- Iran’s misguided strategy has drawn it into a war that will inflict unprecedented damage upon it and fundamentally alter the balance of power in the Middle East to its detriment.
- For many years, the Iranian leadership misjudged Israel’s intentions and capabilities, and its strategy of entrenchment through regional proxies has ultimately failed.
Since the outset of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the regime of the ayatollahs in Tehran has identified the United States and Israel as its principal enemies.
Taking this enmity a step further, it launched a nuclear program with the explicit goal of acquiring a nuclear bomb capable of achieving Israel’s destruction.
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a leading figure in the Islamic Revolution and one of the architects of the Islamic Republic during its first three decades, was known to tell his associates: “Israel is a one-bomb state. A single nuclear bomb could destroy half of it, and the rest of its population would flee in panic.”
Yet despite its vast military capabilities, its stockpiles of thousands of ballistic missiles and UAVs, and its 12 nuclear sites, Iran has made grave strategic miscalculations that now pave the way for its own downfall.
For years, despite its inflammatory rhetoric and threats to annihilate Israel, Iran refrained from broad military engagement against it. While Israel conducted a prolonged campaign known as the “War Between the Wars” (MABAM), targeting Iranian military infrastructure in Syria to prevent its entrenchment, Iran responded with only symbolic and minor retaliation.
It was only during the current war that Iran directly attacked Israel twice, launching hundreds of missiles and drones—most of which were intercepted by Israel’s air defense systems with the assistance of the United States and Jordan.
Iran’s longstanding strategy has been to operate from the shadows, utilizing its proxies across the Middle East while denying direct responsibility and portraying these groups as independent actors.
Behind the scenes, it urged Hamas to launch the brutal attack known as “Al-Aqsa Flood” on Israeli communities near Gaza, and encouraged Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Shiite militias in Iraq to engage in hostilities against Israel following October 7, 2023.
This strategy of hiding behind its proxies has backfired. Since the onset of the war, Israel has unleashed overwhelming military force against Hamas and Hizbullah, decimating their leadership and depleting their weapons stockpiles—effectively abandoning them to Israel’s wrath. Now, as Iran itself faces a powerful Israeli onslaught, its weakened proxies are of little military use.
On June 16, Iraqi commentator Dr. Muthanna Abdallah wrote in Al-Quds Al-Arabi that “Iran’s mistake was to base its military response to Israel on its regional proxies, but this approach failed because Israel has neutralized Hizbullah.”
Senior security officials note an additional strategic blunder: for years, Iran neglected its internal security apparatus, allowing infighting between its intelligence agencies over influence at the top levels of government. This dysfunction enabled Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to establish a deep foothold inside Iran, recruiting elite agents and commando units that carried out targeted assassinations of senior Revolutionary Guard commanders and nuclear scientists—and which could potentially threaten the life of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself.
Iran’s leadership gravely erred in assuming that Israel lacked the strength or will to strike its nuclear facilities or ballistic missile sites, and that Israel’s coordination with the United States was for deterrence purposes only. Only too late did Tehran realize that a large-scale Israeli Air Force strike on its nuclear and missile infrastructure would only occur with a green light from Washington.
Another critical misstep was Khamenei’s reluctance to authorize full military-grade uranium enrichment to 90%. Instead, Iran stopped at 60% and failed to rapidly develop a nuclear bomb trigger mechanism, missing the chance to present the world with a fait accompli—like India, Pakistan, and North Korea once did.
Now caught in a trap, Iran’s nuclear program has been stalled by Israel’s surprise attack on its nuclear sites, preventing it from fast-tracking bomb production. It has missed the train: Israel struck just in time to thwart the program in its final stages.
Iran now finds itself weakened, fighting an uphill battle to retain its nuclear ambitions against insurmountable odds. Israel, the United States, and Western powers have united in opposition to any further uranium enrichment on Iranian soil.
The price of Iran’s strategic miscalculations is extraordinarily high—and irreversible. Tehran stretched the rope too far. It could have remained a threshold nuclear state, but when it secretly began developing bomb components, it crossed Israel’s red line. Now, by all expert assessments, Iran will be forced to dismantle its uranium enrichment project against its will.
Its flawed strategy has dragged it into a war that will harm it in ways never before seen and shift the regional power dynamics sharply against it.
