from its first days. Khomeini did not frame the 1979 revolution as a nationalist uprising against the Shah. He framed it as the opening shot of a divine struggle against what he called taghut — the Quranic term for satanic tyranny — embodied above all by the United States.

“America is the great Satan, the wounded snake.”  — Ayatollah Khomeini, November 5, 1979 — one day after the U.S. Embassy hostage seizure

“We have decided to rely on God Almighty to destroy the regimes which are based on arrogance, capitalism, and Zionism, in order to spread the regime of Islam… We must smash the hands and the teeth of the superpowers, particularly the United States.”  —Ayatollah Khomeini, 1988

These were not campaign slogans. They were constitutional principles. The Islamic Republic’s founding documents enshrine the duty of perpetual resistance against global arrogance until the spread of Islamic governance worldwide. Khomeini built a state whose legitimacy depended on the existence of an eternal enemy — and whose identity was inseparable from the war against it.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Apocalypse as Policy

If Khomeini established the forever war’s ideological architecture, former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made its eschatological engine explicit. As president from 2005 to 2013, Ahmadinejad repeatedly and publicly tied Iranian state policy to hastening the return of the Twelfth Imam — the Mahdi — whose apocalyptic arrival would herald the end of Western tyranny and the global triumph of Islam. This was not fringe theology. It was presidential policy.

“Our revolution’s main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi.” — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 2005, addressing senior prayer leaders

“A divine hand will come soon to root out the tyranny in the world… Iran is paving the way for his coming and will serve him.” — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Isfahan speech, c. 2009

Ahmadinejad carried this framework to the United Nations General Assembly, telling the world body that humanity’s future lay in submission to “Imam al-Mahdi, the Ultimate Savior,” who would come “to eradicate tyranny and discrimination” alongside Jesus. This was not diplomatic language dressed in religious metaphor. It was a statement of strategic intent: Iran’s role, in Ahmadinejad’s explicit framing, was to accelerate the end of the current world order.

The late Professor Bernard Lewis — the preeminent Western scholar of Islam and the Middle East — was among the first to warn that Western strategic planners were fundamentally misreading the Ahmadinejad regime by applying conventional deterrence logic to an apocalyptic theology. His warnings deserve to be read in full by every policymaker engaging with Iran today.

“Ahmadinejad and his group clearly believe… that we are now entering an apocalyptic age, which will result in the triumph of their messianic figure… Muslims, like Jews, believe that there are things you can do to hasten the messiah. M.A.D. [mutually assured destruction] doesn’t work with these people.”  — Bernard Lewis, Ynet News interview, January 29, 2007

“Both of these have global aspirations. Both of them have a sort of apocalyptic mind-set. Both feel that now is the end of time and that the final struggle is about to take place between the forces of good and the forces of evil — the forces of good, of course, means themselves, and the forces of evil means us, the rest of the world.”  — Bernard Lewis, Middle East Forum Q&A, September 20, 2008, on Iran and Al-Qaeda

Lewis’s warning about Mutually Assured Destruction is particularly striking in the current context. The doctrine of MAD — which successfully deterred Soviet nuclear use throughout the Cold War — rests on the assumption that both parties place supreme value on national survival. It worked with Moscow because the Kremlin’s ideologues, whatever their rhetoric, were ultimately rational actors who wished to live and rule. It does not translate to a regime whose leaders have explicitly framed death as martyrdom, defeat as sacred witness, and apocalyptic chaos as the precondition for the Mahdi’s return.

The implication for Western policymakers is profound. A regime that believes chaos hastens the Mahdi’s return has a fundamentally different relationship to instability than a conventional state. Escalation, for such a regime, is not necessarily a cost. It may be an instrument of eschatological progress.

Ayatollah Khamenei: Institutionalizing the Civilizational War

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei presided over the Islamic Republic for more than three decades, before he was assassinated by Israel in Operation Rising Lion in February 2026. Throughout that period, he maintained, elaborated, and institutionalized the forever-war doctrine his predecessor Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini established. Even during the 2015 Permanent Five + Germany nuclear negotiations led by the United States opposite the Iranian regime— a moment when Western analysts hoped engagement and mutual diplomatic agreement might moderate Iranian behavior — Khamenei was unambiguous about the nature of the conflict.

“America is the number one enemy of our nation… the most wicked, sinister enemy.”  — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 2015, during the JCPOA nuclear negotiations

“The Iranian nation has the courage to say, ‘Death to America’… America is aggressive, a liar, a deceiver, and a colonialist and is not committed to any of the principles of humanity.”  — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, February 2025

In a 2015 open letter addressed directly to Western youth, Khamenei described the conflict explicitly as “a preplanned challenge between Islam and you” — not a regional dispute, not a nuclear negotiation, but a civilizational confrontation by design. Samuel Huntington coined the phrase “clash of civilizations.” Iran’s leadership lives it as dogma.

Before his death, Khamenei instructed that the current conflict with the United States and Israel be conducted as “confrontation through the lens of Karbala” — meaning that for the regime’s leadership, military defeat and martyrdom are not failures to be avoided but sacred outcomes to be embraced. His son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, has aligned himself with the most radical messianic stream of Iranian theology, for whom military conflict is literally a test of faith and casualties are proof of righteousness.

When a regime’s leaders explicitly describe their war as divinely ordained, open-ended, and aimed at the destruction of Western civilization, we are obligated to believe them.

III. The Theological Engine: Karbala as Strategic Doctrine

The declarations above are not merely rhetoric. They are grounded in a specific theological structure — the Karbala Paradigm — that functions as the Islamic Republic’s operational code for conflict.

In 680 CE, Imam Hussein ibn Ali — grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and the third Shiite Imam — rode with 72 followers into the plains of Karbala. He was surrounded by a vastly superior Umayyad army. He was offered a choice: submit to the Caliph Yazid, or die. He chose death. His followers were massacred. For Shiite Islam, this was not a defeat. It was the foundational moral event of the faith — proof that righteous resistance against unjust power is sacred even when it leads to annihilation.

This is the living operating system of the Islamic Republic. Trump is cast as the modern Yazid. America is the modern Umayyad empire. And Iran’s leadership — like Hussein at Karbala — frames submission as apostasy. Any prospective ceasefire or agreement will be interpreted not as peace but as hudna: a tactical pause, religiously sanctioned, while the “forever jihad” continues by other means.

During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988, this logic was already visible at massive scale. Iranian leaders invoked Karbala to sustain public support through nearly a decade of grinding attrition that killed approximately 200,000 Iranians. Battles were named “Karbala Two,” “Karbala Three.” State television fabricated casualty figures to match the number of Hussein’s fallen companions. The regime learned a lesson it has not forgotten: suffering, reframed as martyrdom, is not a cost. It is a reward.

The regime’s new leadership has radicalized this framework further. Under Mojtaba Khamenei, whether alive, comatose, or dead, the Islamic Republic presents itself as the “beating heart” of a messianic empire preparing the world for the return of the hidden twelfth Iman, the Mahdi — who is to reappear following a period of global upheaval. In the regime’s eyes, every American or Israeli strike becomes further proof of the cause’s righteousness, and every Iranian casualty becomes a martyr whose blood waters the revolution.

We are not fighting a state that has miscalculated. We are fighting a regime that has theologized miscalculation out of existence.

IV. The West Has Defeated “Forever Wars” Before

The temptation, confronted with this analysis, is despair. It should not be. The United States has faced ideologically committed, seemingly implacable enemies before — enemies who swore they would never surrender, enemies whose cultures valorized death over defeat. The United States won each time. The methods were different, but the underlying principle was consistent: when America over time applied overwhelming, unconditional, and strategically calibrated force or pressure, the enemy eventually broke.

Japan, 1945: The Limits of a Death Culture

Imperial Japan’s warrior code — Bushido — bore striking structural similarities to the Karbala ethos. Death in battle was honorable. Surrender was disgraceful. Japanese commanders sent thousands of kamikaze pilots on one-way missions. Military planners estimated that an Allied ground invasion of the Japanese home islands would cost one million American casualties and potentially more Japanese, because the civilian population had been prepared to fight to the last. The culture had been organized around sacrificial death.

President Truman’s decision to deploy atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war in days. The lesson is not that nuclear weapons are the answer to every ideological adversary. The lesson is that an adversary whose culture sanctifies death over surrender can nonetheless be compelled to stop. Japan’s emperor framed surrender as a protecting his people from extinction. The forever war ended when the cost of continuing exceeded even the culture’s tolerance for martyrdom.

Cuba, 1962: Brinksmanship and the Power of Credible Will

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation of wills between ideological enemies. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had calculated that U.S. President John F. Kennedy was too young, too inexperienced, and too politically constrained to risk nuclear war over Soviet missiles in Cuba. He was wrong. Kennedy exhibited unequivocal moral and strategic clarity and determination to compel his adversary to retreat. Kennedy drew a clear, public, unconditional line, imposed a naval blockade, placed U.S. nuclear forces on maximum alert, and demanded the missiles’ removal. He did not negotiate the terms of the line. He enforced it.

Khrushchev blinked. The missiles were removed. The lesson: credible, unconditional ultimatums backed by demonstrated will are the language that ideological adversaries ultimately understand. Ambiguity invites miscalculation. Clarity compels decision.

The Soviet Union, 1980s: Imposing Unsustainable Costs

Reagan’s strategy against the Soviet Union required imposing costs that the Soviet system could not bear. The military buildup — the B-1 bomber, the MX missile, the Strategic Defense Initiative — was designed not only as deterrence but as economic suffocation. The Soviet economy could not match American defense spending. The arms race Reagan initiated was one the USSR could not win and could not afford to lose. The Soviet empire collapsed from within.

The West has ended “forever wars” from the communist Left. The United States has demonstrated that laser-focused persistence, resilience, and determination to defeat an ideological enemy can overcome a revolutionary actor.

V. The Islamic Republic: What Must Be Done

The Islamic Republic is an even more extreme case of ideological enmity. For the regime, mutually assured destruction is an incentive, not a deterrent.  Martyrdom is a reward for the individual, and it is a necessary mandate for the regime, short of victory. The Islamic Republic’s legitimacy rests on its survival as the guardian of the revolution. A martyred soldier affirms the ideology. A martyred revolution ends it. The United States must exploit this distinction with precision.

1. Impose escalating political, economic, military, and psychological costs on the regime’s ability to function as a state. The IRGC’s vast commercial empire, Iran’s oil revenues, and the financial architecture of its proxy network must be targeted with the systematic intensity of Reagan’s pressure campaign against the USSR. The goal is to dismantle the regime to make the forever war institutionally unsustainable.
2. Maintain unconditional clarity about war aims. Khomeini built a doctrine that treats any negotiated compromise as hudna — a temporary truce, not a settlement. Ahmadinejad institutionalized chaos as an eschatological strategy. Any signal that Washington will negotiate the terms of Iran’s nuclear program or proxy network — rather than their elimination — will be read as confirmation that the forever war is working. It is essential to defeat, destroy, and dismantle the regime before establishing the victor’s terms of the “day after.” Trump’s policy must be clear, unequivocal and determined to end the regime. Trump’s willingness to negotiate with the regime and advance a moratorium on attacks against regime energy plants sends a negative message to the Iranian people.
3. Support Iran’s civilian population as a strategic asset. The Islamic Republic’s domestic political base is not monolithic. Polls show Iranian public support for the regime has deteriorated sharply. A strategy that distinguishes clearly between the theocratic regime and the Iranian people — and that actively empowers internal opposition — creates the conditions under which the forever war becomes politically unsustainable from within, as occurred in the Soviet case.

VI. Conclusion: Strategic Patience Is Not the Same as Passivity

America does not want a forever war. Neither do Israel, the Gulf states, or the broader community of nations that depend on a stable Middle East. But simply wishing for a finite war does not make it finite. The Islamic Republic has spent 47 years telling the world — in explicit, unambiguous terms — that it is waging an open-ended, divinely ordained war to defeat Western civilization and to become the hegemon of the Middle East and ultimately the world. Khomeini said it in 1979. Ahmadinejad said it before the United Nations. Khamenei repeated it as recently as February 2025.

The historical record is unambiguous: when the United States committed to overwhelming, sustained, and strategically calibrated pressure against ideologically driven adversaries — Japan, the Soviet empire, Soviet adventurism in Cuba — it prevailed. The theology of jihad is formidable. The martyrdom culture of Karbala is real. But it is not more formidable than American resolve has proven to be when that resolve is genuine, unified, and wisely directed.

The Islamic Republic has built its resistance strategy on the assumption that the West lacks the strategic patience and political will to sustain pressure long enough to defeat the regime. That assumption has, at various points in recent decades, been well-founded. Now there is a narrow window to prosecute a historic change.

We need not fight Iran’s forever war on its terms. We need only make clear — through action, not rhetoric — that the forever war will end Iran’s revolution before it ends ours.

The precedents are there. The capability is there. The Islamic Republic’s leadership has told us explicitly what they intend. The only remaining question is whether the United States, Israel, and the West have the moral and strategic will to confront this messianic jihadi phenomenon and to defeat it.