When it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump carries a decidedly dismal record. Months of intense American and Israeli aerial bombardments failed to wear down the nation, and diplomatic efforts at the negotiating table fell short of bending Tehran’s political will. Yet, despite seven months of persistent setbacks, U.S. officials maintain that they have successfully turned the page on the conflict.
Washington has implemented a fresh wave of economic sanctions while maintaining its ongoing blockade along Iran’s southern coast, severely throttling the country’s access to external trade and international commerce. Convinced that these measures will yield results, American policymakers have concluded that the Iranian government will soon be forced to either concede or collapse.
"We are going to economically asphyxiate this regime," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared on September 1.
There is little doubt that Washington has dealt significant damage to Iran over the course of the campaign. However, the Islamic Republic does not believe it is unraveling. In fact, Tehran is increasingly convinced that it will ultimately defeat the United States—and the reasoning behind that confidence is not difficult to discern.
The Iranian government did not merely survive the initial U.S.-Israeli bombardments; it retaliated with ferocity, successfully damaging American military bases and disrupting shipping through the vital Strait of Hormuz. While ordinary Iranian citizens are paying a heavy economic toll resulting from war damage and Washington’s trade cutoffs, much of the population has rallied around the flag. A broad cross-section of society appears to accept that severe hardship is a necessary price to pay in order to defend the nation.
As a result, Tehran has become significantly emboldened. While Iranian officials may occasionally disagree on tactical maneuvers, they share a unified strategic ambition: evicting U.S. forces entirely from the Persian Gulf, compelling Washington to lift all economic sanctions, and forcing the United States to officially accept Iran as a recognized great power.
This ambitious agenda might sound excessively bold given that Iran has been materially weakened by the conflict. Nevertheless, the Islamic Republic believes its strategic objectives remain well within reach. Tehran calculates that its military forces can successfully drive U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf by continuing direct strikes against American installations and by encouraging regional Arab partners to pressure Washington into a withdrawal. Furthermore, the Iranian leadership believes that by wreaking strategic havoc on global energy markets, it can compel the White House to lift crippling economic restrictions. In essence, Tehran’s theory of victory relies on holding out and inflicting enough cumulative pain to convince the United States to end its containment policy.
CLOSING RANKS
No one doubts that Iran has been severely battered by the ongoing war. Months of American and Israeli airstrikes have damaged the country’s industrial base and critical infrastructure, causing unemployment to spike and pushing a growing number of citizens into poverty. Sweeping U.S. sanctions and the active naval blockade have simultaneously fueled rampant inflation. The U.S. and Israeli militaries can point to numerous tactical successes, most notably the targeted assassination of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Yet, from a broader strategic perspective, the conflict has yielded unintended results for Washington. U.S. officials initially believed that punishing aerial bombardments and sweeping efforts to degrade the Iranian economy would quickly bring the Islamic Republic to its knees. They did not. Washington also hoped that assassinating Khamenei would trigger a massive anti-government uprising across the nation. That scheme failed as well.
Instead of sparking a revolution, Khamenei’s death brought out the Islamic Republic’s most ardent supporters. They marched nightly through the country’s major cities and were eventually joined by citizens of diverse political backgrounds who rallied together in defense of their homeland. When the conflict first broke out, neighboring Turkey made logistical plans to accommodate an estimated 70,000 Iranian refugees fleeing the violence. Ultimately, very few people fled. As the war progressed, many expatriate Iranians actually returned home, including long-exiled cultural figures, journalists, and well-known political personalities, such as singers Mohsen Namjoo and Bijan Mortazavi.
This sudden surge in nationalism should not be misconstrued as a blanket endorsement of the ruling clerical establishment. Many Iranians remain deeply dissatisfied with the country’s internal leadership and governance. However, public anger directed at the state has been largely subsumed by a deeper, more pervasive anger directed at Washington.
Prior to the hostilities, most ordinary Iranians were deeply skeptical of the Islamic Republic’s long-standing claims that the United States was bent on the total destruction of their country, with many privately hoping that Tehran would pursue closer diplomatic ties with Washington. However, the bombing of Iranian cities and President Trump’s repeated threats to annihilate the nation’s civilization—including public statements suggesting he might "blow the entire nation up" and drive it "into hell with no chance of survival"—fundamentally transformed public attitudes. Iranians across the entire political spectrum now genuinely believe that the United States is intent on obliterating their country, or at least forcing its total capitulation to every American demand.
This conclusion was plainly apparent in extensive conversations conducted with Iranians of diverse political ideologies. These interviews began when Washington first launched airstrikes against Iran in June 2025 and have continued steadily, tracking the evolution of public sentiment over the duration of the conflict. The vast majority of respondents expressed deep distress and anger toward their own government following the violent crackdowns that occurred in response to the mass protests of January. Yet, as the war dragged on and Trump escalated his threatening rhetoric, political opinions shifted drastically.
"We believed so much in the American promise," said Ali, a 45-year-old long-time dissident who has spent years imprisoned for his social and political activism. "Yet with this war and everything that Trump and his administration have said and done, it’s obvious the Americans sold us a false bill of goods. They want nothing but Iran’s total submission, and that’s not acceptable to us."
Mahsa, a writer and artist in her 30s, echoed those sentiments. "Everything we believed the United States stood for, freedom and respect and democracy, I now see as lies," she noted. "As angry as I’ve been at our state over the years, this is our homeland, and no outside country has the right to kill our leaders and drop bombs on our children and attempt to destroy us."
It is little wonder, then, that Khamenei’s funeral procession in July drew millions of mourners, despite the active conflict. During the procession, participants handed out red flags symbolizing a desire for bloody vengeance. Shortly thereafter, Iran launched attacks against commercial vessels navigating the Strait of Hormuz, effectively shattering the precarious cease-fire that had been brokered between the two nations just three months prior.
Many U.S. officials appear to operate under the assumption that stiff economic pressure will eventually trigger a shift in public opinion—believing that if citizens suffer enough, they will decide to overthrow their government, or that the Islamic Republic, fearing for its own survival, will ultimately submit to American demands. However, experts note this perspective relies on flawed assumptions. Iran has spent the past decade and a half systematically developing an economy specifically tailored to withstand sustained American economic warfare. Iranian officials have forged strong commercial relationships with neighboring trading partners and made the country nearly self-sufficient in food production.
Consequently, even though the Iranian economy is under immense strain and inflation remains exceptionally high, cities and towns across the country have experienced no critical shortages of essential goods or services thus far.
"It’s incredible how well-run everything has been inside of the country," said Hamid Reza, an engineer who regularly commutes between Isfahan and Tehran for work. "Things are expensive, but there have been no shortages whatsoever across the country. Everything has been managed internally with a lot of care."
This resilience does not mean Iranians feel optimistic about their long-term future. Citizens remain deeply anxious about what lies ahead and yearn for a return to normalcy and economic relief. Crucially, however, they do not view the U.S.-Israeli military campaign as a form of liberation. Instead, they perceive it as an act of gratuitous foreign aggression. The resulting wave of nationalism has successfully blurred traditional political lines and significantly reduced the likelihood of an internal uprising, thereby reinforcing the stability of the Islamic Republic.
PAIN AND GAIN
Much like the broader population, the Iranian government has adopted a sharply adversarial view of Washington since the onset of the conflict. The country’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has placed trusted loyalists into key governing positions—even as he remains largely in hiding—with many of these hard-line figures maintaining deep ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Key figures within this inner circle, including National Security Adviser Mohsen Rezaei and Hossein Taeb, commander of Iran’s primary domestic paramilitary forces, firmly believe that deterring future attacks requires a decisive, aggressive response to any Western provocation. They remain deeply skeptical that Washington is genuinely interested in diplomacy. They point out that the United States has twice initiated military attacks against Iran while diplomatic negotiations were underway, and subsequently walked away from the memorandum of understanding signed in June. Consequently, they argue that Washington cannot be trusted. In their view, any renewed American interest in talks likely conceals plans for fresh military strikes, mirroring the patterns seen in June 2025 and February 2026.
Conversely, Iran’s relative moderates maintain a somewhat different outlook. This faction of political elites—including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, former President Hasan Rouhani, and former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif—has consistently argued that Tehran should continue searching for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf have publicly emphasized the severe economic hardships facing ordinary citizens. Yet, the ideological distance separating them from the hard-line leadership is narrower than it might appear to outside observers.
As one analyst familiar with these political dynamics noted, "No one is saying Iran should surrender." While moderates view economic relief as a top national priority, their proposed solution is to force the United States to honor the memorandum of understanding signed in June. In Tehran’s view, that diplomatic arrangement committed Washington to unfreezing all Iranian financial assets, lifting all economic sanctions, halting future military strikes, and paying financial reparations. In exchange, Tehran agreed only to a cease-fire and the resumption of commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, while retaining the right to levy transit fees.
Since the end of the summer, Rezaei and Ghalibaf have insisted that any meaningful diplomacy must begin with the United States returning to the terms of that memorandum. According to analysts following recent United Nations meetings in New York, these officials believe that President Trump is not yet prepared for genuine talks. Consequently, they conclude that Trump will only return to the negotiating table if forced to recognize Iran’s resilience, which requires increasing the military and economic costs of the war for the United States.
Iran’s behavior moving forward is therefore expected to remain unrestrained and disproportionate. If hostilities resume, Tehran plans to project power across the wider region rather than restricting its operations to its immediate geographic vicinity. The dominant consensus within Tehran is that caution and predictability will only invite intensified U.S. pressure without advancing its core strategic goals: forcing Washington to withdraw all military forces from the Persian Gulf and compelling the West to accept Iranian regional primacy.
Repeated Iranian strikes against American military bases and installations in Jordan, Syria, and across the Persian Gulf are explicitly designed to achieve this objective. To a certain extent, these tactics have yielded results. The missile and drone strikes have inflicted serious damage on several U.S. military assets, forcing the Pentagon to relocate numerous operations and logistical resources to Israel and Jordan, while increasingly relying on a distant base in the central Indian Ocean for support. The persistent threat of Iranian attacks even prompted Washington to withdraw its strategic B-1 bombers from a forward operating base in the United Kingdom.
Simultaneously, Tehran has sought to pressure Washington’s Gulf Arab partners into closing American military bases on their soil. To drive this point home, Iranian officials have openly declared that regional peace and security depend on the removal of the U.S. military footprint, punctuating the message with targeted rocket and drone attacks against Gulf states suspected of aiding the American war effort. While it remains unlikely that Iran will completely succeed in ending the U.S. military presence in the Gulf, these actions have already caused Arab governments to reconsider their reliance on the American security umbrella, potentially paving the way for a reduced U.S. regional footprint.
Iran could theoretically force the American military out of its neighborhood without securing immediate economic relief. Indeed, the Trump administration launched its strategy of intensive economic pressure in part due to military fatigue and because Iranian attacks on the U.S. Navy forced American warships to operate at a greater distance from Iranian shores. Nonetheless, Tehran believes it can successfully coerce its adversary into an economic accommodation by inflicting continuous financial pain.
To achieve this, Tehran has worked to drive up global energy prices—affecting oil, natural gas, diesel, and jet fuel—by striking key energy infrastructure across the Gulf region. These actions included attacks on Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas field, carried out in retaliation for an Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars gas facility, as well as assaults on oil infrastructure near the United Arab Emirates’ Fujairah port. Iran has also targeted commercial tankers ferrying oil and natural gas, while seeking to consolidate sovereign control over the strategic Strait of Hormuz. Although Washington has pushed back forcefully against these efforts and recently succeeded in escorting certain tankers through the chokepoint, these protective naval operations demand enormous resources that the United States cannot sustain indefinitely.
Regional partners aligned with Tehran have also amplified these pressures. Iraqi militias backed by Iran have targeted vital oil pipelines carrying Saudi crude to Red Sea export terminals, a move projected to severely restrict global oil supplies for months. Meanwhile, Houthi allies in Yemen have consistently attacked Saudi energy infrastructure. The Houthis have also captured extensive new territory near the Bab el Mandeb Strait, enhancing their ability to threaten the Red Sea shipping lanes through which roughly 12 percent of global trade passes. These coordinated actions demonstrate that despite sustaining heavy blows to its networks in Lebanon and Syria, the broader Iranian-led axis remains highly capable.
STEADY AS SHE GOES
The United States may operate under the belief that it has successfully cornered Iran, but Tehran strongly disagrees. The Iranian leadership does not view itself as being on the defensive or running out of strategic options. On the contrary, officials in Tehran believe the nation has effectively secured great-power status through its defiance.
Tehran has expressed immense pride in its military performance throughout the conflict and feels it commands newfound international respect. Government officials publicly celebrated as the Iranian delegation was enthusiastically received by member states during the September meetings of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the non-Western BRICS consortium.
Significant monumental challenges remain for Iran, and the government has yet to discover a reliable formula for translating wartime resilience into enduring, peacetime economic gains. Nevertheless, the nation stands prepared to continue fighting if circumstances demand it. As one senior Iranian analyst close to country’s policymakers observed, the Iranian populace remains "willing to endure economic pain and the suffering, if it means that [they] are going to win."
With the political elite firmly coalesced around a shared strategic vision, Tehran remains fully confident that it can prevail simply by staying the course, rendering any major compromises unnecessary.
