Tehran is not trying to win a conventional war against the United States and Israel - it is trying to make the cost of fighting one unbearable. At the heart of Iran's military doctrine sits a phrase that encapsulates decades of strategic preparation: survive and exhaust. The goal is to absorb strikes, keep functioning, and inflict enough pain that the political will for continued conflict collapses on the other side.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing a Foreign Affairs analysis by Narges Bajoghli, an anthropologist and Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, Iran's approach is rooted in 35 years of preparation that began in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War.
According to Bajoghli, the strategy is working. Iran has decentralized its military command, ensured a new generation of commanders can step in when leaders are killed, and launched an economic campaign that threatens the energy infrastructure underpinning the US-led regional order. "The serious economic and political problems it is creating for its adversaries are, on a strategic level, giving Iran the upper hand," Bajoghli wrote.
The doctrine emerged from a bitter lesson. During the 1980-88 war with Iraq, Iran fought largely alone while its enemy drew on Western arms, Soviet equipment, and Gulf financing. That experience convinced Tehran's leadership that conventional parity was impossible - and unnecessary. Instead, Iran invested in asymmetric capabilities, nonstate allies, and forward defense beyond its borders.
The analysis found that US and Israeli airstrikes, while devastating, are being measured by the wrong metrics. Destroying targets and killing commanders are tactical achievements, but they have not degraded Iran's ability to pursue its strategic objectives: threatening Gulf energy flows, straining the US-Gulf alliance, and demonstrating that the Islamic Republic can survive a war with the world's most powerful militaries.
If the strategy holds, Iran could emerge from the war battered but intact, while the US-led security architecture in the Persian Gulf fractures in ways that limit American power projection for years to come.
"Hvylya" earlier reported on how competing power spheres are redrawing the foundations of the global order.