To understand how the current war in Iran will develop, one must first understand that it did not begin seven months ago. It didn’t even begin months earlier, when Israel targeted Iranian commanders and nuclear scientists in June 2025. These are all milestones that mark the renewal of a war that has continued for decades, ever since Washington and Tehran parted ways and Iran became an Islamic republic.
It is a long war, beyond stated objectives that include Iran’s support for terrorism, regional role, missile program, nuclear program, and geography. In the minds of those waging it, it is a zero-sum war, even if they once accepted a sort of intermittent coexistence. This continues to be the direction in which military events are unfolding. Iran’s enemies hoped a single blow would suffice in 2026, but that failed, so a thousand blows became necessary—all in service of the same overall aim: the fall of the Iranian regime. Iran has responded, and will continue to respond, accordingly.
To understand how the current war in Iran will develop, one must first understand that it did not begin seven months ago. It didn’t even begin months earlier, when Israel targeted Iranian commanders and nuclear scientists in June 2025. These are all milestones that mark the renewal of a war that has continued for decades, ever since Washington and Tehran parted ways and Iran became an Islamic republic.
It is a long war, beyond stated objectives that include Iran’s support for terrorism, regional role, missile program, nuclear program, and geography. In the minds of those waging it, it is a zero-sum war, even if they once accepted a sort of intermittent coexistence. This continues to be the direction in which military events are unfolding. Iran’s enemies hoped a single blow would suffice in 2026, but that failed, so a thousand blows became necessary—all in service of the same overall aim: the fall of the Iranian regime. Iran has responded, and will continue to respond, accordingly.
The attempted single blow against the Iranian political system took place at the outset of the most recent war, on Feb. 28. Israel and the United States together launched an attack targeting the head of the Islamic Republic, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with members of the Supreme National Security Council and senior commanders. In scale, it was equivalent to the strikes on Iran’s nuclear program the previous year—an attempt, in this instance, to decisively wipe out the Iranian state. And just as Iran concluded its response to the first war by targeting a Gulf state, its response this time began where the previous one ended. It launched a wide-ranging attack on U.S. assets in neighboring Gulf countries, adding to it the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately one-fifth of the world’s oil passes.
The war dragged on for weeks, with airstrikes deep inside Iran targeting cities and killing more than 3,000 people. In the final days of that first phase of the war, threats to strike strategic assets, infrastructure, and energy facilities in Iran began. The United States bombed the B1 bridge in Karaj, Israel destroyed parts of eight bridges, and U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to obliterate Iran’s civilization. That phase of the war ended on April 8, after both Iran and the United States accepted a Pakistani cease-fire initiative. Negotiations resumed, this time in Islamabad, but another brief round of strikes kicked off in July; on July 22, Trump announced that he would destroy an Iranian bridge or power plant for every ship Iran targeted in the Strait of Hormuz.
But the war is no longer purely an Iranian-U.S.-Israeli conflict, as it has now been overwhelmed with other issues and parties affected by Iran’s closure of the strait. And at the negotiating table, both sides still generally seem to be less focused on peace than on the format of the next round of war.
Iran also knows its internal situation is vulnerable. The economy would be the primary catalyst for any internal unrest. Iran’s central bank governor estimated year-on-year inflation at around 84 percent in September. Sanctions have emptied the pockets of Iranians and made their daily lives increasingly difficult, emboldening the U.S.-Israeli bet that external pressure will ignite an internal explosion.
Yet the war has, over the past few months, also produced an opposite effect, where domestic support for the state has significantly increased. The war may even have resulted in the regime enjoying its highest level of public support in years. This is mainly due to the rhetoric adopted by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which many Iranians perceive as directed against Iran’s national identity. Added to this was the assassination of the country’s highest religious authority, the supreme leader, which made Shiism itself appear under threat.
The general feeling among Iranians remains that their country was attacked twice during negotiations. This was perhaps most clearly reflected in the numerous rallies held across the country during the most recent fighting, which numbered over 850 by March. The so-called Janfada-e Iran (or the “ones who sacrifice their lives for Iran”) rally on Sept. 18, for example, drew hundreds of thousands of people to Tehran, the largest gathering since the war began. These were state-organized rallies, to be sure—and Iranians’ memory remains strong of the January anti-government protests, which the state itself violently suppressed, resulting in thousands of deaths.
But the war has moved large sections of the Iranian middle into the pro-government camp. Historically, Iranians’ fundamental complaint about their governments in times of crisis hasn’t been the presence of an absolute ruler; the country has been ruled by kings and shahs for centuries. Their problem lies with a weak ruler, one who doesn’t control the reins of power and lacks the power to defend the homeland. The real danger to the state lies in the perception that it can’t respond and not in the scale of the blows the country might receive.
Therefore, Tehran is rebuilding its internal structure to deny any impression of weakness from within. On Aug. 10, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued six decrees reshaping the military leadership; the most significant was the appointment of Hossein Taeb as the head of the Basij domestic militia force. Taeb spent more than a decade heading the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ intelligence service and led the Basij itself during the 2009 protests, in which the force played a leading role in repressing them, and today, he returns with a mandate to expand its intelligence network at the grassroots level and transform it into a local intelligence community.
Taeb is described as Khamenei’s righthand man, the man who built his networks and orchestrated his rise to power. Both men have been companions for years and served together in the same battalion during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. With the supreme leader mostly absent from the public eye, Taeb has become the man in the spotlight. He has emphasized the country’s readiness for “total defense” while organizing security forces to confront an internal threat coming from the country’s periphery, where various ethnicities and minorities—including Balochis in the southeast and Kurds in the northwest—have been planning to exploit the war to win greater independence.
Within Iran, this unrest is seen as part of an ongoing effort by its enemies to transform the country into an area of chaos. The government is preparing, and committed, to fight against any attempt to partition the country or reduce its territorial size, including any move targeting the three islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb, which the United Arab Emirates has long claimed, and perhaps other islands in the Strait of Hormuz and off the coast of Bandar Abbas. Iran believes, justifiably, that any such territorial moves would be consistent with the overall, long-term U.S. goal of weakening, and ultimately ending, the Islamic Republic.
In light of these developments, the crucial question becomes: When—not whether—will outright war again break out? In these scenarios, the next round can be expected to begin where the previous one ended, with Israel and the United States targeting Iranian infrastructure, roads and bridges, and energy facilities. It would aim to dismember the country and exert internal pressure at the highest level, on the state itself and its core support base, until the cost of resistance became a daily burden for every Iranian. It would also aim to strike Iran’s central command and control system, in an attempt to prevent Tehran from supplying outlying provinces at the very moment they are under mounting security pressure.
Taeb and the Basij will emerge as potential key players in organizing domestic countermeasures in such a scenario. For years, Iran relied on its “front defense” leverage to avert such scenarios, but today, it faces the very nightmare it struggled decades to prevent. The events of the past three years have weakened the structure of its regional allies, relegating them to a secondary role in its defense, behind the lines of geography and the missiles and drones launched from Iran.
Nevertheless, they will play a role in any future conflict, by seeking to expand the geographical scope of the harm Iran inflicts. The Houthis are advancing as the spearhead of the Iranian-led axis, now controlling the Bab el-Mandeb—or at least holding the power to close or open it. It is a role they experimented with in their support front during Israel’s war on Gaza. Targeting this strait, which became an alternative oil route after the closure of Hormuz, could greatly escalate the situation, especially given the Houthis’ repeated attacks on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline and other Saudi oil infrastructure.
In Iraq, factions seem freed from constraints following the U.S. withdrawal, with their destinations being the Kurdistan Region, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. Hezbollah, on the other hand, emerged from the 2026 war burdened with losses in geography, fighters, and weapons and with limited influence on political decision-making in Lebanon amid a general silence on the ground. This silence was exceptionally broken by a visit to southern Lebanon on Oct. 1 by a delegation close to Khamenei. The party may not return to fighting unless it perceives the next round as an existential threat to Tehran. In that case, its Lebanese considerations will no longer be the decisive factor.
The war didn’t begin seven months ago, and it won’t end in November. The next round, whoever initiates it, may be the most devastating the region has ever witnessed, stretching from Hormuz to the Bab el-Mandeb, from Iraqi Kurdistan to Jordan, and perhaps even wider. In Tehran, a leadership whose red lines have already repeatedly been crossed by its enemies may feel emboldened to strike harder. It would be betting that the very wounds inflicted on it from outside will only draw Iranians closer—and that the Iranian government increasingly has little left to lose.