After years of condemnations, sanctions, and small-scale attacks, in late February, the United States and Israel finally launched a large-scale war on Iran. In the time since, U.S. and Israeli forces have assassinated Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, along with many other senior officials and destroyed many of the country’s military installations, government buildings, airports, energy facilities, and civilian infrastructure. Now, three weeks into the campaign, U.S. and Israeli leaders are persistently predicting that Iran is on the verge of military defeat and that its regime will come out of the war either significantly weakened or swept aside.

Washington and Israel are right that their bombs have wreaked havoc on Iran’s military capabilities. But if they believe that Tehran is about to keel over, they are probably mistaken. The Islamic Republic has maintained remarkable cohesion since the attacks started. Its command-and-control system remains intact, even though it has lost many leaders. It has retained enough firepower to launch missile strikes against U.S. bases, Israel, and various Persian Gulf Arab countries. And it swiftly named the elder Khamenei’s hard-line son Mojtaba as its new supreme leader.

This resilience should not come as a surprise. For more than two decades—since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and especially since the 12-day war last June—Tehran has been preparing for a large U.S. attack and signaling that it would respond with fury. It based its strategy on a plan to cause maximum chaos in hopes of restoring deterrence—which is exactly what it has done.

Iran is also using the war to bolster its domestic position. Before the bombings began, the regime had grown deeply unpopular at home and was subject to repeated mass protests that it could suppress only with increasing repression. But beyond providing further justification for a more brutal crackdown, the war with Washington affords it a potential new source of legitimacy. The conflict has allowed Iran’s leaders to argue that they are bravely standing up to foreign invaders. It is fostering a sense of cohesion akin to the one that took root after the Iran-Iraq War. The bombings, after all, are killing both military personnel and civilians, generating a culture of martyrdom that is sweeping across Iranian cities.

How this scenario unfolds remains uncertain. The Islamic Republic was facing serious internal resistance before the war began—so much so that many Iranians welcomed outside intervention. Even if Tehran gets a bounce in support now, the destruction Iran has incurred will only compound its governance challenges. And the United States could ultimately decide to launch a ground invasion and carry out regime change itself.

But Iranian officials, at least, see an upside to the bombings. To them, the war with the United States and Israel is an opportunity—not just a hazard.

Over the course of the last decade, many U.S. officials came to a fateful conclusion about the Islamic Republic: for all its fiery rhetoric, it was, in reality, weak and cautious. Iranian officials, after all, had absorbed blow after blow without doing much in response. When Israel spent years assassinating Iranian officers in Syria and targeting nuclear scientists, the country’s leaders did nothing except condemn the deaths. After Israel attacked the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus in April 2024, Tehran launched a barrage of drones and ballistic missiles at Israeli territory, but almost all of its projectiles were intercepted. In July of that year, Iranian leaders remained almost entirely silent after Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Iran sent another........

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