Middle East and North Africa

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........

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