(Al Jazeera)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHow is this strategy different from last June?<\/h2>\n
In June last year, Iran and Israel, which was supported by the US, engaged in a 12-day war.<\/p>\n
It erupted on June 13, 2025, when Israel launched air strikes on Iranian military and nuclear sites, killing key nuclear scientists and military commanders.<\/p>\n
Iran retaliated with hundreds of ballistic missiles targeting Israeli cities. In the days that followed, Israel and Iran traded missiles as casualties mounted on both sides. While casualties were high in Iran, they were minimal in Israel. However, some missiles did breach Israel\u2019s much-lauded Iron Dome.<\/p>\n
The US entered the military clash on June 22 with bunker-buster strikes on Iran\u2019s Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan nuclear facilities. Afterwards, US President Donald Trump claimed that Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities had been neutralised.<\/p>\n
A fragile ceasefire was eventually brokered by the US on June 24, hours after Iran had fired missiles at the largest airbase hosting US troops in the Middle East \u2013 Al Udeid in Qatar.<\/p>\n
Phillips said that since then, Tehran has shifted its military doctrine from a primarily defensive containment to an explicitly offensive asymmetric posture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe June 2025 war marked a major inflection from largely proxy\u2011based confrontation to direct, high\u2011intensity exchanges between Iran and Israel, with US involvement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompared to June 2025, Iran today appears more structurally aggressive in doctrine where it is formally embracing earlier and more extensive use of regional missiles, drones, cyberattacks and energy coercion (when energy resources and infrastructure are targeted or cut off), but is operationally constrained by battle damage, sanctions and internal instability,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Phillips also noted that Iran has become more risk\u2011accepting and escalatory in nature since June last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut its degraded capabilities and fear of triggering an outright regime\u2011ending campaign push it toward calibrated, episodic bursts of aggression rather than permanent high\u2011intensity warfare,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir immediate response is likely to be similar to that post the killing of [Qassem] Soleimani,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In January 2020, after Trump\u2019s administration killed IRGC military commander Qassem Soleimani, along with six others in an air raid on Baghdad\u2019s international airport in Iraq, Iran fired more than a dozen missiles at two Iraqi bases hosting US forces. There were no casualties.<\/p>\n
Phillips added that Iran will likely resort to \u201cexcessive proxy attacks \u2026 for the period of mourning to avenge the killing of the ayatollah. There is highly likely to be another large-scale ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] attack on Israel to prove a point and to fight back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Is Iran\u2019s current military strategy working?<\/h2>\n
Defence analysts say it is too early to tell whether the recalibrated strategy is working.<\/p>\n
\u201cIran has a strong army, but there are currently no boots on the ground, and it is an aerial war. Iran is in a disadvantageous position with its air defence compared to the US and Israel. Tehran has increased its stockpile of aerial missiles, but only time will tell if it can hold its own,\u201d the military expert and former official said.<\/p>\n
Phillips compared Iran to a \u201cwounded animal\u201d and said that in narrow deterrence terms, Tehran\u2019s military strategy is working to the extent that it has demonstrated it can still launch meaningful missile and drone attacks after the 2025 strikes. It has also forced Israel and the US into a \u201csustained, resource\u2011intensive defensive and offensive campaign rather than a clean, one\u2011off disarmament\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, Iran\u2019s nuclear and missile infrastructure has been heavily damaged, its economy further weakened, and it lost Ayatollah Khamenei in the strike on Tehran, leaving the regime more vulnerable and internally strained, which indicates that its strategy has not prevented severe strategic setbacks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
How long can Iran hold out?<\/h2>\n
Even before the Israeli and US attacks on Iran on Saturday, Iranian officials had warned that any attack from Washington or Tel Aviv on Iran would be treated as the start of a wider war, not a contained operation.<\/p>\n
After Khamenei\u2019s killing, this stance by Iranian officials has continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have crossed our red line and must pay the price,\u201d Iran\u2019s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said in a televised address, referring to the US and Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will deliver such devastating blows that you yourselves will be driven to beg.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Iran, the US and Israel have traded air strikes since Saturday, it remains unclear how long the conflict will continue.<\/p>\n
Phillips said that militarily, Iran can likely sustain \u201cintermittent missile, drone, proxy, and cyber operations for years because these systems are relatively cheap and can be produced and deployed from dispersed, hardened facilities, even under sanctions\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolitically and economically, however, prolonged high\u2011intensity conflict that invites repeated large US\u2011Israeli strikes risks severe economic contraction, internal unrest, and further erosion of regime legitimacy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo Tehran has strong incentives to oscillate between escalation and tacit pauses rather than sustain continuous full\u2011scale war,\u201d Phillips added.<\/p>\n
How long can the US and Israel hold out?<\/h2>\n
US President Trump has repeatedly warned Iran against retaliation and threatened that the US could strike Iran \u201cwith a force that has never been seen before\u201d in the face of retaliation. But he has also sent mixed messages about how long the war could continue.<\/p>\n
Since early February, the US has amassed a vast array of military assets in the Middle East, amid escalating tensions with Iran.<\/p>\n
According to open-source intelligence analysts and military flight-tracking data, since early February, the US appears to have deployed more than 120 aircraft to the region \u2013 the largest surge in US airpower in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq war.<\/p>\n
The reported deployments include E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft, F-35 stealth strike fighters and F-22 air superiority jets, alongside F-15s and F-16s. Flight-tracking data shows many departing bases in the US and Europe, supported by cargo aircraft and aerial refuelling tankers, a sign of sustained operational planning rather than routine rotations.<\/p>\n
But after attacking Iran, Trump has been unclear about how long the conflict could last.<\/p>\n
On March 1, he told the New York Times that the war could last for four to five weeks. He told ABC News that after the killing of Khamenei, the US was not thinking of targeting anyone else. He also told The Atlantic magazine that Iran\u2019s new leadership had agreed to talk to him, signalling a potential end to the ongoing conflict.<\/p>\n
Christopher Featherstone, associate lecturer in the department of politics at the University of York, said that for the US and Israel, international condemnation and domestic opposition could be a limiting factor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US can continue to deploy assets in the region, but any increase in attack would require a huge political effort and significant resources. Trump ran on being an \u2018at home\u2019 president, but is increasingly aggressive abroad. However, he is still wary of sustained foreign engagement,\u201d Featherstone told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
Phillips said that militarily, Israel retains qualitative superiority, an active missile\u2011defence network, and robust US security support, allowing it to sustain repeated air and missile campaigns and defensive operations for an extended period.<\/p>\n
\u201cIts main constraints are domestic resilience (civilian disruption, reserve mobilisation fatigue) and the cumulative diplomatic and economic costs of prolonged regional conflict, which suggest it can sustain a grinding campaign for years, in military terms, but will come under growing pressure \u2013 internal and external \u2013 to stabilise the situation well before that,\u201d Phillips said, adding that support from European and United Kingdom defence contractors could also dictate, to a degree, how long Israel can sustain this conflict.<\/p>\n
\u2018The US can sustain the current tempo of strikes, air and naval deployments, and missile\u2011defence support far longer than either regional actor in purely material terms, given its global force posture and industrial base,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe binding constraint is domestic political will and strategic prioritisation,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Iran-Israel theatre is testing Washington\u2019s ability to align its National Defense Strategy with limited public appetite for another open\u2011ended Middle Eastern conflict,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cSo the US is likely to aim for a contained, deterrence\u2011focused campaign rather than an indefinite high\u2011intensity war. Their catalyst for stopping will be the political will of allies and how much sway they can hold over the next supreme leader.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran appeared determined to avenge the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials following the start of the US-Israeli assault on Saturday, as Tehran continued to strike back at Israel and United States military assets across the Gulf on Monday. After Khamenei\u2019s death was confirmed by Iranian state media on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explained"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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