On the morning of 28 February, explosions lit the sky over Tehran. American and Israeli aircraft struck Iran in what Washington called a joint operation to eliminate a nuclear threat. The strikes were designed to signal finality. What they demonstrated instead was a lesson history has repeated endlessly: military supremacy and political submission are not the same thing.

This did not begin on 28 February. It was the endpoint of a strategy assembled over months, one face turned toward diplomacy, another quietly building the largest American military footprint in the Middle East since the Iraq invasion. The talks in Muscat, Rome, and Geneva were never genuine peace negotiations. They were instruments of coercion dressed in diplomatic language. By early February, Washington had deployed a second aircraft carrier to the region.

On 13 February, President Trump declared that regime change in Iran would be “the best thing that could happen.” Twelve days later, American envoys sat with Iranian counterparts in Geneva, exchanging what mediators called promising ideas. This is not a contradiction. It is coercive diplomacy, using negotiation as leverage, not resolution. Washington was not offering Iran a choice between war and peace. It was offering a choice between capitulation and war.

Tehran understood the difference. Iran restricted talks to the nuclear file alone, rejecting American demands to include its missile programme and regional influence. Secretary of State Rubio eventually conceded he was unsure whether a deal was reachable. What he was admitting, without quite saying it, was that Iran had refused to play by Washington’s rules.

This is not irrationality; it is doctrine. Since 1979, Iran’s core strategic logic has been that survival under external pressure requires endurance, not surrender. The weaker power does not seek conventional victory; it makes victory for the stronger appear perpetually costly and perpetually out of reach.

Any honest assessment of Iran must also confront what is unfolding within its borders. The 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising following Mahsa Amini’s death cracked the facade of ideological unity. Hundreds were killed, tens of thousands arrested, and dozens executed. But repression did not restore legitimacy; it only delayed the next eruption. By late 2025, a second wave, this time driven by economic desperation, swept across more than two dozen provinces.

Whatever one believes about the Islamic Republic, Iran is not submitting

Whatever one believes about the Islamic Republic, Iran is not submitting

Inflation exceeded 40 per cent, food prices had nearly doubled, the currency had lost half its value, and millions fell into poverty. Merchants, workers, pensioners, and students who had once been considered regime loyalists were marching openly against Khamenei’s government. Executions climbed sharply, reaching around 1,500 in 2025 alone.

Yet a clear analytical line must be drawn here. Internal repression does not grant foreign powers the right to bomb a country in the service of their own strategic goals. Washington’s stated justification is nuclear security, but Trump’s own words on 13 February made the real objective explicit: regime change. That is not a humanitarian goal. It is a strategic one, packaged in the language of non-proliferation.

Iran’s nuclear ambitions are real and legitimately concerning. But the decision to bomb rather than negotiate reflects a calculation about regional dominance, not principled commitment to preventing nuclear proliferation. If non-proliferation were genuinely the governing principle, it would be applied consistently.

Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal, estimated at between 80 and 400 warheads, has never attracted American sanctions, diplomatic pressure, or military threat. The standard being applied to Iran is not the principle. It is the relationship.

History offers a sobering record. Iraq was dismantled in 2003 based on weapons that did not exist, and what followed was two decades of sectarian collapse. Libya’s Gaddafi surrendered his nuclear programme and was rewarded with NATO-backed regime change. The lesson Iran absorbed from both cases is simple: disarmament invites destruction. Asking Iran to give up its deterrent while repeatedly demonstrating what happens to states that comply is not a peace offer. It is a trap.

The strikes on Iran cannot be read in isolation. They are part of a broader pattern of American unilateralism steadily eroding the norms that once constrained state behaviour. In early 2026, the Trump administration arranged the extraordinary rendition of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a sitting head of state, seized without an extradition treaty or UN authorisation.

In Greenland, Trump has spoken openly of acquisition and refused to exclude force. In Gaza, Washington has vetoed ceasefire resolutions, continued weapons transfers, and threatened the International Criminal Court when it moved against Israeli officials. The message is consistent: international law is a tool applied when convenient, discarded when not.

International law is imperfect. The Security Council veto protects great powers from accountability. Courts cannot enforce their own rulings. But the erosion of even this flawed framework carries real consequences. When states can no longer anticipate a coordinated response to invasion, annexation, or assassination, the logic of pre-emptive aggression becomes rational and not just in Washington. Every capital watching draws its own conclusions.

The 28 February strikes reportedly included targeted operations against Revolutionary Guard commanders and elements of Supreme Leader Khamenei’s security apparatus. Strategically, this is unlikely to produce the intended outcome. The killing of Qasem Soleimani in 2020 did not diminish Iran’s regional reach; it accelerated Iran’s missile development and deepened its networks across Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

The removal of Hassan Nasrallah in 2024 did not dismantle Hezbollah; it triggered succession. An Iran without Supreme Leader Khamenei would not be a compliant Iran. The Revolutionary Guard would consolidate, and whatever moderate forces existed would be the first casualties.

At the deepest level, two incompatible visions of world order are in collision. Washington’s is hierarchical: American primacy sustains global stability, and states that challenge it must be brought to heel. Tehran’s is one of defiant sovereignty: Iran does not accept Washington’s right to determine which nations may enrich uranium or build missiles. Every refused deadline is, in Iranian framing, an assertion of national dignity.

When worldview clashes are fought with weapons, the outcomes rarely match the expectations of those who order the strikes. Whatever one believes about the Islamic Republic, Iran is not submitting. To compel a superpower to negotiate three times, to force the deployment of two carrier groups before it dares to strike, to leave the world questioning whether this confrontation can actually be won, that is not the posture of a defeated nation.

The explosions over Tehran have not resolved this crisis. They have deepened it. When the smoke clears, Iran will still be there.

© The Friday Times