Iran’s long walk toward Jerusalem |
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and struck nuclear facilities, missile bases, and military infrastructure across the country. Iran responded with the largest retaliatory strikes in the history of its armed forces, targeting Israel and American military assets across the Gulf.
The immediate question was whether this would become a sustained war. The deeper question, the one almost nobody is asking, is what happens when it ends. What happens when a regime built around missiles, nuclear ambitions, and eschatological prophecy loses the first two and is left with nothing but the third?
The arsenal and the obsession
Iran’s military doctrine has been built around one instrument: ballistic missiles. Without a modern air force, without a blue-water navy, without strategic bombers, missiles became the only way Iran could project force beyond its borders. The logic was compensatory. Decades of sanctions and arms embargoes prevented the modernization of conventional forces, so Tehran invested everything it could develop domestically: missiles and drones.
The result was the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East. In 2022, U.S. Central Command estimated Iran possessed over 3,000 ballistic missiles, not counting its growing land-attack cruise missile force. Short-range systems like the Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar covered 300 to 700 kilometers. Medium-range systems like the Shahab-3, Ghadr, Emad, Sejjil, and Khorramshahr extended that reach to 2,000 and potentially 2,500 kilometers, enough to strike Israel, every American base in the Gulf, and parts of Eastern and Central Europe.
Iran also developed the Fattah series, presented in 2023 as its first domestically produced hypersonic missile, though independent verification of full operational capability remains limited.
But quantity is not precision. Iran’s doctrine is one of saturation: launch as many missiles as possible to overwhelm the enemy’s air defense systems and ensure that some get through. Against Israel, this means exhausting the interceptors of Iron Dome, Arrow, and David’s Sling until the defensive ceiling collapses.
But the true danger of saturation is not conventional warheads. It is the possibility that among hundreds of incoming missiles, one carries a chemical, biological, or nuclear payload. Even if that missile is intercepted in mid-air, the dispersal of its contents over a populated area would be catastrophic. Interception does not neutralize the threat. It redistributes it.
In this sense, Iran has become the world’s premier missile incubator and launch platform, a state whose entire military identity is built around producing and firing as many missiles as possible, hoping that the one that matters gets through
Missiles were never the full picture. Behind the arsenal sits a three-legged strategy converging toward a single objective.
The first leg is range. Iran’s self-imposed 2,000-kilometer cap on missile range has long been viewed by Western analysts as a political choice, not a technical limit. The Khorramshahr, if equipped with a lighter warhead, could almost certainly reach farther. And Iran’s space program provides the technological bridge to go further still. Iran became an orbital-launch-capable nation in 2009.
In April 2020, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched the Noor military satellite into a 426-kilometer orbit, publicly revealing the military dimension of its space program.
In September 2024, the IRGC put another satellite in orbit using the solid-fuel Qaem-100 rocket. In December 2025, Russia launched three more Iranian satellites from its Vostochny cosmodrome.
The U.S. intelligence community has warned that Iran’s space launch vehicle program shortens the timeline for developing an intercontinental ballistic missile. The Defense Intelligence Agency estimated in 2025 that Iran could develop a long-range missile by 2035, but that timeline does not account for assistance from allies like Russia, China, or North Korea, all of which already possess ICBMs.
The second leg is nuclear capability. Iran has enriched uranium to 60 percent. Civilian reactors require 3 to 5 percent. Medical research isotopes require up to 20 percent. There is no peaceful justification for 60 percent. And the technical gap between 60 and 90 percent, weapons grade, is the shortest step in the entire enrichment chain. It can be closed in weeks, not years.
The third leg is drones. The Shahed series, cheap, mass-producible, and exportable, has already been deployed in Ukraine through Russia, in the Red Sea through the Houthis, and now directly against European military targets in Cyprus and the Gulf. Drones saturate air defenses while ballistic missiles attempt to penetrate them. It is a layered strategy designed to stretch interception systems to their limits.
Three legs. One destination.
And the arsenal is finite. During the 12-Day War in June 2025, Israel destroyed approximately 40 percent of Iran’s ballistic missiles. Tehran prioritized reconstitution, rebuilding its heavy missile stockpile to an estimated 2,000 by December 2025. But the current campaign is dismantling that recovery. The Israeli Air Force has destroyed or disabled around 300 missile launchers since February 28. The United States has struck nearly 2,000 targets, including missile production facilities in Isfahan, Kermanshah, and Karaj.
The daily rate of Iranian ballistic missile launches is already declining, a pattern analysts attribute to the destruction of launchers, the risk of detection upon launch, and possible rationing to preserve a residual deterrent. Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, described what remains as a ‘lingering launch capability.’ Every missile Iran fires is one it cannot replace under current conditions. Every launcher destroyed is one that will not reload. The arithmetic is unforgiving. When the last missile is spent, what remains is not a military strategy. It is a theology.
The engine beneath the strategy
To understand where these three legs are marching, you must understand a theology that Western policymakers have consistently ignored.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a Twelver Shia state. Twelver Shiism holds that twelve Imams were appointed through the Prophet Muhammad’s lineage, and that the twelfth, Muhammad al-Mahdi, went into occultation in the ninth century. He remains alive but hidden. He will return to establish global justice and rule decisively over the world.
This is not peripheral folklore. It is constitutional doctrine. The regime governs under the principle of Velayat-e Faqih, which holds that qualified jurists rule as deputies of the Hidden Imam until his return. And within the IRGC, the doctrine of Mahdism has become one of the main prisms through which senior commanders understand and communicate their actions. Since 2009, there has been a growing emphasis on viewing the IRGC as the military vehicle to prepare the foundations for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, with hostility toward the United States and the eradication of Israel understood through this prism.
This is not metaphor. The IRGC increasingly views the existence of Israel as the greatest barrier to the Mahdi’s return. According to the doctrine, part of preparing for his reappearance is removing all obstacles to his return. The destruction of Israel is not a political goal. It is a theological prerequisite.
And here lies the danger that should concern every strategist in Washington, Brussels, and Jerusalem: some factions within Iran’s clerical leadership believe the Mahdi’s return will be hastened by apocalyptic war. During the Cold War, Mutually Assured Destruction kept nuclear powers from attacking each other. But if a regime believes nuclear war would accelerate the return of a prophesied messiah, MAD does not function as a deterrent. It functions as an incentive.
The Middle East Institute warned in 2022 that the doctrine of Mahdism in the IRGC remains a complete blind spot for Western policymakers, yet could have major implications for the militia network, the ballistic missile program, and the nuclear program.
A blind spot. In 2026. While the missiles are flying.
The scenario without fangs
Now consider what happens if this war achieves its stated objectives. If Iran’s missile infrastructure is destroyed. If the nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan are rendered inoperable. If the drone factories are leveled.
Iran’s conventional ground forces are massive in numbers: approximately 610,000 active-duty personnel plus 350,000 reserves, with the Basij paramilitary force capable of mobilizing 600,000 to one million additional personnel. That is nearly two million people under arms. They have over 1,500 tanks, 4,500 artillery pieces, and 1,000 multiple-launch rocket systems.
But those forces exist for one purpose: territorial defense. They cannot project power beyond Iran’s borders in any meaningful way. They have no strategic airlift. No amphibious capability. No air cover for moving armored columns. As one defense analyst noted during this war: Iran has a strong army, but it is an aerial war, and Iran is in a disadvantageous position with its air defense compared to the U.S. and Israel.
The geography confirms the impasse. The RAND Corporation estimated that a ground invasion of Iran would require 500,000 to one million troops because the terrain is that defensible. The Zagros mountain passes are narrow kill zones. The southern coast is backed by mountains within 100 kilometers. The eastern and northern borders are impassable for Western forces.
But that same geography works in reverse. If Iran wanted to strike Israel on the ground, its army would have to march approximately 1,500 kilometers through Iraq, then through Syria or Jordan, before reaching Israeli territory. Every kilometer of that march would be under the absolute air dominance of the United States and Israel. Without air cover, an armored column crossing the flat terrain of Iraq would be annihilated in hours. The 1991 Highway of Death, where retreating Iraqi forces were destroyed from the air on the road out of Kuwait, would be a footnote by comparison.
Without missiles, without nuclear capability, without an air force, and without a navy, Iran cannot reach Jerusalem. It can only walk.
The theology of walking
When the Prophet Muhammad died in 632 CE, he left no clear instruction on who should lead the Muslim community after him. That single ambiguity split Islam in two. One group, later known as Sunnis, believed leadership should be chosen by consensus among the community elders. They selected Abu Bakr, a close companion of Muhammad, as the first caliph. The other group, later known as Shia, believed leadership belonged exclusively to Muhammad’s bloodline, beginning with his cousin and son-in-law Ali, who had married the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. For the Shia, Ali was the only legitimate successor. He was not chosen. He was designated by God.
Ali eventually became the fourth caliph, but was assassinated in 661. His eldest son Hasan negotiated a truce with the rival Umayyad dynasty and stepped aside. It was Ali’s second son, Husayn, who refused.
In 680 CE, when the Umayyad caliph Yazid demanded Husayn’s allegiance, Husayn refused to recognize a ruler he considered illegitimate and corrupt. He marched toward the city of Karbala in modern-day Iraq with 72 followers, including women and children, to face an Umayyad army of 4,000 soldiers. He knew the outcome. He marched anyway. He was massacred. Decapitated. His family was paraded in chains through the streets of Damascus.
That massacre did not destroy the Shia movement. It created it. Husayn’s death became the founding act of Shia identity: the proof that standing against tyranny, even unto certain death, is not defeat but the highest form of devotion. The supreme hero of Shia Islam is not a conqueror. He is a martyr who chose annihilation over submission. And for fourteen centuries, that choice has been the lens through which every Shia struggle is understood.
This is not ancient history stored in books. It is lived practice. Every year, millions of Shia pilgrims walk on foot from Najaf to Karbala in the Arbaeen pilgrimage, one of the largest human gatherings on earth, retracing the path of Husayn’s suffering with their own bodies. Former IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani described it as a twenty-million-person maneuver. Khamenei himself called it a great and astonishing combat rehearsal.
During the Iran-Iraq War, the Islamic Republic sent hundreds of thousands of young men to the front with keys around their necks, symbolizing their readiness to enter paradise. Battles were named Karbala Two, Karbala Three, and so on. Actors were hired to play the Hidden Imam before dangerous assaults, calling soldiers to suicide missions. Slogans on their shirts read: Imam Khomeini has given me special permission to enter Heaven.
The IRGC’s military doctrine formally incorporates martyrdom zeal, including suicide operations, as core elements of its asymmetric warfare framework. In Shia belief, those who die in the way of God are not dead. They are alive, though you do not perceive it.
And perhaps the most haunting detail of this current war: multiple analyses suggest that Khamenei himself may have chosen not to evacuate when the strikes were imminent. The IRGC maintained a dedicated contingent capable of relocating him to secure bunkers at short notice. No evacuation occurred. Some analysts believe it was a deliberate choice to die as a martyr, transforming his death into a symbol that reinforces the system’s ideological foundations.
A regime that sends its supreme leader to die as Husayn died at Karbala is not a regime that surrenders when it loses its missiles.
Strip Iran of its ballistic missiles. Destroy its nuclear program. Eliminate its drone factories. Degrade its proxy networks. What remains is a nation of 88 million people, most of whom did not choose this war. Iran is not a monolith. It is a country where millions have protested, where dissidents have been imprisoned and killed, where an ancient civilization chafes under a theocracy it never voted to keep.
But the Revolutionary Guard does not need the consent of the population. It needs only its own ranks, its own doctrine, and a theology that treats defeat as confirmation, suffering as purification, and death as promotion
The IRGC was forged in the memory of a man who walked toward annihilation because the prophecy demanded it.
The rational calculus says a demilitarized Iran would negotiate. The eschatological calculus says otherwise. The Mahdi does not return when conditions are comfortable. He returns when the world is filled with injustice and oppression. For a regime steeped in Mahdism, losing everything is not the end of the mission. It is the proof that the mission is close to fulfillment.
The IRGC’s Quds Force, its external operations arm, carries the name of Jerusalem in Arabic. Its name is its mission. It was not named after a weapons system that can be destroyed. It was named after a destination.
Iran’s long walk toward Jerusalem is the regime’s last road. But 1,500 kilometers is a long way for anyone. And on that road, anything can happen.