Iran: A Different War Requires a Different Strategy

In July 2025, when President Trump decided he had to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, I suspect he thought that would be the end of it. The seven B-2 bombers flew all the way from Missouri, refueled multiple times in-flight, and then hit the facilities around 2:10 a.m. Iranian time.American dominance seemed total as the airplanes flew home without having lost a single aircraft. The combination of B-2s, Tomahawk missiles, and other aircraft seemed to prove that Iran had no choice but to submit to joint American-Israel power. Unfortunately, 15 months later, the Iranians have not been intimidated into doing what America wants. There are reports of a fourth nuclear site. There are reports that the Iranians have begun work rebuilding some of the bombed sites — and hardening them against future airstrikes.Iran’s religiously inspired dictatorship proved its ruthlessness earlier this year by killing an estimated 47,000 of its own people to maintain domestic power. Having failed to intimidate the Iranian dictatorship, America and Israel launched a much bigger and more powerful campaign on February 28, 2026, including a strike that killed the former Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This attack also targeted a wide number of other senior leaders and severely wounded Khamenei’s son and ultimate successor.There were apparently two miscalculations in the decapitation campaign. First, it enraged and embittered the survivors and made them even more determined to outlast the Americans and the Israelis. Second, it turned out that the layers of trained and prepared leaders were vastly deeper than anyone had expected.I was reminded of an interview I had with an Air Force analyst just before the second Iraq war. He said the Iraqi anti-aircraft systems were getting much harder to identify and take out. I asked why. He simply explained we had killed most of the existing operators, or as he put it “all the dumb ones.” Those who were left were much tougher, smarter, and better at surviving.The American decapitation campaign may have backfired in killing the older and least-aggressive members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and thus creating space for a younger, more militant, tougher generation to take power.Most of the legacy leadership signed up in the emotionally powerful period of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s initial seizure of power. They are true believers and have devoted their entire lives to the revolutionary dictatorship and its twin goals of destroying America and Israel.This younger generation had fought Iraq for eight years, enduring Iraqi chemical warfare attacks. They sustained the war despite suffering 1 million casualties. I have never understood why our analysts think that an occasional bombing campaign will make a real impact on people this ruthless and fanatical.The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp troops know they are engaged in a war of survival. The atrocities they’ve committed against their own people and their neighbors mean they have no safe harbor. If they lose power, they are dead — not imprisoned or exiled — dead. So, there’s no scenario in which they give up. They are also confident the Americans will weaken and cut a deal. Their current strategy is to raise the energy and military costs for Americans so President Trump and his Republican allies lose the 2026 election. Then they will work with the Democrats and the anti-Trump establishment to get a phony deal which will leave them in control of their country, their nuclear and missile programs, and their allies in the region. Everything will go back to normal for them.We have not yet recognized that we are in a different war than the one we expected. The Russians and Chinese have been helping the Iranians. As a result of Chinese and Russian targeting help, the Iranians have functionally driven the Americans back. They have killed Americans and destroyed a lot of equipment. They’ve effectively increased risk levels enough to have Americans now operating from as far away as Germany. (And in return Iran and China are helping Russia in its war in Ukraine.)Furthermore, Iranians have been coordinating with their allies in: Iraq (where the government is incapable or unwilling to stop the pro-Iranian militia); Yemen (where the Houthi have been on offense and increasing their ability to cut off oil supplies to the West through the Red Sea); and Lebanon (where Hezbollah remains a major threat to Israel).The Saudi closure of its major pipeline after having been hit by devices fired from Iraq should be a reminder the war is bigger and more complicated than we expected. The highest price of diesel fuel in history is another reminder that things may not be going the way we intended.This is a new and different war than the one we thought we were fighting. We need a new and different strategy to win — against a much more complex variety of threats. Otherwise, the Iranian effort to wear us down may work.

Iran: A Different War Requires a Different Strategy

Iran: A Different War Requires a Different Strategy

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