Even as Iran’s Islamic ideology does not allow to make compromises with and surrender its national interest to the US on diplomatic issues, Tehran demonstrated persistent desire to negotiate with the US over the nuclear matter. Iran’s official ideology considers development of nuclear weapon as haram (religiously forbidden). Besides, the country’s economy which was paralyzed by crippling American sanctions kept propelling the regime for a diplomatic off-ramp to negotiate its military and nuclear ambitions. In the backdrop of contradictions between Iran’s ideology and aspirations, the US President Barack Obama’s strategy to bind Iran to a set of legal commitments was effective to a large extent in constraining its nuclear ambitions if one looks at the fact that Iran could not go nuclear even as a decade had passed since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal was signed in 2015 until President Donald Trump attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities in last year June.

President Trump, however, sought to rein in Iran at multiple levels from its missile power to its capabilities to raise asymmetric warfare which Tehran found unacceptable to negotiate considering it complete surrender of its power. Without the current war, Iran would have been compelled by circumstances to negotiate on nuclear issue. The sordid conditions of its economy can be gleaned from the statistics that it has a ten times more population than Israel but its GDP is less than 90 percent of Israel’s and its people confront shortages of electricity, water and nutritious food on a regular basis. Hence, to keep the diplomatic channel open, Iran also avoided direct confrontation with the US. For instance, Iran’s response to assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the top leader of Quds Force, an elite unit of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in 2020 was more theatrical than substantive. 

Iran’s retaliation to Israel’s missile strike against its embassy in Syria in 2024 was kept weak so as to avoid any possibility of military escalation. Much in a similar vein, Iranian response to 12 day war in last year June which included advance warning to US and Qatar before missiles strikes suggested that Iran was clearly seeking to avoid a direct confrontation with the US. Since 2023, Iran’s proxies Hamas and Hezbollah have been substantially degraded to which Iran could not offer meaningful assistance because of its own domestic predicaments. Even in the beginning of the last year, the Vice President of Iran Mohammad Javad Zarif denied Iran’s control over proxy groups. In April 2025, Iran evacuated its military personnel while the US military campaign was very much on in Yemen which amounted to abandoning its proxy-Houthis just to avoid tension with the US and keep the channel of resuming negotiation with the US open. During all these contexts of possible military escalation from the US and Israel, Iran did not close the Strait of Hormuz as it feared the outcome would be massive retaliation from the US and the Gulf neighbors apart from further debilitating its own ailing economy as well. 

The current war is the outcome of the calculation that the US and Israel made that was hitting Iran hard by collapsing its leadership structure at the moments of its serious domestic weakness and in the midst of protests would quickly galvanize into a spiral of reactions instituting regime change. The economic mess in the country resulting from years of economic sanctions, corruption and mismanagement had gradually eroded the support base of the theocratic regime. Reformists and moderates led by former Presidents of Iran Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani gained support from the masses which ultimately resulted in popular protest against the regime.

The US and Israel have contradicted their objective of regime change in Iran by killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Both failed to reckon with the fact that the very people including the moderates and reformists who opposed the oppressive rule of the Iranian Islamic regime would die on behalf of the regime if the country comes under duress by external powers. Their coordinated attacks allowed Khamenei to die a death of a martyr directing all the existing resentments against the regime towards the offensives from Israel and the US.

The hardliners of the regime including the IRGC and the Basij paramilitary forces in Iran have been able to receive a level of support from reformists, moderates and protest veterans alike against what they consider a war of survival against imperialist powers that was inconceivable prior to the attack and the resultant war.

Both Iran and US have reached a point of no return in the war in the Middle East. The whereabouts of new Supreme leader of Iran Mojtaba Khamenei and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remain unknown. Both countries aim at assassinating the top leader of each other. 

Ali Khamenei was himself against hereditary rule. This apart, there were many other more eligible claimants with better credentials such as vast knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence for the supreme leadership position. But the urgency of circumstances catapulted Mojtaba to lead the wartime country. Warnings from President Donald Trump not to accept any new leader chosen by the regime and Israel’s threat to assassinate the new leader not only strengthened the hardliners but it had a rally around the flag effect by overshadowing the earlier simmering discontent against the regime. As the Iranians have come to believe that they are fighting a war of survival, indiscriminate missile attacks by US and Israel that took lives of innocent civilians of Iran including school children have only strengthened such notions.

The US and Israel fear that agreeing to a ceasefire in order to stabilize the Middle East for energy supplies would mean victory for Iran. Despite heavy destruction of Iran’s naval, nuclear and other military capabilities, the country can still claim success by keeping the Gulf region destabilized and energy supplies choked carrying global ramifications.

As the US has already struck most of its targets, the only alternative remains to allow more success in the war is putting boots on the ground. This can provide President Trump the opportunity for regime change or stop asymmetric challenges to American military presence or energy supplies in the Middle East. However, Trump would not like to commit ground troops if the past is considered a useful guide. Similarly, the other option which is mobilizing Kurds within Iran would only deepen regional conflict and lead to mass migration whereas popular support for the regime now far outweighs the opposition of any particular ethnic group.

Israel has taken the war to a more dangerous level by violating humanitarian principles governing the wars by initiating an ecocide offensive and injecting poisonous substance into the air and water within Iran. That will cause long-term respiratory diseases among people. Meanwhile, President Trump has asserted that it would take ten years for Iran to revert to pre-war conditions. The war initiated with rhetoric of democracy coupled with unseating of an authoritarian regime with threatening nuclear and missile power by President Trump has been turned on its head with the expansion of the war blurring the distinction between civilians and legitimate targets according to the objectives of the war. The war that started with rhetoric in support of the protesters has turned into a war against the whole country. By proclaiming the illegitimacy of the war, Trump administration’s top counter-terrorism official and the director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, Joe Kent has resigned.

Many countries believe that Trump is fighting an unpopular and illegitimate war. For instance, the European countries have denied to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz to counter Iranian efforts to blockade it. Leaders of many European countries have remarked that let the US solve the mess it has created without putting unnecessary pressures on them. They have pressed for diplomatic resolution. The US and Israel are doing whatever is possible through air power and powerful missiles for instance, Israel has claimed that it has assassinated Iran’s intelligence minister Esmail Khatib and its national security chief Ali Larijani but without boots on the ground the remnants of the Iranian regime would continue to impose asymmetric challenges on both countries by impeding their tangible presence and intangible interests in the Middle East.

© Eurasia Review