When speaking of Iran’s strategic posture, too often the discussion falls into the binary of containment versus confrontation, diplomacy versus deterrence. What this debate fails to grasp is the very premise upon which the Islamic Republic has anchored its security doctrine – a doctrine not based on survivability, but on martyrdom. The regime’s internal strategic rationale is not just ideological, it is apocalyptic. Nowhere is this more evident than in what Iranian insiders have termed the “Kamikaze protocol” – a doctrine of deliberate national self-sabotage in the event of existential threat.
This doctrine is more than just a contingency plan. It is a message: if the regime falls, the nation falls with it.
During my time in Iran, I was privy to high-level discussions in which regime officials outlined a chilling scenario. Should Israel and its allies engage in a concerted campaign to dismantle the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and threaten the leadership’s hold over the state apparatus, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has provisioned for maximum harm to be exacted within Iran’s borders.
This is not military defense in the conventional sense – it is calculated annihilation. Critical infrastructure, including oil refineries, dams, energy hubs, and even civilian urban centers, have reportedly been seeded with strategic weaponry and chemical agents. These are not “booby-traps” in the literal sense, but they serve a dual-use function: to be activated by IRGC operatives in acts of sabotage, or to become targets for foreign powers in a way that can be weaponized in the court of public opinion.
The aim is threefold: ensure maximum civilian casualties, provoke environmental collapse, and – most cynically – blame Jerusalem. The regime, even in its death throes, seeks to control the narrative.
This strategic nihilism is not a theoretical exercise. Iran has already demonstrated the infrastructure and intent to pursue such operations. In June 2020, a string of unexplained explosions and fires targeted military and nuclear facilities across Iran, including the Natanz enrichment site. Official obfuscation followed, but independent intelligence agencies pointed to a combination of internal sabotage and foreign cyber operations.
In January 2023, Isfahan’s ammunition factory was struck by drones, followed by oil refinery explosions in Tabriz. The pattern is unmistakable: Iran’s sensitive sites are not only militarized, but increasingly vulnerable. The more concerning inference is that the regime anticipates this vulnerability – and has turned it into policy.
Furthermore, the 2019 Gulf of Oman tanker attacks, attributed to the IRGC’s naval units, illustrate how easily the regime deploys false-flag operations. In the Kamikaze scenario, such tactics would be scaled domestically: a sabotaged refinery or breached dam would be pinned on Israeli or American intervention, thereby justifying retaliatory strikes and securing the regime’s ideological legitimacy in the eyes of its proxies.
The logic of the Kamikaze protocol dictates that key infrastructure across Iran is pre-selected for weaponization. From the sprawling Karun-3 and Dez dams in the southwest, whose destruction could trigger devastating floods, to the Abadan oil refinery – one of the oldest and largest in the region – each of these locations offers a uniquely catastrophic potential. In the event of sabotage or direct attack, the resulting fires, toxic releases, and energy grid collapse could plunge Iran into weeks of darkness and chaos. The same is true for chemical facilities near Damghan and the military-industrial complexes surrounding Parchin, long suspected of dual-use research involving chemical and possibly biological agents. Sabotage at these locations could result in a humanitarian disaster that extends beyond national borders.
Equally concerning is the vulnerability of Iran’s power generation and nuclear infrastructure, particularly around Isfahan and Bushehr. Targeting these sites – either through regime sabotage or as a response to IRGC provocations – would serve both tactical and propaganda purposes. Finally, Iran’s southern ports, notably Shahid Rajaee and Bandar Abbas, which are vital nodes for both commerce and IRGC maritime operations, could be turned into theaters of economic strangulation. Taken together, these vulnerabilities outline a regime prepared to transform the country into a giant trap, waiting to be sprung should its survival be threatened.
Yet, despite these signals, Western powers continue to operate under the dangerous illusion that the Islamic Republic can be moderated through incentives and diplomatic engagement. This is a profound misreading of the regime’s ideological DNA. Iran’s leaders are not irrational, but they are operating from a strategic paradigm where deterrence is achieved not through survivability, but through the threat of martyrdom on a national scale.
This makes Iran fundamentally different from other authoritarian regimes. Its willingness to exact harm upon its own citizens to preserve the regime’s religious and political hegemony renders containment not merely ineffective, but complicit.
It is time to move beyond euphemisms and half-measures. The Kamikaze protocol must be publicly exposed as a strategy of state-orchestrated mass suicide. By shedding light on this doctrine, the international community can begin to puncture its utility. Secrecy, after all, is the oxygen of such plans. Once exposed, their potency diminishes.
Disruption, not dialogue, must be the strategic compass. Covert operations – whether cyber or kinetic – should focus on neutralizing command-and-control structures and dismantling the logistical backbone of the IRGC. These actions need not be declared; they need only be effective. Simultaneously, regional cooperation must be elevated. Gulf States such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, long targeted by Tehran’s proxies, should be integrated into a broader intelligence and civil contingency alliance.
Meanwhile, civilian defense must evolve. Western powers, in coordination with Iran’s neighbors, ought to develop rapid environmental response units capable of addressing dam breaches, chemical contamination, and infrastructure sabotage. This is no longer a theoretical exercise but a necessary precaution in light of what the regime has threatened to unleash.
The legal arena, too, must not be ignored. International bodies must begin documenting and preparing the groundwork for accountability under the Chemical Weapons Convention and other arms control frameworks. Should evidence emerge of chemical weapons deployments tied to civilian infrastructure, the culpability must be clear and unambiguous.
What we face is not a rational regime seeking security guarantees. We face a regime that sees annihilation as a legitimate instrument of statecraft. The Kamikaze protocol is not a last resort – it is a foundational pillar of the regime’s strategic imagination. It is time we recalibrated our own.
Containment has become collusion. Dialogue has become denial. Only through exposing, disrupting, and disarming Iran’s apparatus of self-destruction can we prevent the greatest tragedy of all: a regime that, true to its apocalyptic vision, burns the house down rather than see it occupied by another.
