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Attacks by the United States and Israel killed Iran‘s supreme leader, but the Iranian regime remains standing and has many tricks up its sleeve, putting the end of the war further away.
Two weeks after the start of the conflict, the world’s oil supply is suffocating and Iranian attacks on Washington’s allies in the Middle East are incessant.
On February 28, when Israel and the United States launched the attack, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei died in a compound in the Iranian capital along with dozens of senior officials.
The Government was decapitated, but a new supreme leader, his son Mojtaba Khamenei, was quickly appointed.
The strategy of eliminating leaders “has never been effective” in wars between states, points out American professor Robert Pape in his book “Bombing to Win.”
The Iranian authorities were prepared. “We have had twenty years to study American military defeats east and west of our immediate border. We have learned the lessons,” said Foreign Minister Abás Araqchi.
“Decentralized mosaic defense allows us to decide when and how the war will end,” he said.
This mosaic defense “is an Iranian strategic concept that was developed in 2005 after the American regime changes in Afghanistan and Iraq,” recalls French researcher Élie Tenenbaum, from the Ifri think tank.
“The regime seems to be almost intact,” says researcher Ali Vaez, from the Crisis Group.
Thanks to its relatively cheap missiles and drones, Iran has responded by taking the war to the Gulf countries, but also to Türkiye, Iraq and Cyprus.
And thanks to the Hezbollah movement, its ally, it has plunged Lebanon into chaos.
As a consequence, the price of crude oil skyrockets, air traffic decreases and tourists and managers leave the Gulf countries, breaking their image of stability.
– Pandora’s Box –
“We knew that [el ataque contra Irán] “I was going to open Pandora’s box,” laments Saudi researcher Aziz Alghashian, of the Gulf International Forum.
Despite this, both the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, appear calm.
The first demanded an “unconditional capitulation” and the second assured that “we have defined objectives and we are pursuing them.”
“The US Administration has undoubtedly been presumptuous in believing that it had all the cards in its hand,” estimates Jonathan Paquin, of Laval University in Quebec.
Washington “embarked on this conflict thinking it could win at low cost. However, it is suffering costs,” emphasizes Nate Swanson of the Atlantic Council.
Militarily, the United States consumes an enormous amount of these defensive projectiles, “very expensive and slow to produce,” Tenenbaum emphasizes in this regard.
Diplomatically, the war irritates the Gulf countries and, politically, it is a risk for Trump in the November midterm elections.
The US president “has certainly underestimated the economic impact of the war on energy; “The American population suffers from the cost of living,” emphasizes Paquin.
According to French researcher Clément Therme of Ifri, Iran could become in the long term a “zombie state”, which remains in control thanks to its security apparatus, but “which no longer fulfills its functions because it is disorganized, unable to collect taxes or export oil.”
Trump now has different options, all of them risky.
“Most likely, he will revise the concept of victory, leaving aside the idea of surrender or regime change, and say: ‘We have done the job, the objectives have been met, now it is up to the Iranian people,'” Paquin estimates.
Swanson, meanwhile, indicates three hypotheses: stop the war and declare victory, “double down the bet, with troops on the ground” or “foment an armed opposition” to transform the war into an internal conflict.
fz/dab/pc/mmy
