For the month before the war, the view from Tehran should have looked frightening. As Iran looked over its western horizon, dozens of US and Israeli combat aircraft and warships were in the region, all pointed towards Iran. The President of the United States had said that strikes would begin if Iran did not make a deal to his liking, and yet, Iran did not blink. Looking back at this miscalculation, it might seem that Iran’s thinking was crazy or a reflection of religious zeal, but there was a strategic logic to it.

For decades, one of the nightmares that kept the Iranian government up at night was the possibility of a direct war with the US or Israel. Their previous experience of war, while successful, had been costly. The Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s demonstrated to the Iranian leadership that they could not prevent enemy missiles or aircraft from screaming through their skies and could ill afford the hundred thousand or more casualties and damage to cities that war on their own territory would bring. The rapid success of the US and coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003 further cemented Iran’s fear. Iran developed three approaches to preventing the war that they dreaded. The first was “forward defense” – using proxies to fight far from its borders. The second was what was referred to as “mosaic defense,” in which Iran would create defenses in the country that could survive an initial air campaign and make any attempt to cause regime change costly. Finally, Iran relied on its significant ballistic missile stock and the strike capabilities of its proxies to deter any attack by holding the Israeli civilian population, US military personnel in the region, and much of the world’s oil supply at risk.

On June 13th, 2025, these plans failed, and the nightmare came to Iran in the form of Israeli strikes on key targets throughout the country. Iran’s air defenses proved all but useless. Moreover, despite Iran firing over 500 missiles and 1100 drones at Israel, Israel remained unbowed and undeterred. Then the US joined the war. For Iran, the worst had happened, but then the war ended. The regime survived. Some part of its deterrence had apparently succeeded. At this point, Iran could have developed one of two explanations for what had occurred. The first was that its survival was due to an act of mercy from the US, while the second was that even if the war was painful, the Iranian strategy had succeeded. It seems Iran chose the latter.

Looking across the fate of its proxies and allies, with the notable exception of the Assad regime in Syria, Iran could see that it is possible to weather even truly significant blows. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis were all to be destroyed or defeated by Israel and the US, but are still around to rebuild. Iran believed that it could survive another 12 Day War. It was not the possibility of a limited air campaign, even a devastating one, that Iran feared. Its fear before this war was only an attempt at regime change. Such a campaign would require a longer and harder effort by the US and Israel, with a much wider list of targets. All conducted while Iran continuously raised the cost by potentially attacking targets such as US troops, international commerce, US allies, Israeli civilians, and potentially the global oil supply.

Iran had good reason to believe that, despite some rhetoric, the US and Israel would not pursue regime change. Iran’s threat of retaliation had already carved off some US partners, such as the UAE, from their support of operations against Iran. Additionally, there were reports that Israel and the US had far fewer interceptors available to protect bases and civilians than they did this summer. If true, that meant Israel and the US would pay a higher cost for the war. Perhaps the two most important reasons that Iran believed the US and Israel would not pursue regime change were the Iranian experience of the previous year and US statements about global strategy.

The US could have supported Israel in pursuing regime change during the 12 Day War, but it did not. In early January 2025, the US threatened to intervene militarily if Iran kept killing protestors – Iran kept killing, and the US kept out, eventually negotiating a deal to de-escalate the situation. This pattern of behavior may have led Iran to conclude that the US has little interest in a major operation that would risk significant harm to the strategic state in the Middle East. Moreover, the US made it very clear that, as written in the National Security Strategy, “the days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy…are thankfully over…” Attempting regime change in Iran would bring the Middle East back into being an unwelcome focal point for US policy and resources, something which the US appeared to wish to avoid. Iran might have viewed statements like this as true reflections of US policy and strategy. It was this assessment of US policy, together with Iran’s belief that it could impose a high cost on the US and its allies, and its confidence that it could survive a repeat of a limited-duration war like that of the 12 Day War, that led Iran to an uncompromising position and the miscalculation that brought war to Iran and the Middle East.

“The views, facts, opinions, and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, U.S. Army, U.S. Army War College, or any other government agency. (References to this presentation should include the foregoing statement.)”

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