Israel lacks the capacity to fight a prolonged war with Iran, an Iranian daily affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps wrote, saying that any renewed conflict would be far costlier and longer than a previous 12-day confrontation.
“Israel does not have the capacity for an intense war of attrition or for confronting a major power like Iran, and it is clear that another war would not end in 12 days as the previous one did,” Javan wrote in an analysis on Wednesday.
The 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June 2025 was a brief but intense conflict. It began with extensive Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military and nuclear facilities.
The United States became militarily involved mid‑conflict. On June 22, US Air Force and Navy forces carried out coordinated strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities – Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan – in an operation codenamed Operation Midnight Hammer, using B‑2 bombers and submarine‑launched missiles, marking the first US offensive against Iranian territory in decades. Iranian forces fired missiles at US assets in Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, after those strikes.
The conflict ended with a US and Qatari-mediated ceasefire, but it caused significant casualties, infrastructure damage.
Israeli rhetoric, the paper said, has shifted from threats of decisive victory to language of caution and warnings about the costs of renewed conflict.
Air strikes, according to Javan, failed to halt what it called Iran’s “distributed and self-sufficient” military production. The paper also argued that the previous fighting severely strained Israel’s multilayer missile defense systems.
“Israeli officials are now openly speaking of the ‘real threat’ posed by Iran’s missiles and warning that without preventive action Iran could reach annual production of thousands of missiles,” the paper said.
Focus shifts from battlefield to society
Javan framed the change in tone as evidence that the military option has lost credibility, writing that the inability to control the consequences of war has weakened Israel’s long-standing doctrine of absolute military superiority.
“War in the contemporary world is not merely a military confrontation, but a test of social capacity, political cohesion and national resilience,” the paper wrote, arguing that internal divisions, political strains and reliance on external support limit Israel’s ability to endure a prolonged conflict.
The article concluded that future confrontation will be shaped as much by narratives and domestic resilience as by missiles and air defenses.
