Why Iran Escalates

These, it might seem, are good days for the Islamic Republic of Iran. After years of being diplomatically isolated, economically strangled, and militarily assaulted, the Iranian regime came face-to-face with its nightmare scenario—a full-blown war with Israel and Washington—and survived. The United States began bombing Iran on February 28 with the goal of destroying the country’s nuclear program, its missile program, and even its government, only to fail spectacularly at each objective. In fact, Tehran may now be stronger than it was when the war began. It successfully seized the Strait of Hormuz and shuttered it, sending energy prices skyward. Its armed forces have proved capable of continuing to damage American military bases despite coming under heavy bombardment. U. S. support for the war, always weak, has fallen, and international anger at Washington has spiked. Little wonder, then, that many analysts think Tehran will stay the course over the coming year. Iranian officials are no doubt proud of how their country has fared against Israel and the United States. They have publicly bragged about their success and even declared victory. But in private conversations, the regime’s elites remain quite nervous. They know that the United States has many tools and tactics it can use to increase the pressure on Iran, and they are concerned that the factors that seem to be holding Washington back—dwindling stockpiles of ammunition, domestic public opinion, and international opposition—could go away, grow manageable, or otherwise become unimportant to American officials. For the United States, this might seem like good news. If Tehran still fears Washington, perhaps the U. S. government can pressure Iran’s leaders into making concessions. But this misreads the mood in Iran’s capital. The country’s elites have been hardened by the war, which killed their friends and family members. They see February 28, 2026, the same way Israelis see the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas—as the moment their enemy proved willing to slaughter them, and thus as proof it must be permanently defeated. They never had much faith in American negotiators; now, they have virtually none. Iran, then, is adopting a strategy toward the United States defined by escalation and continuous offense. That means it will neither stay the course nor compromise with Washington. Instead, it will start doing even more to hurt the economies of the United States’ regional partners and to decimate global energy markets, as well as expand its attacks on U. S. military infrastructure. It could try to assassinate American and Israeli officials. It may even launch ground offensives against its neighbors, including by trying to seize U. S. bases located in Gulf Arab countries. This approach might fail to make the United States relent. But even if neither side can overpower the other right now and both accept a settlement, peace is unlikely to last. Tehran believes that Washington will regroup and, eventually, start fighting again. The regime is committed to responding forcefully to any American provocation, and perhaps even attacking without one. It does not think it can live with a U. S. presence in the Middle East, so it is willing to go full tilt to get the United States out. Iran’s enduring goal, in other words, will be to make staying in the region so painful that Washington has no choice but to withdraw most of its troops, accept Tehran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, and acknowledge the Islamic Republic as an enduring power. FEAR AND LOATHINGWhen the U. S.-Israeli war on Iran began, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was at a meeting in Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s compound. Araghchi had spent the last several months negotiating with the United States over Iran’s nuclear program, but in the preceding weeks, Washington had moved many of its military assets closer to the Persian Gulf and demanded that Iran give up all nuclear enrichment. U. S. President Donald Trump was publicly suggesting that he might try to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Araghchi was in the middle of briefing senior officials on these developments and the growing likelihood of conflict when the bombs started to fall. Khamenei’s compound was targeted in the initial strikes, which killed many senior officials—including the supreme leader himself. But Araghchi lived. He emerged from the rubble stunned and covered in debris. According to an account he gave to an Iranian podcaster, he ran into the street, stopped a passing car, and asked the driver to take him to the foreign ministry. From there, he tried to reach any military commanders he could and began contacting foreign leaders. Soon, he was joined by other surviving officials. The Islamic Republic had long anticipated that Khamenei and his deputies might be killed, so it was well prepared to handle the aftermath of the attacks. The government had spent the better part of a year, for instance, decentralizing its political and military bureaucracy so that provincial governors and military commanders could operate without instructions from top leaders. Senior officials had to designate at least two people to succeed them should they not survive. But the experience was nonetheless traumatic for the regime. Iran’s leaders could no longer remain in one place and instead had to spend hours in cars and on motorcycles shuttling between bunkers. They had to contend with the loss of colleagues, friends, and sometimes family. The country’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, lost his wife, a sister, and a niece in the attacks—in addition to his father. U. S. intelligence officials say that he himself was injured. Iran sees February 28 the same way Israel sees October 7. By themselves, these shocks would have been enough to make Iran’s government even more hostile to Israel and Washington than it was before. But the regime’s elites have been further aggravated by U. S. attacks on Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including energy plants and transportation networks. They have concluded that Israel and the United States are not fighting a limited conflict designed to destroy people and institutions that have long ruled the Islamic Republic, but a war aimed at destroying the country itself. They have accordingly adopted a newly forceful posture. Mojtaba promoted hawkish military leaders to take the place of their deceased colleagues and instructed them to prepare for “offensive operations against the enemy.” Mohsen Rezaei, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps during the Iran-Iraq War, became the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and declared that Iran would target American economic assets and oil companies in addition to military facilities. The country has also started openly attacking Washington’s regional partners. (Before February 28, Tehran wielded military power throughout the Middle East, but mostly via its network of nonstate allies.) Finally, the regime has begun attacking preemptively. In July, for example, it struck bases in Jordan used by the U. S. military, arguing that they were a staging ground for attacks in Iran. In doing so, Tehran killed three American soldiers. The regime’s fresh approach is designed to do more than deter Washington psychologically. It is also meant to systematically degrade the U. S. military and intelligence infrastructure in the Middle East. In this sense, Iran is developing its own version of Israel’s “mowing the lawn” strategy, in which it carries out repeated, limited attacks intended to weaken an adversary’s capabilities between major rounds of conflict. In doing so, it hopes to make the United States less able to protect its allies and its own forces from future Iranian strikes—and thus less likely to stay in the region. PRESS THE ADVANTAGEIranian leaders are pleased with the results of their methods. They believe that rapid and massive escalation across the region forced Israel and the United States to limit their strikes on Iran’s civilian infrastructure and helped calm the war down. Yet Iranian elites do not think Tehran has fully prevailed. U. S. and Israeli officials have spent decades predicting that the Islamic Republic is about to fall, and even after its surprisingly strong military performance, they continue to portray it as weak. In September, for example, U. S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the country was “in a death spiral.” To the regime, this perception gap is dangerous. Iranian officials believe that if Washington thinks the government is one sanction, one attack, or one protest away from collapse, it will not stop applying economic and military pressure. Before his death, the elder Khamenei both privately and publicly warned that Washington would not leave Iran alone until U. S. officials could simply not deny its military power. And last August, Mojtaba instructed Iran’s military to achieve what he called “maximum deterrence” against the United States. In the past, some Iranian leaders thought that they might be able to negotiate a peaceful coexistence with the United States. But now, almost no one in the regime thinks this is the case. Instead, Tehran has concluded that the United States will never be a good-faith partner. Washington’s track record, after all, is defined by betrayal. It pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal after just three years. When it struck Iran in both June 2025 and February 2026, the two sides were in the middle of talks. And in Tehran’s view, the United States is responsible for the collapse of their most recent peace attempt—the “memorandum of understanding” the two countries signed in June—by trying to open a new shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian regime also worries that its favorable position will not last forever. With enough time, the global economy could find alternative export routes from those in the Persian Gulf, making the closure of the strait ineffective. Washington, meanwhile, could gain a stronger hand. Iranian leaders think that Trump is constrained for now because he wants Republicans to win the upcoming midterm elections, and expanding the war with Iran has been deeply unpopular. But once that election has passed, the president will not have to worry as much about his approval numbers. Tehran could hold out for a Democrat to win in 2028, but it does not think this outcome will help it much, either. President Joe Biden promised to return to the 2015 nuclear deal while campaigning, only to unsuccessfully try leveraging Trump’s first-term “maximum pressure” sanctions to gain concessions once in office. The next administration might similarly feel that it is locked in conflict with Iran and thus press ahead. In fact, a more moderate president could prove even more dangerous to the Islamic Republic by mending Washington’s international relationships and getting Asian, European, and Middle Eastern partners to help more with its campaign against Iran. Iranian missiles on display in Tehran, September 2026 Majid Asgaripour / West Asia News Agency / Reuters The regime, then, is unlikely to sit tight. Instead, it will start increasing the pressure on Washington now. It can do so through a variety of mechanisms. The government might start, for example, by fully throttling gas and oil exports from the Persian Gulf. Tehran has already cut off much of this trade by closing the Strait of Hormuz, but some Gulf states can still access the Indian Ocean directly or by transiting the Red Sea. To choke off these countries, Iran could directly attack their oil production facilities and ports. It could also coordinate with its Houthi allies in Yemen to shut down the Red Sea by threatening to bomb ships crossing it, as the group did during much of Israel’s war in Gaza. The Houthis have put themselves in a strong position to again shutter that waterway by seizing more territory from Saudi-backed forces in Yemen. In response, Riyadh temporarily shut down the pipeline it uses to transport oil from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. Iran could also intensify its attacks on its direct antagonists. That might mean lobbing more drones and missiles at U. S. military bases. It might mean carrying out more cyber-operations against civilian infrastructure in the United States—much as U. S. officials believe Iran did in July, when parts of Minnesota’s water infrastructure temporarily went offline. If attacked again, Iran could more aggressively target the Persian Gulf region’s civilian infrastructure, including by hitting water desalination plants until parts of the region are uninhabitable. Finally, Tehran could try to assassinate American and Israeli officials. For the regime, this would be something of a return to form. Throughout the 1980s, the Islamic Republic and its Lebanese Shiite allies carried out all kinds of targeted killings, taking out Iranian dissidents in Europe and hundreds of U. S. and French soldiers in a spate of bombings. It had mostly moved away from such operations by the late 1990s, as it sought to reduce tensions with other states and acquired missiles and drones as deterrents. But Iranian security analysts are now lamenting the loss of its expertise in targeted assassinations, and Tehran appears determined to revive this capability. Iran would struggle to assassinate senior U. S. and Israeli officials. The Iranian military does not have access to the kinds of advanced weapons, including F-35 fighter jets, and sophisticated intelligence that enabled Israel and Washington to kill top figures in the Iranian regime. According to U. S. officials, Tehran attempted to hire a hitman to kill Trump in 2024, only for its plot to be immediately foiled by American law enforcement. (Iran has denied these reports.)But the country does have options. It could, for example, carry out covert operations, or work through its network of regional allies, to kill certain targets. It could also try to kill less prominent personnel. In August, for instance, Iran’s army announced that it would pay anyone who killed or captured a U. S. soldier $30,000. NO QUARTERIran might decide that it can establish deterrence by simply doing to Israel and the United States what those two countries have already done to it. But if not, Iranian officials won’t hesitate to introduce new tactics. They could, for instance, disrupt global communications. In addition to oil, the Strait of Hormuz carries critical communications infrastructure, including undersea Internet cables that link Europe to South Asia, which Tehran could sever by deploying combat divers, uncrewed underwater vehicles, or surface vessels that drag their anchors across the seabed. More dramatically, Iran might try to seize nearby land. Israel, Iranian analysts have noted, grabbed territory in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Syria after October 7 and argued that doing so was essential for its security. Iran, they say, should try to establish security zones, too. Tehran will be particularly likely to act if it believes an American ground offensive is forthcoming. After U. S. officials raised the possibility of an invasion of Iran and the occupation of Kharg Island, Iran’s principal oil export terminal, some Iranian analysts and hardline parliament members proposed invading Bahrain and Kuwait and taking over nearby U. S. bases. Tehran could portray such moves not as territorial expansion, but as defensive measures designed to deny its adversaries forward operating positions. Tehran might apply this same logic farther north. Relations between Azerbaijan and Iran have long been uneasy—some Azerbaijanis view Iran’s Azeri-majority provinces as part of greater Azerbaijan, while some Iranians believe what is now the Republic of Azerbaijan is part of greater Iran—and their ties have grown particularly sour in recent years. Azerbaijan and Israel are close partners, and many Iranian elites have credibly accused Azerbaijan of allowing Israel to use its territory as a staging ground for operations against Iran. Azerbaijan has denied these allegations, but the country is a major oil supplier to Israel, which might be enough to push Tehran to try to seize Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani exclave on the Iranian border. At the very least, Tehran might attack Azerbaijan’s energy infrastructure. Similarly, Iran could make an incursion into Iraq’s Kurdish region, which it also sees as a staging area for its opponents. In the war’s opening weeks, American officials floated the possibility of arming Kurdish groups and having them mount a ground offensive. If Tehran believes that the United States wants to establish a land corridor from Israel toward Iran—which would necessarily run through Iraq’s Kurdish regions—it might launch a preemptive ground attack. In such a situation, it could call on Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to attack Syria, which would be part of such a corridor, as well. It might also ask those militias to invade Syria if the country’s new leadership facilitates a military campaign against Hezbollah, Iran’s partner in Lebanon. It could even ask the Houthis to enter Saudi territory. Finally, Tehran could try to do what American and Israeli officials have long feared and worked to avert: build a nuclear bomb. The Iranian government continues to officially insist that it has no intention of constructing nuclear weapons, but many of the country’s elites, including members of parliament, are now arguing that Tehran must acquire them to establish deterrence. It is not yet clear how widespread this view is, and if Iran took steps toward weaponization, it could provoke Israel and the United States to escalate in turn. Nonetheless, if Iran’s leaders conclude that nothing else will stop Washington from continuing to attack, they may decide that going nuclear is the responsible course of action. APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTIONEven if Iran does not dash for a bomb, Israel and the United States could respond to its provocations by carrying out more forceful and extensive attacks. Without an extraordinarily costly full-blown ground invasion, however, it is unclear how much more the Israelis and the Americans can achieve. The Iranian regime has proven itself adaptable, and it believes it is caught in an existential battle that it must win. If Israel and Washington carry out even more decapitation strikes, lay waste to critical infrastructure, or put boots on the ground, they will likely end up strengthening the Islamic Republic’s resolve, and the regime will move further up the escalatory ladder. Tehran, after all, will not immediately go all the way to max. Should Washington realize this, it might respond to new Iranian incitements by trying to reach a cease-fire or otherwise freeze the conflict. But in the long run, this is unlikely to work, either. The Islamic Republic is clear about what it wants—the removal of all U. S. forces from the region—and it is prepared to remain indefinitely on a wartime footing to get it. It could even launch a major offensive without first being hit or threatened, when Washington seems off guard. To do so, Iran and its partners might decide to launch a highly coordinated, simultaneous ground invasion against the United States’ various regional partners and bases and pair it with a massive bombing campaign, including by attacking U. S. naval forces. Its goal would be to quickly overwhelm the American military, forcing it to pull back. The Iranian regime will need to be careful before launching such an attack, or even before undertaking lesser forms of escalation. Iranian officials are developing ways to circumvent the sanctions and break the blockade, but continued warfare will almost certainly create continued domestic pain. The Islamic Republic is a dictatorship, but authoritarian regimes can pay a price for being too confrontational—particularly when they were facing trouble beforehand. Argentina’s struggling junta, for example, came crashing down after it tried and failed to seize the Falkland Islands from the United Kingdom in 1982. Iran’s political and military leaders are aware of this, and they have repeatedly emphasized that military decisions must have at least some domestic—and global—backing. In an August interview, Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, declared that his country would proceed according to a logical, rational trajectory in which “the world can come along with us” and Iran’s “own people” would understand “that we are not really seeking war.” But the Islamic Republic’s leadership believes that the Trump administration’s rhetoric and actions have given it lasting support. It claims, for example, that foreign governments are privately telling Iranian officials that they admire the regime’s resistance to U. S. and Israeli pressure. Iranian leaders likewise think they have convinced their constituents that the war is worth the costs. Before February 28, many Iranians were skeptical of the regime’s claim that Washington wanted to “swallow” the whole country, as the elder Khamenei put it, rather than just the government. But after Trump began bombing civilian infrastructure, claimed sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, and declared that Iran’s whole civilization “will die” if the country refused to reopen the waterway, the regime’s declarations seemed much better grounded. ALL INIn a sense, Iran has been here before. Right after the Islamic Republic was founded, the country was invaded by Iraq and subject to repeated decapitation attacks by armed opposition groups. In 1981, for instance, a bombing wiped out much of the governing Islamic Republican Party’s leadership. The survivors decided that the regime needed to be more than just organizationally resilient if it wanted to endure. It also needed to retaliate hard against its opponents so that they would learn never to challenge it. Aside from Mojtaba, Iran’s new leaders are still drawn from its revolutionary-era elite, and they remember this lesson well. They have decided that to stop U. S. and Israeli strikes, they once again must do whatever is necessary to demonstrate their strength, even if that means going on the offensive for years. Tehran is thus more than ready to strike a widening array of targets until the United States gives in. Escalation, of course, is a risky gambit. If Iran pushes too far, it could provoke exactly the kind of American response it is trying to deter, including a surge of U. S. forces to the Middle East and a large ground invasion. If its people grow weary of war, they might rise in protest. But the regime believes it can avoid a major backlash, and to its officials, the risks are all the more reason to move quickly. Iranian leaders believe that the United States is reeling, that the world is sympathetic to their cause, and that their citizens support them. They believe, in other words, that this may be their chance to finally defeat Washington.