Iran is prepared for the long haul

THERE are wars of choice and wars of necessity. The US-Israel military strikes on Iran fall in the former category, the ownership of which is firmly vested in US President Donald Trump and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Operation Epic Fury, launched by the US and Israel, and the Iranians’ Operation True Promise-4 have entered the fourth day. While Iran was caught off guard by last June’s Operation Midnight Hammer, this time the speed and fierceness of its counter-force missile strikes, launched within the first 24 hours of hostilities, appear to have taken the US and Israel by surprise.

Iran has so far absorbed massive US-Israeli aerial bombardments and missile strikes and has counter-attacked by targeting Gulf countries and US military bases in the region, extensively damaging the US Navy’s 5th Fleet headquartered in Bahrain and shooting down four US jet fighters over Kuwaiti airspace. Both are unprecedented US losses. The Bahrain strikes have degraded US naval supply and replenishment operations. The Iranians are clearly better prepared and have gamed multiple conflict scenarios, identifying targets in advance.

For the present, the conflict is on an escalatory ladder with a high risk of turning into a regional war of attrition. It’s a question of when and whether the Gulf countries will enter the fray. Following an Iranian strike on a Saudi Aramco refinery, a Saudi official blamed the Americans, saying that they had “left all Gulf states that host American military bases at the mercy of Iranian strikes”. Iran has successfully delivered a warning to members of the Gulf Cooperation Council to shed the pretence of hosting US bases on their territories while distancing themselves from American actions emanating from those very bases.

Iran is not Venezuela and calculations of a regime collapse have shown to be a catastrophic misreading by the US administration. Equally confounding is the lack of clarity of US-Israeli war aims and desired endgame. Iran was widely assessed to be at its weakest position ever. The June 2025 US airstrikes “obliterated” its nuclear programme, as US President Donald Trump put it, burying it under tons of rubble. Israel’s decimation of Iran’s regional allies exposed the limits of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ ambitious strategy of “forward defence” via its “Axis of Resistance”, while US sanctions brought the Iranian economy to its knees. The latter development triggered the recent nationwide social upheaval and anti-regime demonstrations which shook the ruling clerical establishment.

The US-Israeli escalation comes while negotiations were still going on between Iran and the US. It mirrors the game plan of deception that the US adopted during the 12-day war with Iran last year. At that time, as is the case now, the US and Iran were engaged in detailed discussions on Iran’s nuclear programme. Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al Busaidi, who is mediating the talks, revealed after the recent Geneva meeting that the Iranians had offered unprecedented concessions on their nuclear programme. He said, “If the ultimate objective is to ensure forever that Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, I think we have cracked that problem.” Later, the usually reticent Omani publicly expressed his “dismay” as US launched military strikes.

It’s possible that things may not have deteriorated this rapidly had the US and Israel not launched the airstrikes that led to the death of 86-year old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Predictably, the Iranian response has been one of calculated ferocity and a conscious expansion of the conflict’s geographic contours. For the Shia faithful, martyrdom (shahadat) is the ultimate sacrifice — embracing death in defence of their faith.

Two developments have quickly followed Khamenei’s death — first, the succession process as laid down in the Iranian Constitution has been set in motion. A three-member interim leadership council has been set up, consisting of the President (Masoud Pezeshkian), the Head of Judiciary (Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei) and a representative of the clerics (Ayatollah Alireza Arafi). The announcement of the next Supreme Leader or Velayat-e-Faqih is expected as early as this week. The second pertains to calls to avenge Khamenei’s killing that are spreading among the Shia Ummah, from Lebanon and Iraq to Pakistan. In Lebanon, the Hezbollah have opened a new front against Israel. The Lebanese Hezbollah had stayed silent during Operation Midnight Hammer. In Iraq, there was an attempt to storm the US Embassy in Baghdad by Khataib Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian militia group.

The turn of events are a matter of serious concern for India, given our dependence on oil imports from the Gulf and the presence of over nine million expatriate Indians in the region. Outside of Iran, India has the largest Shia population, based in Lucknow, Hyderabad and Kargil. Khamenei’s death is echoing within the Shia community in the country.

India holds the presidency of the BRICS, of which Iran is a member. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has spoken to his Iranian counterpart. Following Iran’s missile strikes on the Saudi Aramco refinery, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called up Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and underlined the “utmost importance” of early “restoration of regional peace and stability”.

The adverse downstream consequences of the US-Israeli actions are stacking up multidimensionally, impacting global shipping, spiking oil and energy prices and causing air traffic disruptions, all of which are being closely followed across the world.

Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura oil refinery is one of the world’s largest refineries and export terminals. Its shutdown is likely to lead to a massive spike in global oil prices. Trump, however, has nonchalantly announced that the conflict could last several weeks. This declaration reveals a gross misreading of Iran’s resilience and counter-strike capabilities, which are dragging the US into one of its most consequential conflicts in decades. In the process, notions of a clean decapitating strike have been demolished, along with expectations of an imminent collapse of Iran’s clerical regime.