In 1988 (1367 in the Iranian calendar), when Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, was forced to accept a ceasefire in the eight-year war with Iraq, all of the regime’s strategic resources and capabilities had been exhausted, and the battlefronts were running out of manpower. This retreat meant abandoning slogans such as “War, war until victory,” “The road to Jerusalem passes through Karbala,” and “War until the last house in Tehran.” The war had cost more than one trillion dollars and left nearly two million dead and disabled on Iran’s side. Khomeini described this retreat as “drinking the poisoned chalice.”

To compensate for this strategic........

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