WHAT CAN IRAN DO?

In 2022, we published a two-article series on the Russia-Ukraine War, shedding light on the strategic, political, diplomatic and economic options both nations had in the conflict at that time. What is special about it is that, in the respective article, we assumed the stance of one side and solely assessed their strategy from their perspective, informed by their interests. Today, we are reviving this format by assuming the stance of various actors in this multi-layered war between Israel, the United States of America (hereinafter: USA) and Iran. This time, we present you with a five-article series over the coming weeks, in which we will assume the position of each significant party in the recent war between the said parties. Beginning with Iran in this article, we are moving forward with Israel, the USA, Türkiye and Arabia in the following works.

The value and purpose of this series is to display our impartiality, flexibility, expertise and the strategic strength of our analytical framework. Usually, work in the political field is limited to cognitive and conceptual frameworks of ideologies and interests. With this series, we underline that politics can, and should, be approached from a technical angle to ensure that crafted measures truly reflect functional and sustainable solutions. It follows from the above that we are not inherently adopting the stances of the parties, but merely adopt their lens for the purpose of our strategic analysis. This series must therefore not be read as a positioning from our side.

Iran’s Goals And Interests In This War

Even though Iran has responded to the aggression by Israel and the USA with attacks on neighbouring nations, it is inherently fighting a defensive war. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has not engaged in cross-border interventions in other nations, although it has supported militant groups in other nations for foreign policy and defence purposes in the past. Other than that, the Persian nation has neither displayed any aggressive stances nor voiced any territorial aspirations outside of its borders. Conclusively, the fought war is categorised as a defensive war. However, because of past aggressions in 2025 and longstanding economic warfare and diplomatic pressure and isolation for more than 40 years, Iran has developed a strong interest in ending the antagonistic behaviour of Israel and the USA.

Iran’s gross domestic product has experienced massive hits between 2012 and 2021, due to heavy international sanctioning, which has resulted in a deterioration of public support for the political system. During this time, Iran has naturally lost much of its developmental potential. Therefore, a prolonged conflict, with or without military action, might lead to political or societal failure in the long run. This war could open the door for Iran to settle hostilities with a dominant victory against the aggressors. It would show that fighting Iran results in more disadvantages than perceived advantages. Surely, Iran will not have the illusion that peaceful relations might arise with a victory, but the goal is rather to achieve neutral coexistence that comes with a reintegration of Iran in the international state community.

Iran’s Strategy To Achieve Its Goals

Military Strategy

Currently, Iran mostly relies on missile attacks on Israel to achieve a victory without involving ground troops. As the USA are also involved in this war, the military strategy also includes ground missile attacks on military bases of the USA in adjacent nations, such as Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. This strategy helps to demoralise Israel and cut the USA’s mid- to long-term capacities in this war. As the USA are located far away, they will need to build a complex supply chain to sustain the war if it lasts more than two months. Such a supply chain will quickly drain the economic means of the USA, which already has a large public debt burden, which strains public support for the government. The question is whether Iran can outnumber the military capacities of both counterparts to survive long enough before the USA shows a significant drop in attacking power.

Since we do not have detailed into Iran’s arsenal, production infrastructure and international supply chain, we adopt the “worst-case” stance. This is a method in which we analyse the situation from the worst possible situation, which is that Iran’s current military capacity is insufficient to prolong the war for more than two months. In that case, direct involvement of the naval and air forces would be the next step for Iran to uphold the pressure on Israel and the USA. Ideally, these forces are activated before the ground missile stock depletes. That way, the missile attacks can be reduced by 25% to keep the stock through ongoing production up, while the gap is closed by the activation of naval and air forces.

While naval forces would primarily be concerned with ensuring full destruction of all military bases of the North Americans in the neighbouring nations, the air forces would be primarily targeting strategic infrastructure in Israel. Of course, these are not exclusive deployments; both forces can also be partially involved in each of the other scenarios as well. The involved risks are that if the air force of Iran targets metropolitan areas, it could quickly lose important firepower, as the air force is unlikely to fully survive the defence systems of Israel. On the other hand, the navy should avoid direct confrontation with the North American fleet at once. Only after the supply chain of the North Americans has been diminished to a point where each attack of the fleet would mean an absolute reduction of military power, can this strategy be adopted.

In the broader military context, Iran can continue military operations on a large scale for as long as there are no signals from its counterparts seeking a ceasefire. Although it is unsuitable in the Persian cultural context to do so, if initial ceasefires are offered by Israel and the USA, Iran should be careful not to fully honour such overtures. Due to Israel’s past diplomatic conduct, there is a very weak basis of trust, as such offers could be exploited to recover strength for counter-offensives.

Diplomatic And Political Strategy

Due to Israel’s campaign against Palestine in recent years, the diplomatic atmosphere in the international state community is shifting increasingly against Israel, which opens the door for more favourable stances towards Iran. This is not directly due to sympathy for the Persian nation, as its political system is viewed critically among many states in the world, but rather because the built-up narrative against Iran by Israel since 1996 is rapidly losing its credibility. Therefore, Iran could use the current diplomatic atmosphere to normalise relations with many nations and maybe even secure some economic or rhetorical support.

Because its political system is, independently from foreign labelling, not supported by many nations, and it has been diplomatically isolated for many decades, there are no nations that have a direct interest in Iran’s victory. Russia and China have indirect interests in such a victory in that a Persian victory would result in a relative loss of power of Israel and the USA, while simultaneously securing peace in the region for a certain time and continued access to important oil resources. However, these factors are not strong enough for them to directly engage in the war. As Russia is currently involved in another burdensome war with Ukraine, it does not have the resources to support Iran meaningfully, even if it wanted to.

Türkiye Relations

The nation with the most tangible interests in Iran’s victory is Türkiye, with roughly 30 million Turks living in Iran. Further, Israeli politicians have often mentioned Türkiye as an important military target. With Israel currently being involved in wars with Lebanon, Iran and Palestine, another flank in Türkiye would result in Israel’s destruction; Türkiye would only be targeted after a successful Iran campaign. If Iran successfully defends itself, however, a military campaign against Türkiye would not be feasible for Israel for a long time. Therefore, Iran could prioritise Turkish relations to secure at least intangible support.

Arab Relations

On the other hand, the Persian nation could also intensify public diplomacy efforts in Arabia. Historically, the Sunni Muslim Arab nations maintain cold relations with Shia Muslim Iran. However, historical anger with foreign intervention in Arab lands by Europeans and Neo-Europeans increasingly flares up in the Arab nations targeted by Iran. Instead of dissatisfaction with Iran, the Arab populations where USA bases were attacked directly blame the USA for the Iranian aggression. Although the governments of these Arab nations currently remain loyal to their North American ally, the populations become increasingly dissatisfied with the situation, their governments and the North Americans. Iran could leverage this situation to spur public dissent among Arabs to support their defensive cause. If one Arab ally of the USA defects, others will quickly follow, shifting the power balance in this war, leaving the USA without the geographical advantage. Further, Israel would then be put under increasing pressure because the dissent could quickly spread from domestic uproar to international action, which could be another leverage for Iran.

Economic Strategy

Finally, Iran must seek to strengthen its economic position. Isolated for years, the means to withstand continued aggression are limited. One of the first steps to exert international pressure was the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for 26,2% of the world’s maritime oil trade. Currently, the Persian nation is negotiating with China over the free passage of Chinese naval vessels through the Strait of Hormuz to continue the supply of oil to China, as Persian oil accounts for 11% of China’s annual oil imports. If Iran can leverage this strategic advantage to get access to more Chinese war technology and supplies, it could sustain a prolonged siege by its aggressors. However, as we assessed above, China does not have a direct interest in involvement in the war. Further, it needs to strike a delicate balance not to provoke diplomatic and economic sanctions by Europe and North America. Therefore, Iran could alternatively also leverage its strategic advantage to extract financial help from China.

On the other side, the eased diplomatic conditions could be used to regain access to global financial markets, especially in terms of public debt. Nations are currently less inclined to honour the unilaterally imposed sanctions by the USA against Iran, and future punishment of granted debts is less likely due to the turbulence of the current war. Therefore, Iran could seek foreign financing to keep its defence afloat, as well as normal economic conduct domestically.

Societal Strategy

In times of war, every nation comes closer together, especially when defending. After the deadly protests in Iran at the beginning of 2026, this war could be leveraged to strengthen Persian identity in Iran to create stronger social cohesion for the times of peace after the war. This is aided by the deaths of high-ranking political figures, such as Iran’s long-reigning Supreme Leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei. However, as the government is currently heavily dependent on social cohesion, it will necessarily also make concessions to the Iranian public, which is divided along ideological and religious, as well as ethnic lines. Surely, people can and will come together to more closely unite under the Persian flag. However, since there is considerable dissatisfaction with the theocratic political system, the government can ease the Islamic infrastructure to signal that national cohesion is more important than religious cohesion.

This would strengthen the Iranian society as people would be more likely to lay their grief with the theocracy aside, acknowledging that they were heard. The government would secure more coherent support, which is necessary in the light of Iran’s goals. However, concessions to ease the application of theocratic policymaking would not endanger the political system altogether. Rather, it would trigger a transformation as opposed to a revolution, whose danger has been looming over Iran ever since the transition to a theocratic political system in 1979. In technical terms, such a transition to a more flexible political system would benefit Iran in the long term.

Final Remarks

Although we have examined the situation in the necessary depth, we stress that there are still many more policy options available to Iran at more micro-levels of policymaking. These options, however, fall more into the category of tactics, as opposed to strategy, which is the focal point of this work. Moreover, it needs to be stressed that we are examining this topic from a perspective of limited informational resources. From what is available, we conclude that the above strategy would enable Iran to achieve its goals. It is also very important to consider the limitations of political actors. These can be in terms of resources, normativity or structure. Therefore, the assessments above should also be read in light of those real-life constraints of the said actors.

In our next article in this series, we are looking at the second actor in this war: Israel. Here, too, we are going to adopt the lens of the said actor and argue in light of its interests. As we move forward in the series, we will see that interests diverge but also converge at some points among the different actors, which then paints a complete picture of the war.