What is Iran's strategy?

Patience, preservation, and calculated retaliation

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The enemy always gets a vote. Whilst Israeli tactical victory is already a given, strategic success is harder to come by. This piece looks at the other side: what Iran’s most likely and most dangerous plans might be.

From the outset of this conflict, Iran’s conduct suggests a leadership attempting to wait out Israel and the United States. Iranian officials project defiance. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei rejected President Trump’s call for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and warned that US intervention would cause “irreparable damage” to America. Beneath the fiery rhetoric, Tehran appears to be banking on a belief that Western-led air campaigns eventually lose momentum and political support. This belief is informed by recent history. The US gave up and withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 after two decades of war. The US air intervention in Yemen earlier this year expended billions of dollars with little to show for it, before Washington scaled back military action. Iranian strategists are keenly aware of Western war fatigue. They remember that foes with superior firepower can be forced into stalemate or retreat if the defender refuses to collapse.

Iran’s leadership often invokes a “strategic patience” doctrine. This is a long-game approach, where endurance itself is the ultimate victory. Even as Israeli warplanes pound targets across Iran, Tehran’s calculus is that if it can withstand the initial onslaught, domestic, international, logistical and financial pressures (bombs are expensive and finite) might eventually compel Israel to relent. Indeed, Israeli analysts acknowledge that Israel’s intense air campaign cannot be sustained indefinitely at its opening tempo. Tehran’s strategy is to buy time. It has signalled via intermediaries its openness to diplomacy, hinting it might return to nuclear talks if the US stays out and Israel halts strikes. This is essentially stalling for a breather.

However, playing for time is a high-stakes gamble. As Iran waits, Israel expands its target set daily. Even Vladimir Putin has reportedly warned Khamenei that Iran’s regime survival is at risk. Tehran hopes that Israel’s political will might wane before Iran’s does. The Iranian psyche values revolutionary resilience. The regime endured the gruelling 1980-88 war with Iraq and still stood firm. Sensing this, Tehran’s strategy is to buy time and outlast Israeli urgency.

A striking feature of Iran’s conduct so far is the limited scale of its missile barrages targeting Israel, especially compared to what Iran was believed capable of. Israeli intelligence estimated that Iran had 750 to 1,000 ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel before the conflict. Other estimates suggest that Iran had between 1,000 and 2,000 missiles. As of today, Iran has fired approximately 468 missiles. We can estimate that Iran has used up between one-quarter and one-half of its pre-war stockpile. By this point in the conflict, Iranian launches have dwindled to mere handfuls of missiles per barrage. This raises the question: is Iran deliberately conserving its missiles for a later, massive strike once Israeli defences are depleted, or have Israeli strikes on launchers done their job?

Iran would have good reason to hold back. Israel’s multi-layered missile defence has proven adept. However, missile defences have magazines; interceptors can run low. Tehran may calculate that absorbing Israeli strikes while launching only modest retaliatory volleys forces Israel to expend interceptor missiles and remain on constant high alert. Then, at a time of Iran’s choosing, it could attempt a second-wave mass barrage to overwhelm Israel’s defences. By holding many of its longer-range missiles in reserve, Iran would retain the option to launch a concentrated saturation attack if conditions change.

Israeli officials assert that Iran’s decreasing missile launches are attributable to Israeli operational successes. The Israeli Air Force’s strikes on launch sites have, without doubt, markedly diminished Iran’s missile capabilities. Israeli attacks have targeted numerous missile bases, compelling Iran to relocate launch units to central Iran. The IDF estimates that it has destroyed 35–40% of Iran’s ballistic missiles and roughly half of Iran’s launchers; a significant reduction in capacity. Iran’s recent employment of fewer missiles per attack might be less of a strategy than a necessity in response to ongoing fire. Combining those fired and those destroyed by Israeli action, we can reasonably assess that well over half of Iran’s pre-war missile stocks are gone.

Both sides may be partially correct. Iran is facing constraints due to the destruction of launchers, cut supply lines, and hampered coordination, but is also showing restraint. It has not “gone for broke”. This suggests a conscious decision to preserve some capacity. Tehran may be contemplating scenarios such as an escalation involving the US, where having missiles in reserve would be crucial. For now, Tehran is holding a final card close to its chest.

Iran also seems to be estimating that it can endure the strikes and safeguard its most critical assets. Nowhere is this more apparent than in its nuclear infrastructure. Israel inflicted a significant blow to Natanz, likely destroying thousands of centrifuges. Yet Fordow remains largely unscathed. Fordow, excavated under a mountain, was constructed to endure this kind of assault. Israel cannot eliminate it from the air without US assistance and the heaviest bunker-buster bombs. Even then, success is not assured, which makes a special forces commando raid more likely (discussed here).

This outcome is likely by Iranian design. Tehran’s nuclear strategy anticipated this scenario. By concentrating enrichment work at Fordow, Iran ensured that a Western air campaign could at best set back, not eliminate, its nuclear capability. Iran can tolerate losing centrifuges at Natanz as long as the knowledge, personnel, and some capacity survive. The attacks might even spur Tehran to race for a bomb later, feeling vindicated in its view that nuclear weapons are the only sure deterrent.

To preserve future capability, Iran is prioritising the survival of its institutions. It has likely changed launcher tactics to one-shot-and-done, to minimise the window before and after firing for Israel to strike. It will have tried to relocate missile units away from vulnerable positions. Rather than waste all its missiles in futile defence, Iran may be keeping some in reserve to protect core regime sites. After Israel’s shocking decapitation strike that killed multiple senior leaders, the regime has likely dispersed its remaining command structures. The logic is clear: as long as the Supreme Leader and the administrative functions of the state are alive and functional, and security forces can repress mass protests, Iran has not lost the strategic war, even though the tactical war is already a clear Israeli victory.

Regarding Israeli claims of damage, a possible disparity exists between rhetoric and reality. Israeli officials assert they have destroyed a significant portion of Iran’s capabilities. Many of these assertions are credible, underpinned by satellite imagery and other evidence. However, some targets reportedly survived relatively unscathed. Fordow is one such target, while Shiraz missile facilities represent another. Iran has also introduced new missiles during the conflict, the Sejjil-1. This indicates some resilience and adaptation.

One week into the war, Israel’s tactical successes are genuine, but they do not yet ensure strategic victory. Iran’s missile firepower has diminished but has not been neutralised. Its nuclear programme is damaged but not destroyed. Iran’s proxies have suffered significant losses, yet their networks remain intact. The remnants of the Iranian military are bloodied, not knocked out.

What is Iran’s most dangerous course of action? In a worst-case scenario, Tehran could unleash everything: a massive second-wave missile barrage, a surge of regional proxies, strikes on global targets, or even the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. These escalatory steps would aim to inflict intolerable pain, provoke an international crisis, or compel external intervention. Such a move would represent a desperate gambit by a regime on the brink.

This is not Iran’s most likely course of action. The most probable path is more cautious: to seek a ceasefire, maintain low-level retaliatory strikes on Israel to preserve credibility, secure regime stability, and prepare for long-term recovery. Iran will likely spin any truce as a victory, rebuild discreetly, rearm its proxies, and resume its regional strategy.

Iran’s leadership believes that time is on its side. If it survives, it can restore capabilities and reassert influence. This is the logic driving its current actions: endure, retaliate just enough, and wait for the moment when it can regain the initiative. It represents a strategy of calculated resilience, not reckless escalation. In a war that is as much psychological as it is kinetic, this approach may prove to be Iran’s most potent weapon of all.

This will be the topic of discussion for my weekly podcast with Shana Meyerson, “A Paratrooper and a Yogi Walk Into A Bar”, so please do subscribe in advance! Find it in the podcast section of my Substack page, or:

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