By Kenji Nakanishi

8:00 JST, November 22, 2025

I spent three years in Tehran as the Iran correspondent for The Yomiuri Shimbun, starting in 2015 — the year a nuclear deal was reached with the United States and others to lift sanctions and integrate Iran into the global economy.

On reporting trips to Egypt in those days, local people in that country often asked me the same simple question: “You’re visiting from Iran? Tell me, is Iran really that powerful?”

Significant attention was being paid to Iran, a major non-Arab Islamic power with which Egypt had no diplomatic ties. Under the then new deal, Iran was expected to see growth in its economic power.

Nearly 10 years have passed since then. The nuclear deal has essentially collapsed. In June, Iran had its military vulnerabilities exposed during the military exchanges with Israel described as a 12-day war. Iran’s air defenses were breached, and its capital faced daily missile strikes. Top regime officials were systematically targeted and assassinated. Israel and the United States bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, with U.S. President Donald Trump claiming three sites had been “completely destroyed.”

“I never imagined it would come to this.” That’s what an Iranian acquaintance in Japan told me one day in June, just as the air raids began.

Nevertheless, my answer to the question of whether Iran is powerful today is “yes and no.” While Iran certainly showed its vulnerability, it could also be argued that Israel and the United States were able to go only so far. Iran’s land area is 75 times larger than that of Israel, and its population is nine times larger. Israel, with its troops numbering just under 170,000, would likely have no way to deploy against Iran, which possesses 610,000 troops. The same holds true even for the United States, which carries the bitter memory of the post-war quagmire in Iraq.

Takuya Murakami, the senior fellow at the Institute for Middle East Strategic Studies in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, offers the analysis that “Iran’s prestige was damaged in the 12-day........

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