‘States tend to overestimate themselves or the benefits and swiftness of war, and to underestimate their opponents’ capabilities, intentions, or the costs and duration of war.’ If anything, the 2026 war initiated by the United States and Israel against Iran shall be remembered in the annals of warfare among the most visible manifestations of this dynamic. 

The war, immediately preceded by the January mass protests in Iran, did not represent a sudden rupture but rather the continuation of a 47-year-long confrontation and a more intense phase of the June 2025 war. 

The US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, defined the war’s objectives as being laser-focused: to destroy Iran’s missile capabilities and its security infrastructure, while ensuring that it could never develop nuclear weapons. Beyond these stated objectives, among the priorities on the continuum also lay the objective of regime change, with both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu explicitly calling on the Iranian population to take over the government at the outset of the war. 

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According to an article published in The New York Times, which drew on extensive interviews conducted on the condition of anonymity, Mossad’s intelligence indicated that disillusioned Iranians would take to the streets and be better positioned, unlike before, to topple the government with the agency’s support. The expectation was premised on the idea that an intense bombing campaign would destabilise the regime and cripple the institutions that had earlier acted as counters to any uprising. At the same time,

Netanyahu is said to have presented an idealistic plan to the American administration making them believe that Iran’s ballistic missile program could be destroyed within a matter of weeks and the regime weakened to the extent of being unable to retaliate meaningfully–a plan that was reportedly well-received by President Trump.

Netanyahu is said to have presented an idealistic........

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