As the conflict with Iran enters its fifth week, Trump administration officials are increasingly looking for a way out. Donald Trump has dropped his demand that Tehran reopen the Strait of Hormuz before any ceasefire, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that America’s war aims are to destroy Iran’s armed forces and ballistic missiles – conveniently forgetting earlier promises of regime change. A “day after” is apparently on the horizon.
But in war, the enemy always has a vote. Iran’s pre-war political leaders are dead or in hiding. Its army has been significantly weakened. But Tehran’s goals — preserving the regime and discouraging another round of fighting — not only remain unchanged, but look increasingly achievable as the war drags on. After two years of setbacks and repeated strategic failures, Iran may have finally found a way to realize its objectives.
Many in the Gulf states were shocked by Iran’s relentless attacks on their civilian infrastructure. But that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Since the “12-day war” of June 2025, Tehran has repeatedly threatened to strike any Gulf country that hosts US bases in any future round of conflict. That no one apparently believed that Iran’s retaliation would match the scale of the chaos it has caused points to a major cause of the war: Tehran failed to convince its rivals that the costs of renewed hostilities would outweigh any benefits. In short, it failed to design deterrence.
The way Iran fights has undergone some changes since the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023. It has long styled itself as the head of the “Axis of Resistance,” a diverse network of allies of convenience and ideological fellow travelers. Its conventional military could never win head-to-head against Israel, or the US, let alone both. Axis of Resistance mitigated this weakness. Tehran can use Hezbollah and Hamas to keep Israel in its backyard, avoiding a state-on-state war, or a direct retaliation on Iranian soil.
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But the Axis of Resistance continued on its way. When planning the attacks, Hamas leaders tried to reverse their dependence on Iran and instead make the tail wag the dog. They apparently kept Tehran in the dark, but hoped to launch an attack so sudden and shocking that Iran would have no choice but to join. They succeeded in the first, but not in the second. This gave Israel the legitimacy to unleash its destructive potential; first for Hamas, then for Hezbollah. In April and October 2024 alone, Iran belatedly went to war for its allies, firing hundreds of drones and missiles directly at Israel for the first time.
This was a catastrophic miscalculation. He came too late and did too little damage to change the momentum of the conflict. Worse, it created a new normal of state-to-state warfare, precisely what the Axis Resistance strategy had sought to avoid. Israelis had long feared that any war with Iran would be long, costly and kill hundreds of civilians. Despite repeated rounds of conflict in 2024 and 2025, none of these predictions materialized. Tehran’s bark looked worse than its bite, and its escalation gave Benjamin Netanyahu the justification he had long sought to attack Iran. It was Iran’s miscalculations, then, that precipitated both the “12-day war” and the current conflict.
This is why Iran is now attacking the Gulf states, despite the monarchies putting aside their important political differences to lobby Washington against starting the war. Iran’s strategy is simple: to cause unprecedented regional chaos and global economic instability. The Gulf states – which have significant hydrocarbon reserves – are an obvious target. Each also boasts inward-focused development agendas that depend on regional stability to attract investment and tourism, alongside strong political and defense ties to the US. Iran has thus identified the Gulf states as the local center of gravity of the US and the global economy.
There is a method to this apparent madness. In the short term, it seeks to force the US to first close its eyes and agree to a ceasefire without achieving regime change. This would allow Iran to claim that they have won this round. But Tehran also has a longer-term goal: By imposing unprecedented costs that would make the US think twice before trying again, Iran seeks to make this the latest round of state-to-state conflict. It has even strong-armed its remaining proxy—Hezbollah—to join the conflict as a force multiplier in an otherwise state-centric conflict, and has relied heavily on the Yemen-based Houthis to do the same.
After two years of stalling, Iran may have finally found something that works. Most Americans never supported Trump’s war; Criticism is only likely to increase as gasoline prices hit their highest levels since 2022. Trump threatened to hit Iran’s energy grid before apparently backing down after Tehran threatened to attack similar targets in the Gulf. This illustrates that despite the blows to its military, Iran can still discourage the US from pursuing an escalation that could force Tehran to negotiate. Further, Trump’s decision to de-sanction some tankers loaded with Iranian oil in order to calm energy markets was a victory that years of negotiations failed to achieve for Tehran.
Even Iran’s most resilient enemy – Israel – has paid a much higher price than in any previous period of state-to-state conflict. Israel’s home front is well prepared. Unlike their American counterparts, the Israelis have long been preparing for this war. However, recent polls suggest that support is on the wane, while anti-war demonstrations have been held across the country. Before the war, Israel had the upper hand against Hezbollah, intermittently hitting its assets in Lebanon with little retaliation despite a ceasefire. Now, Israel finds itself mired in a Lebanese quagmire. Ten of its soldiers have been killed in Lebanon, while Hezbollah rockets destabilize normal life in Israel’s northern border communities.
Iran has adopted its new, morally dubious strategy out of weakness and to compensate for its past failures. Its officials vehemently deny it, but its main targets are civilians across the region, from Doha to Tel Aviv. It can no longer rely on the Axis of Resistance because many of its nodes are crippled or, in the case of Syria’s Assad regime, no longer exist. It is also endangering its last reliable regional ally – Hezbollah – by forcing it to fight Israel, a fateful decision that has undermined the group’s position in a war-weary Lebanon.
However, unlike the US, Iran’s war aims for regime survival and reestablishing its deterrence have been consistent and clear. They also correspond to her scorched earth strategy. As the US runs out of targets for its “shock and awe” offensive and the physical and economic costs of war continue to escalate, Washington may now be looking for a way out of this conflict. For Iran, however, dragging out this war may be its best bet to prevent the next war.
(Further reading: The axis of autocracies is winning)
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