The Iran War and What Comes Next

Years of bad decision-making by Iran and the next chapter of the forever war

Since at least the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there has been a relentless push from the neoconservative movement to launch a U.S. war against Iran. The most important figure in this movement has actually not been an American, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In typical fashion, Netanyahu, for whom this has been a near-lifetime project, took dramatic action last week and launched attacks on Tehran that have now killed as many as 600 people. The Israeli government has signalled that their ultimate goal is not limited to destroying the Iranian nuclear program, but extends to causing the collapse of the Iranian government, or even the wholesale liquidation of Iran in its current form.

From an Iranian perspective, the war now has become one of national survival. Iranian officials had long justified their own adventurist foreign policy by saying that Iran needed to fight its enemies abroad to not fight them at home. Yet now the Iranians find themselves fighting on their own homeland, losing hundreds of civilians and soldiers to ruthless Israeli bombing attacks and sabotage, and doing so entirely alone. This strategic failure had been long in the making, and it bears reflection on how they go here.

Notwithstanding its anti-American rhetoric, for many decades now Iran has taken a hedging position towards the West. When it developed a nuclear program, it did not do so as a serious project of national survival aimed at developing a bomb. It did so instead as a tool to create leverage for itself to remove Western economic sanctions and win eventual reintegration. Iran was pursuing this sclerotic policy at the same time that it maintained a posture of total hostility towards Israel, which enjoys powerful ideological and material backing from Western countries, as well as a veto over any attempt by Iran to reintegrate on terms not of its liking.

Iran needed to pick a side. If you want to be Bahrain, be Bahrain. But if you want to be North Korea, be North Korea. Any half measures will be fatal. To put it another way, if you really want to be a sovereign, revisionist, and ideologically anti-Western power, you had better be ready to act decisively in the manner that Pyongyang did, and prepare for life under siege. That means nuclear weapons, poverty, and total information control.

Instead, Iran tried to strike a delicate balance that won them the worst of both worlds: sanctions and military attacks on their nuclear program, but no actual nuclear deterrent to show for their efforts. Partly to blame for this are likely the large cohort of Western-educated Iranian leaders, a class that has no parallel in North Korea, who evidently succumbed to the illusion that the West would integrate a state such as theirs.

Without a nuclear weapon, the Axis of Resistance and a ballistic missile program were Iran’s poor attempts at building alternate channels of deterrence. Developing a network of non-state proxy groups and then hesitating while watching them fail at their intended purpose over the past two years is an unforgivable strategic misstep. Iran did all that while simultaneously avoiding making alliances with other powerful states that might otherwise have become invested in their survival in the manner of Pakistan and China.

Iran maximized its enemies and minimized its friends. Once this war is over, if they survive, Iranians will have serious reason to be angry at their leaders for bringing them into confrontation with a genocidal foreign power for which they had no plan to defend them.

New Israel

There are well known divisions and cleavages in Iranian society, and the government had been at odds with most of the population over social and economic issues long before the current crisis. When Israel started its attacks, had it limited itself to hitting nuclear sites, military bases, and regime officials solely, they may have been able to navigate these divisions in a constructive manner and create a split between Iranians and their government. But it seems like Israel no longer is capable of behaving so rationally.

From the first day, the Israelis decided to carry out massive attacks against civilians in urban areas, including central parts of Tehran. They carried these out evidently not caring if they kill their targets, their families, or random neighbors and passers-by in the process. Accordingly, hundreds of people are already dead and many more wounded who had nothing to do with this situation, and who will be marked for life by these brazen actions.

Senior Israeli officials meanwhile have been publicly boasting about “burning” the capital city of Iran and driving its population from their homes with no sense of awareness of how Iranians and others may perceive that. Judging by their statements, the Israelis appear to be especially proud of bombing famous areas of Tehran and making them look like the ruins of Gaza City. This behavior doesn’t comport with any identifiable political logic and seems to represent the full post-October 7 flowering of a new Israel that is focused purely on brutal domination of its neighbors with no respect for their lives or sovereignty.

This is all rapidly earning Israel the undying hatred of an Iranian population that had previously been of mixed opinion, or even more polarized against their own government. When I used to talk to my friends in Iran, as well as in the Iranian diaspora, about Israel they often had nuanced and refreshing views about the subject, including some which I shared. Many of them were consistent about not commenting negatively on Israel at all, simply as a means of signalling their separation from the conflict between their own government and Tel Aviv.

A few brutal attacks on north Tehran and images of dead Iranian children has rapidly transformed those attitudes into overwhelming hatred. I can only imagine how this will entrench itself as the conflict drags on. But judging by their official statements, Israelis do not seem to care. They have abandoned the hearts-and-minds paradigm that existed when the state felt itself less hegemonic, and believed it might have to make compromises, or even treat its neighbors with minimal dignity. Now they simply kill the faceless hordes who live beyond their security fence, and do not exercise much concern about the matter beyond preserving ammunition.

This has become a particularly heinous civilizational war of a type that Samuel Huntington would immediately recognize. With Cold War liberalism fading away, there is no alternate paradigm to replace that. The post-October 7 Israeli view of deterrence is that no Muslim-majority country can have even a latent military capacity that can threaten it, since, even if ties are OK today, no one can guarantee what type of government may exist there in future. Accordingly, its better to destroy them now before they get the chance. This also means taking whatever extreme steps are necessary to sabotage these states relationship with the West, up to and including killing nuclear negotiators in the middle of mediation.

We have gradually witnessed the birth of a new Israel for which people have been slow to update their mental map. It is truly a radical, supremacist state whose residual liberal characteristics no longer exert decisive influence. If you hadn’t noticed, in addition to their preemptive war with Iran, and expanding occupation of southern Syria, the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip has taken on a macabre new dimension with an Israeli-fronted “humanitarian organization” now carrying out near-daily massacres of desperate Palestinians struggling to obtain a bowl of rice for their families.

In the face of all this you can see silent satisfaction, or even active defense and celebration from Israel and its supporters. To ignore that would just be self-injurious.

Drinking the Poison

Despite the impressive tactical blows that Israel has struck at Iran in the first week of the war, I do not think it is theoretically impossible for Iran to emerge victorious in a long conflict with Israel. The Israeli security apparatus is designed for sprints, whereas Iran is designed for marathons. The senior leadership of Iran is headed by people whose worldview was forged by an eight-year war of attrition with Iraq that also saw massive bombardments of Iranian cities. This situation is hardly unprecedented from their view, and maybe not even the worst they’ve experienced. As long as they can keep their state together and continue firing missiles til the last day, they can say that they held their own in this confrontation, and maybe even inflicted a relative parity of devastation on Israel, given their respective sizes.

The issue is that fighting Israel, at least for now, also means fighting the U.S. and E3 countries. As such, Iran is in grave danger. The Iranians could resist a likely American onslaught which may continue for weeks or months and try to race to a bomb afterwards. Or they could “drink from the poison chalice” in the words of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and sign an unfavorable deal that compromises their nuclear and potentially ballistic missile programs. That decision entails grave security risks to Iran, as countries like Libya that willingly signed away their deterrence were destroyed shortly after their guard was sufficiently lowered.

Another possible outcome, of which there have been whisperings, is that a new Iranian regime steps forward that pushes aside Khamenei and signs onto a cold peace with Israel and its allies. But this new regime would still have the vexing problem of what position to take on Iran’s nuclear enrichment rights, and whether they can afford to accept a situation of permanent inferiority in Eurasia. They would also face the internal opposition of hardliners, who may choose civil war if they feel that the nation or ideology of the Islamic Republic is being betrayed. So this is not an easy or attractive path either, although it may be better than a relentless Israeli and U.S. campaign to partition the country and terminate the existence of Iran altogether.

If Iran does survive, drastic change is required in its foreign policy. In addition to abandoning the hyperbolic Third Worldist rhetoric that has been a propaganda coup for its enemies, a future Iranian government must pivot away from the Arab world where it has been fruitlessly entrenched for several generations now and focus on Central and South Asia where Iranian influence is viewed as more benign. It can revive its pre-revolutionary relationships with the Central Asian countries, Pakistan, and Turkey and take advantage of economic and strategic connectivity with China.

Regardless of what happens now, the Iranian-led phase of the civilizational war with Israel is coming to an end. To survive, the country needs to have a foreign policy more in fitting with its capacities. Let’s hope they get that second chance.

Next Phase

Despite the blows they have inflicted on Iran, in my opinion, rather than projecting strength, this war has actually revealed that Israel remains totally dependent on high-level U.S. and European military support. Israel has become purely a Crusader state which exists as a vehicle for destroying and disciplining the nations of the Middle East, or doing the “dirty work,” of the West as German chancellor Friedrich Merz recently put it. Despite its impressive capabilities, due to its size Israel could not persist very long in a state conflict without such patronage. Israelis feel elated that they have cut down another one of their neighbors, and ensured that anyone who takes issue with their project of eradicating Palestine will suffer the wrath of their friends in Washington and Brussels.

But I actually agree with hawkish figures in Netanyahu’s government that this is a “forever war.” It is a civilizational war no less than the Reconquista and will take place on a similar timescale. The next phase will either be a conflict with Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, or, increasingly, some combination thereof with the support of the Central Asian countries and China. Though this war with Israel is inevitable, it need not be direct or immediate. It can take the form of various means of nonviolent shaping and preparation that help undermine the attractiveness of the state, and weaken its relatively delicate political and economic foundations. This is not a call to initiate aggression as Israel is already sizing up its enemies to do the same.

The populated and built-up area of the territory Israel is only about 1200 square miles, or 30 x 40 miles. The entire Israeli population and all its critical infrastructure fits into this small envelope. Every Iranian ballistic missile that lands today hits somewhere in this zone. That will also be the case in future conflicts that Israel has with other states in the region, even if it succeeds in aggrandizing its territory through conquest a bit more. The Jewish Israeli population is only around 7 million people. If and when the project of eradicating the population of Gaza is completed, the new land will still not add much lebensraum to the existing state. Managing the affairs of the Gazan survivors and their ethnic kin in the West Bank will also add a permanent additional resource stress.

The Iranians were generally an inept adversary who made serious political and strategic errors in the lead-up to this confrontation, and who had no navy or airforce to speak of, let alone allies. The Central Asia states and Turkey in cooperation with Pakistan, China, and maybe Egypt are all modernizing their navies and air forces and will be much more prepared in the coming generation to confront this mortal threat to their survival. The overwhelming hatred and alarm about Israel that I’ve heard from disparate quarters lately has actually been reassuring. It means that people are sobering up to the reality in front of them and becoming determined.

The growing proliferation of Chinese weapons which I have written about before will help erode Israel’s Qualitative Military Advantage (QME) regardless of whether the Israel lobby is able to maintain its control over domestic politics in Washington, which is also increasingly coming into question. There is already a nuclear deterrent in one hostile country that has delivery mechanisms with sufficient range to hit the small handful of Israeli population centers. That deterrent will probably expand at least to advanced nuclear latency in Turkey. As such, while not discounting their own ability to punch above their weight, I believe that the zero-sum wars to come will be no cakewalk for Israel, and will be far more taxing than its current confrontation with Iran.

The rest of the region should spend the next five to ten years preparing for war. The Israelis are preparing. That said, those who are rightly opposed to Tel Aviv should not lose sight of morality and pragmatism in the same manner. It is important to keep a channel of communication with ordinary Israelis, as well as segments of their elite, in order to try and move them to something other than Zionist ideology as a means of defending their safety and security. Without any alternative, many will simply choose to die on that hill, even as the project continues to get uglier, and the outcome will be far more tragic than it needs to be for all sides.

That was another mistake that the Iranians made with their overwrought hostile rhetoric that helped consolidate the extremist faction that now rules Israel, and will control the country indefinitely now in some form. I will have more thoughts about what such a third civilizational option may be in future, and it may be something that Jewish and Muslim Americans can help with.