In Iranian political discourse, main conflicts are sometimes described as “imposed wars” – wars that Iran believes have been pressured upon it by exterior powers fairly than chosen by Tehran. Iranian leaders determine three conflicts in these phrases: The Iran–Iraq Conflict (1980-1988), the Twelve-Day Conflict launched by Israel in June 2025 and later joined by the USA, and the present warfare that started on February 28, 2026, when Israel and the US launched assaults on Iran.
The 45-year hole between the primary and second conflicts displays an essential function of Iran’s strategic outlook. Regardless of its rhetoric and shows of navy preparedness, the nation’s political and navy management has traditionally sought to keep away from direct warfare due to its heavy political and financial prices.
This sample additionally displays a deeper tendency throughout the management: An aversion to conditions that take them without warning or for which they really feel unprepared. Iran’s response to the Arab Spring, for instance, was marked by confusion as a result of the uprisings caught the management off guard. The same sense of shock formed its response to the Hamas assault on Israel on October 7.
This strategic tradition helps clarify Iran’s response to the present warfare: Reasonably than searching for outright victory, Tehran’s precedence is to make sure that any try and overthrow it carries prohibitive regional and international prices.
Iran’s choice for avoiding direct navy confrontation has additionally been evident in its dealings with Western powers. Issues about Iran’s nuclear programme intensified in August 2002, when the primary photographs of the Natanz nuclear facility have been printed. Within the years that adopted, Iranian officers engaged in quite a few rounds of negotiations – first with the European powers: The UK, France and Germany, and later with the P5+1 group: The US, Russia, China, the UK and France, along with Germany. These negotiations mirrored Tehran’s longstanding choice to handle confrontation by diplomacy fairly than direct navy battle.
The scenario modified dramatically when the US, underneath Donald Trump’s first administration, withdrew from the Joint Complete Plan of Motion (JCPOA) in Might 2018. From that time onward, Washington adopted a much more aggressive posture in the direction of Iran, whereas Israel strongly supported this tougher line and continued to advocate navy choices towards Iran’s nuclear programme.
Tensions escalated additional in January 2020 with the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, broadly seen because the architect of Iran’s regional technique and its relationships with the so-called “axis of resistance”. The strike marked a dramatic escalation within the confrontation between Washington and Tehran and raised fears of a broader regional warfare.
The assassination was accompanied by an intensified financial marketing campaign towards Iran underneath the coverage generally known as “most stress”. The marketing campaign didn’t solely goal Iran externally; it additionally reshaped the nation’s inside political and financial panorama. Financial pressures deepened Iran’s home instability, prompting protests and intensifying tensions between the state and the general public.
Collectively, these developments bolstered Tehran’s perception that the US and Israel have been making ready the bottom for navy confrontation with it.
The acceleration of the navy choice can largely be traced to the occasions of October 7. After the assaults on Israel that day, Israeli leaders argued that Iran’s assist for Hamas made it not directly accountable and due to this fact accountable. From that time onward, Iran more and more appeared on Israel’s checklist of major strategic targets.
Israel started pushing to broaden the battle to incorporate Iran straight, first weakening Hezbollah, Iran’s strongest regional ally. This was adopted by a collection of confrontations between Israel and Iran’s regional community.
Direct tensions escalated in April 2024, after the bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, broadly seen as a direct Israeli strike on Iranian personnel.
These clashes resembled preparatory operations main as much as June 2025, when Israel, with US assist, launched what Iran seen as an actual warfare towards it. From Tehran’s perspective, the warfare represented an Israeli try and impose new guidelines of engagement based mostly on the idea that Iran and its regional allies had weakened. The battle ended with Israeli strikes on three key Iranian nuclear amenities: Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz.
Though the combating stopped, tensions didn’t disappear. Israel and the US continued signalling that one other spherical of confrontation was attainable, and Israeli preparations for such a situation intensified. Iran, for its half, additionally appeared to arrange for a second spherical.
On the identical time, worldwide stress on Iran’s nuclear programme elevated. Calls have been raised for the elimination of uranium enrichment, the elimination of enriched uranium, and the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear programme, much like the Libyan mannequin of 2003. Negotiations continued, however many in Tehran believed these talks have been unlikely to supply significant outcomes and have been as an alternative shopping for time for attainable navy preparations.
By the point the third imposed warfare started, the aims of Israel and the US appeared broader than within the earlier confrontation. Iranian leaders more and more concluded that any future warfare would finally purpose not solely to break the nuclear programme but in addition to weaken or overthrow the political system itself.
Consequently, Iranian leaders started making ready for such a situation by a collection of navy and safety measures. For the management in Tehran, survival was tied not solely to political energy but in addition to the preservation of a political system rooted in Shia Islamic ideology. Officers, due to this fact, tried to make concessions throughout negotiations within the hope of avoiding a broader battle, at the same time as many doubted that diplomacy would succeed.
This calculation formed Tehran’s preparations for the following confrontation. When the warfare ultimately started, and Supreme Chief Ali Khamenei was assassinated, together with a number of senior navy commanders, Iran’s response made clear that it might strategy this battle in a different way.
Iran’s behaviour on this warfare is formed by its perception that the battle is existential. The core of Tehran’s technique is due to this fact to boost the price of warfare for all actors concerned, not just for Iran itself.
In impact, Iran is signalling that if the target of the battle is to carry down the governing system, then the broader area – and probably the worldwide system – won’t stay secure. This logic explains Iran’s concentrating on of financial and power infrastructure, together with oil assets, fuel provides and the Strait of Hormuz. Disruptions on this hall have already contributed to sharp fluctuations in international markets, and additional disruptions might push costs considerably greater.
By this technique, Iran seeks to display that the autumn of the federal government in Tehran won’t come simply. On the identical time, Iranian leaders imagine that the US and Israel are pursuing a second technique geared toward weakening the state from inside.
Army doctrine means that overthrowing a political system sometimes requires floor forces, as seen within the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but such a situation seems unlikely within the case of Iran.
As a substitute, Israel and the US might try and destabilise Iran internally by encouraging political fragmentation and weakening the nation’s safety establishments. The target can be to exhaust the management politically and militarily till it could now not maintain itself.
Consequently, growing consideration has targeted on the opportunity of arming opposition teams, together with Kurdish teams and actions working in Iran’s jap border areas close to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Tehran has responded by tightening its inside safety equipment and deploying larger navy capability to those areas.
The February 2026 warfare, due to this fact, seems to be shifting in a transparent course: Both the overthrow of the Iranian political system or pushing it to the brink of collapse. Whereas the US might not essentially agree with Israel on each tactical element, each seem to share the view that the present management shouldn’t survive unchanged.
The remaining Iranian management understands this clearly. It has due to this fact adopted a technique of elevating the prices of warfare, each economically and by way of regional safety.
On the identical time, Israel seems involved that Donald Trump might unexpectedly halt the battle. This has inspired Israel to speed up strikes designed to weaken Iran’s management as rapidly as attainable. In flip, Tehran has escalated its personal response utilizing the navy capabilities nonetheless obtainable to it.
The result’s an intensifying cycle of escalation that dangers reworking a regional confrontation right into a supply of worldwide financial and strategic instability.
On this sense, Iran’s technique shouldn’t be geared toward profitable the warfare outright however at making certain that the prices of regime change grow to be too excessive for its adversaries to bear.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
