Forty-seven years on from the Iranian revolution, Iran is confronting a strategic reality it has never faced before – a simultaneous crisis of domestic legitimacy and a credible threat of external attack so severe that regime survival can no longer be taken for granted. Until now, Tehran has survived wars, sanctions, assassinations, mass protests and international isolation through a strategy of projecting strength abroad, repressing dissent at home and generating a permanent crisis to justify poor leadership and political failure.

Today, Donald Trump has mobilised an “armada” to the Middle East that includes the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, guided-missile destroyers, an expanded air presence and missile defence systems. This force projection suggests the US is no longer focused on containing Iran but rather compelling a final resolution of a long-running conflict. The choice at hand is either the acceptance of a US-imposed settlement or the destruction of the Islamic republic as it exists today.

Trump’s actions during his first term as president included abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal, reimposing sweeping sanctions and the assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani in 2020, and foreshadowed a new approach towards a longstanding adversary. Now back in office, he seems intent on completing that project by forcing Tehran to either accept a deal on American terms or confront military strikes aimed at dismantling the regime itself.

For Iran, this........

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