Four days into the US-Israeli air campaign against Iran, the contours of the Islamic Republic’s response are clear.

As it did in the previous Israeli operation last June, it is maintaining a steady rain of ballistic missiles and drone fire on Israel.

Unlike last time, however, it is focusing more on hitting Arab countries across the region, including many that worked to convince US President Donald Trump to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program and not to go to war.

The scale of the strikes shows how much of a priority attacks on Gulf countries are for the Iranian regime. It has hit all the Gulf Cooperation Council members — Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and even Oman, a reliable mediator with the West.

Iran has also attacked Iraq, Jordan, and even British bases in Cyprus have been threatened.

Iran’s Arab neighbors are not facing one-off strikes. According to the Emirati Defense Ministry, Iran fired 186 ballistic missiles at the country, only one of which hit its territory. Iranian forces also launched 812 drones, of which 57 hit inside the country.

Saudi Arabia suffered a drone strike on its main Saudi Ras Tanura refinery, causing a fire and forcing some operations to be shut down. Qatar also shut off energy supplies after Iranian attacks.

The attacks on Arab countries lie at the heart of Iran’s strategy to survive the war against two far more capable military powers, according to analysts. Unable to defeat either the US or Israeli militarily, it is raising the costs of the war’s continuation for the region and beyond in hopes that pressure builds on the US, and thus on Israel, to agree to a ceasefire.

So far, the strategy has not had the intended effect, but the Islamic Republic still has cards it hasn’t yet played.

Iran has made no secret of its intention to carry out strikes across the region in the event of a US or Israeli attack. “Tehran has told regional countries, from Saudi Arabia and UAE to Turkey, that US bases in those countries will be attacked,” a senior Iranian official told Reuters in January.

But Iran’s neighbors didn’t expect such a furious response, which has gone far beyond just targeting US bases.

“The Gulf states are extremely surprised by the scale and brazenness of the Iranians to strike their assets, the airport in Dubai and the like,” said Danny Citrinowicz, Iran expert at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.

Dubai International Airport sustained damage in an Iranian attack on Saturday. Airports in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait were also hit, with nearly all airports across the region closed until further notice.

Seeing its survival at stake, Iran’s broad goal in the war is to show that the regime is still functioning and is in control, said Citrinowicz.

Even after the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran quickly announced that it formed a council to govern the country until a new leader is chosen. There were no signs that it was about to back down and stop fighting.

As far as its strategy to end the war, it sees the attacks on its neighbors as the key to forcing a stalemate.

“Iran believes its only hope to survive the war is by broadening it,” said Jonathan Ruhe, fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “By attacking across the entire region and threatening vital energy shipping lanes, Tehran hopes to create Arab and international pressure on the US to end the war, and split off from Israel, before the conflict supposedly spirals completely out of control.”

“Dubai, Bahrain, they don’t have [bomb] shelters,” said Israel-based Iran analyst Beni Sabti. “Their whole economic basis is tourism [and] keeping everything quiet just to sell oil. And then the Iranians hope to cause such damage with this fire that the Saudi leadership, let’s say, tells the Americans, ‘Listen, stop.’”

Iran’s reading of history supports that theory. It fired missiles at the Al Udeid air base in Qatar during the war last June, and later that day Trump announced a ceasefire.

Iran also attacked hundreds of international ships in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz during its war with Iraq in the 1980s, which led it to believe that internationalizing conflict leads to regime survival.

Their way of stopping the war is to raise the cost for everyone.

Their way of stopping the war is to raise the cost for everyone.

In the weeks leading up to the war, the Arab countries now under attack — concerned about the price they would pay — appealed to Trump to avoid a war. It makes sense to assume that they would intensify those calls once the attacks began.

“Their way of stopping the war is to raise the cost for everyone,” said Citrinowicz.

That doesn’t only include Arab countries. Russia and China will also suffer from spiking energy prices, which rose sharply on Monday amid disruptions to oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint. Crucially, it will also hurt American consumers, piling pressure on US President Donald Trump ahead of a midterm election that will likely focus on affordability.

Notably, Iran has not attacked its northern neighbors, Azerbaijan and Turkey. The former is a close Israeli security ally, and the latter hosts a major base housing thousands of US troops. But American planes have not attacked Iran from either country, and Turkey has one of the most powerful militaries in the region. What’s more, it is a member of NATO, meaning an attack on Turkey could trigger a response from the alliance, or at least give cover for more European countries to get involved.

So far, Iran’s plan hasn’t worked. Major European powers are inching closer to direct involvement, and Arab countries are banding together to condemn Iran and may go further.

That doesn’t mean the situation won’t change. Gulf countries prioritize stability, which allows them to attract tourists and investment.

“This is Dubai’s ultimate nightmare, as its very essence depended on being a safe oasis in a troubled region,” Cinzia Bianco, an expert on the Persian Gulf at the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on X. “There might be a way to be resilient, but there is no going back.”

Iran’s plan is “clearly backfiring at the moment,” noted Grant Rumley, Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “but in the long term, if these UAVs continue to get through, the Gulf states may switch their positions.”

Trump’s political cost

Iran is also turning its fire on the US. On a purely military level, Iran has no way to hit US forces — besides going after extremely well-defended warships — without attacking American bases in neighboring countries.

But causing casualties among American troops has an additional strategic benefit for Iran.

The war is already unpopular in the US, with only one in four Americans approving of the US strikes. Many core Trump voters are skeptical of involving the military in Middle Eastern wars, seeing it as a dangerous waste of blood and treasure.

A total of six US military personnel have been killed since the start of the war and 18 have been seriously wounded, said US Central Command.

The more flag-draped coffins are sent back to the US, the more likely it is that domestic fury over the war will spike, putting Trump in a difficult spot.

The strategy comes with risks for Iran. Gulf countries, which already saw Iran as their primary threat, could rush toward the US — and possibly Israel — as they scramble to improve their defenses against future Iranian attacks.

It also means spreading its precious missile stockpile thinner than it might like. Israel and the US are targeting Iran’s missile bases and launchers in an attempt to pare down its capabilities, and hitting Gulf states means Iran has fewer missiles to try to sneak through Israeli defenses.

What’s clear from the first four days of war is that Iran learned lessons from the June fight. Anticipating a long fight in which the US and Israel go after its missiles, it spread out its launchers and hid many of them underground, allowing them to maintain a steady rate of fire.

But it has largely abandoned the massive barrages it used in June to attempt to overwhelm Israel’s air defenses.

“We’re not seeing the types of swarm tactics we saw in previous rounds,” said Rumley, “where they’d try to overwhelm air defense systems with ballistic, cruise, and drone attacks.”

It is possible, he said, that the relatively low rate of attacks indicates US and Israeli success, “but it’s also possible this is just another indication of Iran’s desire to protect its capabilities in order to protract the conflict.”

Iran also has options to escalate. It can turn its fire on major gas and oil infrastructure across the region, and return to its 1980s tactic of attacking oil tankers in the Gulf.

While its strategy for ending the war has not yet seen success, Iran’s regime has thus far managed to weather Israeli and US strikes on its leadership and is not yet on the cusp of being toppled.

On one hand, said Sabti, “the state isn’t being run.”

“No one knows if there’s food in the supermarkets. No one knows what’s happening on the roads, what’s happening in hospitals, whether there is medicine. The country isn’t functioning,” he said.

However, the regime itself and its security forces, built up over the course of 47 years, are still functioning and carrying out their war plan.

“I think we’re clearly in a race at the moment,” said Rumley, “where the US and Israel are trying to get as many of the launchers, storage sites, and production facilities as possible before the Iranians inflict enough damage on the US and its partners to force a halt in the operation.”

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