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There is no scenario in which Iran can actually win the ongoing military contest in West Asia. But for the country which perceives itself to be in an existential conflict, victory has a different meaning. It is fighting a different war, one aimed at a broader goal of drawing the attention of energy markets and testing the political stamina of the US, Israel and their Gulf allies. It is likely to continue a slow and protracted war of attrition with the belief that it has to have the capacity to absorb more pain than its adversaries.

Most commentators have been struck as to how the war in West Asia has unfolded. There had never been any doubt since June 2025 Israeli-American aerial blitz that Iran had few defences against them. Indeed, for this reason Trump and Netanyahu thought that after Venezuela, Iran would simply collapse within days of the hostilities beginning on February 28.

But given the stakes the Iranians had planned a different response this time. They adapted to an asymmetric war in which they absorbed the attacks, and hit back at the American bases in the Gulf countries making them useless by destroying their radars and maintaining control of the Straits of Hormuz. In addition, they struck at tankers and merchant vessels, an Omani port, sites close to Dubai airport, an oil refinery in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait’s airport.

There were four aspects to the plan – ‘mosaic’ decentralisation, widening the war to inflict pain on US allies, missiles and drones and proxies. The first was the strategic posture that saw the Iranian forces – the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Basij milita – being decentralised into what is being called a “mosaic defence.” This concept was formulated by the former IRGC chief Mohammed Ali Jafri and it organises the country’s defensive structure into 31 regional and semi-independent layers instead of relying on a single command chain that could be decapitated.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi succinctly described Iran’s defense strategy in a post on X: “We’ve had two decades to study defeats of the U.S. military to our immediate east and west… Bombings in our capital have no impact on our ability to conduct war. Decentralised Mosaic Defense........

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