Iranian clerics escalate war rhetoric as US orders regional departures

A panel of security and policy analysts said the tone and structure of the administration’s messaging suggest Washington is increasingly reframing the Iran challenge around multiple justifications simultaneously, including ballistic missile threats, regional destabilization and mass killings inside Iran.

Janatan Sayeh, a research analyst focusing on Iranian affairs at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), said the speech reflected three distinct pillars that historically have shaped US decisions to escalate foreign policy crises.

“If you look at all these three pillars,” he said, referring to nuclear ambitions, ballistic missiles and human rights violations, “they have been historically used to explain why the United States would get involved in a foreign conflict.”

According to Sayeh, the evolving rhetoric reflects growing pessimism in Washington about the prospects for diplomacy.

From nuclear file to broader threats

For years, US policy discussions surrounding Iran largely centered on the nuclear program. But Trump’s recent remarks placed greater emphasis on Tehran’s missile capabilities, warning they could eventually threaten the US homeland as well as American bases overseas.

“They’ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America," said Trump during his State of Union address this week.

Shayan Samii, a former US government appointee, said the messaging appeared designed to build a political and public framework for possible escalation.

“President Trump tried to create basically a framework for what a military intervention would be and why there is a need for a military intervention,” Samii told Eye for Iran.

He added that referencing the reported killing of tens of thousands of protesters carried particular significance.

“When he validates the number 32,000, that basically is telling the world that a massacre has occurred and we need to have a collective response for it,” Sami said.

The framing, he argued, was aimed not only at Trump’s political base but also at building broader bipartisan support in Washington.

Tehran’s defiant posture

Despite increasingly forceful rhetoric from Washington, analysts said Tehran appears to be continuing escalation while dismissing the significance of US warnings.

Middle East historian and political analyst Shahram Kholdi said Islamic Republic leaders are behaving as though the shift in tone does not signal imminent action.

“They are reacting as if they have not heard anything that President Trump has said,” Kholdi said.

He described Iran’s posture as a pattern of “passive-aggressive… escalatory behavior,” arguing that the regime is rebuilding military capabilities damaged in earlier confrontations during the 12-day war in June.

“They are rebuilding everything… the ballistic missile program, air defense systems,” he said, adding that Tehran appears to view Washington as “all rhetoric and no action.”

Diplomacy meets deterrence

The day after the latest round of talks concluded Thursday, Trump signaled growing frustration with negotiations.

“I’m not happy with the fact that they’re not willing to give us what we have to have… We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters Friday. “No, I’m not happy with the way they’re going.”

The remarks come amid a substantial US military deployment already positioned in and around the Middle East, including carrier strike groups, advanced fighter aircraft and additional naval assets — a buildup analysts say increases pressure while diplomacy continues.

Sayeh argued that extended negotiations may serve a strategic purpose by demonstrating that diplomatic avenues have been exhausted.

“As the talks drag out… it signals to the world that the West has exhausted all diplomatic options,” he said.

The combination of military buildup, shifting rhetoric and bipartisan concern marks a notable turning point in how Iran is being discussed in Washington.

Historian and political analyst Shahram Kholdi described the US military buildup as “a world war scale force,” comparing it to the kind of power Washington brought to bear during World War II’s Operation Torch.

As negotiations continue alongside escalating military signaling, the central question remains unresolved: whether the current posture is intended to force concessions from Tehran or to prepare the ground for a more decisive action.

Ali Asghar Asgari, prosecutor of Qazvin, said the two suspects were detained over the use of a hunting weapon against Bigdeli’s vehicle. A judicial case has been opened against them, he added.

Asgari said the incident did not have a “terrorist” nature.

On Thursday evening, Salar Abnoush, head of the Qazvin provincial assembly of lawmakers, said the personal vehicle of Bigdeli, who represents Takestan in parliament, was hit by pellet gun fire. He said the lawmaker was unharmed.

Air superiority is a military condition; regime change is a political outcome. When it comes to discussing imminent American strikes on Iran, people often confuse the two, as if one automatically causes the other. It does not. If anything, Israel’s 2023-25 experiences in Iran, Lebanon and Syria have shown that modern air campaigns can be extraordinarily effective at damaging an adversary’s defensive structures, yet still leave an opponent intact but bloodied, paranoid, and still wielding the coercive machinery that matters.

The Israeli campaign in last summer’s 12 Day War was bold precisely because it did not rely solely on aircraft. It combined waves of targeted strikes with covert sabotage, attacking radar, air defence systems, missile sites, and key individuals in rapid succession, aiming to undermine the regime’s sense of security and its capacity to coordinate a response. That brief conflict highlighted the hybrid nature of Israel’s actions: kinetic operations intertwined with cyber and information effects, intended to disorient command structures as much as to destroy hardware. That combination is exactly why people now discuss toppling the Islamic Republic as if it is merely a matter of scaling up what Israel already demonstrated. However, that conclusion overlooks the fact that Iran learns.

A regime that survives decapitation attempts does not remain unchanged. It adapts, strengthens, disperses, and develops redundancy and pre-planned succession. It modifies communication patterns and no longer appears as a neatly presented target on a staff officer’s PowerPoint slide. After the 2025 strikes, Iran’s senior military leaders publicly acknowledged damage to air defence assets and claimed they had been replaced with systems that were already stored and pre-positioned. On the one hand, this was an admission of vulnerability disguised as a sign of institutional resilience; on the other, it reveals how the regime perceives the next war: not as a single decisive encounter, but as multiple rounds of punishment, where merely surviving becomes a form of victory.

The United States can almost certainly achieve freedom of movement in Iranian airspace. America’s suppression and destruction of enemy air defences exemplify refined and developed capabilities. The question is what that freedom achieves politically, and how long the US can sustain its acquisition.

Begin with the straightforward aspect: the air defence challenge. Iran’s defences are not a single impenetrable dome. They comprise a mix of systems of Russian origin, such as the S-300, domestically developed systems like Bavar-373, and a patchwork of other sensors and missile systems, whose effectiveness relies on proper integration and resilient command and control. Israel’s advantage in 2025 was the capability to disrupt that integration from the start, including through covert operations targeting air defence infrastructure timed to coincide with strikes. As a consequence of Israel’s conflict, the regime will relocate launchers, expand radar coverage, reconfigure software, assume networks are compromised, and operate with that understanding.

This adaptation will not be limited to air defence. The more important story is how Tehran might try to impose costs where US air superiority does not automatically guarantee control: at sea, through proxies, cyber means, and escalation politics. It was reported this week that Iran is approaching a deal to purchase Chinese CM302 supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles. These systems are explicitly designed to challenge naval defences by flying low and fast, and are difficult to intercept. Even if that agreement takes time to finalise, the overall trend is clear: Iran does not need to defeat US airpower to complicate an American campaign; it just needs to make the theatre more dangerous and costly.

That leads me to the often-overlooked aspect: the regime is more than just a few visible leaders. It is a complex network of institutions designed to withstand leadership changes: security services, intelligence agencies, the IRGC’s economic backing, local enforcement bodies, and structures that uphold clerical legitimacy. The Israelis demonstrated they could penetrate deeply and eliminate senior figures, but that very success will drive the remaining cadre underground. For a targeted elite, “not being found” becomes the primary goal. Survival then becomes the measure of their success, and as a result, time becomes their greatest asset.

A fantasy of a rapid collapse clashes with the reality of authoritarian resilience. Authoritarian regimes often plan to outlast their opponents’ attention spans. The regime only needs to endure. The US system, by contrast, is highly sensitive to time: news cycles, polling, congressional chatter, and election schedules. AP-NORC polling this month illustrates this tension well: many Americans see Iran as an adversary and are worried about its nuclear programme, but confidence in President Trump’s judgment on the use of military force is low. That presents a political limitation. It indicates that if the regime does not fall quickly, Washington’s idea of “success” will likely shift from winning outright to “degrading capabilities” and declaring the mission complete.

There are also practical constraints. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has warned internally about munitions depletion and the complexities of any major Iran operation, highlighting strained stockpiles from other commitments and the difficulty of maintaining extended operations at scale. The US can strike what it wants,but “as long as it wants” is a different assertion, and one that depends on production lines, allied basing, and the willingness of partners to accept retaliation risks. Even if none of these constraints is decisive on its own, collectively they influence the one variable the regime cares about most: duration.

The most likely endgame is not necessarily a liberal revolution with a clear transition plan. A regime can change leadership while remaining deeply repressive. Venezuela serves as a clear warning, demonstrating how minimal leadership change can be when coercive forces and patronage networks remain in place. An Iranian version could simply be a reshuffle that removes some problematic figures, makes symbolic gestures towards de-escalation, and offers Washington a deal aligned with the US electoral cycle.

The alternative is just as troubling. A forced decapitation could result in fragmentation: competing power centres seeking legitimacy, security forces hedging their bets, commanders becoming warlords, and loyalists fighting a counter-revolution in the name of the old order. Civil conflict is not guaranteed, but it remains a risk we must take seriously. Even if a new governing coalition is formed, it might spend its first years fighting remnants of the Islamic Republic’s security forces or, more likely, integrating them in exchange for impunity. Either way, the Iranian people risk being caught between continuity and chaos, neither of which is the moral victory often implied by Western rhetoric.

Iran’s retaliation options are not limited to shooting down aircraft. Tehran can deploy asymmetric means: missile and drone strikes on regional infrastructure, harassment of shipping, blocking the Strait of Hormuz, cyber operations, and proxy violence. It is reported that Iranian military figures have warned of a shift away from “restrained retaliation” in response to any US attack, including the possibility of targeting US assets in the Persian Gulf region. The point is not that Iran can defeat the United States militarily (it cannot), but that it can force Washington to defend a broad perimeter while undertaking an air campaign, and that it can do so in ways that increase the risk of miscalculation and escalation.

There are even darker escalation pathways. If the regime believes it is facing extinction, it might choose options it would normally avoid because they could provoke catastrophic retaliation. We must seriously consider the logic of a cornered state: if the leadership believes the end is near, the temptation to shock, terrorise, or internationalise the conflict increases, or even deploy chemical or biological weapons. The best approach is through deterrence and risk management, but nonetheless, it remains a vital part of the strategic landscape that any serious planner must evaluate.

US military planning will expect sustained, weeks-long operations against Iran if the president orders an attack, on a scale far beyond a one-night “message strike”. Whether this becomes reality depends not only on military feasibility but also on how quickly the White House can turn bombing into a genuine political collapse inside Iran. If that collapse does not materialise, the Trump administration will be tempted to limit objectives: target nuclear and missile infrastructure, punish command nodes, then cease while claiming victory, leaving the regime bruised but still standing. This temptation grows with each week the regime survives, as every additional week of operations turns a war plan into a domestic political liability.

The military outcome of a strike campaign is never uncertain if the question is whether the United States can destroy what it can locate. The more difficult question is whether destroying what they find leads to the political results Washington desires. Airpower can coerce, degrade, terrify, and even trigger internal collapse if the regime is already decaying and an alternative power is ready to take advantage. However, decades of such operations show that air campaigns do not create legitimacy, govern territory, or shape the internal deals that determine who rules when the bombs cease. Aerial dominance does not equate to lasting political control, and “victory” defined solely in terms of target destruction often results in complex, long-term instability.

These are the risks. That said, it is entirely possible that the planned campaign will achieve great success and will lead to a smooth transition to a democratic and free Iran. This is not out of the question. However, the regime has learned that survival is the key to success, and it will now organise itself around staying alive rather than appearing strong. It can adapt tactically more quickly than Western publics can respond emotionally. It can raise costs without securing victory, and even if Washington can destroy the tools of Iranian power from the air, it cannot simply bomb its way to a clean succession.

The United States will be able to break Iranian capabilities. Whether it can break the regime’s grip, and what, exactly, replaces it if it does, is the part that should keep us skeptical of anyone guaranteeing a short war with a neat ending.

For forty-seven years, the Islamic Republic has anchored Iran to an ideology that promised dignity and independence but delivered isolation, economic decay and recurring crisis. What began as a revolutionary project hardened into a theocratic system sustained by confrontation abroad and repression at home.

Today, that closed strategic loop appears to be under strain.

January marked what many observers describe as a point of rupture. Security forces killed, wounded and arrested thousands during a nationwide crackdown whose brutality shocked even a society long accustomed to state violence.

The state crossed a political and social threshold, relying more visibly than ever on coercion to maintain control. Whatever legitimacy the regime ever claimed has gone.

Iran now faces a convergence of pressures: economic exhaustion, widespread public frustration, continued international isolation and a credible threat of force from the United States. The familiar formula—delay and deflect diplomatically, escalate through regional partners and expand military capabilities—no longer guarantees stability.

At the center of this crisis lies ideological overreach that has become financially burdensome and strategically counterproductive.

Tens of billions of dollars (or over $100 billion if we consider the entire economic burden) have been invested in uranium enrichment to preserve what officials describe as a “nuclear option.” Rather than delivering security, this path has triggered successive rounds of sanctions and intensified isolation.

Billions more have gone into hardened missile infrastructure and underground facilities designed to project deterrence beyond Iran’s borders.

Supporters call these systems defensive; critics see them as instruments of coercion that have deepened confrontation without producing durable stability.

The same logic shaped Tehran’s network of allied militias across the Middle East. Built to extend influence and encircle adversaries, this proxy architecture was intended to provide strategic depth at relatively low cost. Instead, it has drawn Iran into repeated confrontations with militaries vastly more powerful than its own and entrenched a cycle of escalation.

At home, the Revolutionary Guard and Basij remain the state’s primary instruments of control. Their central mission has increasingly been the suppression of domestic unrest.

Each protest wave met with force further widens the gap between state and society.Continued reliance on coercion risks destabilizing Iranian society and the wider region.

Meanwhile, the United States has shifted into what appears to be a posture of sustained coercive pressure. Strike aircraft supported by aerial tankers; strategic bombers waiting at home to embark on global strike missions; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft; layered air and missile defenses, and a reinforced naval presence including two carrier strike groups near critical waterways signal both capability and resolve.

Washington now possesses credible means to target Iran’s air defenses, command structures, missile forces, naval assets and military and nuclear industries for major effects without repeating the large-scale ground wars of the past.

The message, however, is not that war is inevitable. Rather, it is that Iran’s long-standing brinkmanship strategy may be reaching its limits. It is time for Tehran to decide. This does not necessarily mean surrender, but strategic realism.

In 1988, after eight devastating years of war with Iraq, the Islamic Republic’s founder and first supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a ceasefire he described as “drinking from poisonous chalice.” The decision was politically humiliating for many within the revolutionary establishment, yet it prevented further destruction and preserved the state.

Iran may now confront a comparable moment of transformation. Accepting strategic capitulation would not necessarily mean dismantling the state or abandoning national defense. It would mean relinquishing powers and institutions, such as IRGC and Basij, that have contributed to oppression and prolonged isolation, halting uranium enrichment, placing missile programs under verifiable constraints, severing relations with proxy militias as instruments of foreign policy and ending existential rhetoric toward regional adversaries.

In return, Iran could pursue what many of its citizens have long sought: economic recovery, sanctions relief and diplomatic normalization.

Yet, after the events of January 2026, those gains alone may not satisfy public expectations. A growing segment of Iranian society is demanding fundamental political change and a credible path toward secular democracy and free elections in Iran.

The alternative is military attrition layered atop economic fragility and domestic unrest. Infrastructure would degrade further. Isolation would deepen. Public anger would intensify. Repression might temporarily contain dissent but would likely compound long-term instability.

History is ruthless with rulers who mistake ideological stubbornness for strength.

Those ruling Iran still have a narrowing window to prioritize real national interests over ideological expansion. Durable power rests not only in centrifuge halls and missile tunnels, but in legitimacy, prosperity and social cohesion.

For decades, the Islamic Republic framed confrontation as strength and resistance as destiny. Now the shadow of war hangs over Iran. Whether it chooses a peaceful concession of power or renewed escalation with unforeseen consequences may determine not only its own future, but the trajectory of the country and the nation it currently governs.

The path less treacherous for Iran appears clear: stepping back from confrontation and allowing Iranians to choose their future, even if that means the end of an era for those ruling the country.

“They've already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they're working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America," the President said during his address.

The remarks come ahead of upcoming negotiations between Tehran and Washington in Geneva over Iran’s disputed nuclear program and concerns over the country’s expanding missile arsenal.

“They were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular nuclear weapons,” he said, adding, “Yet they continue starting it all over, and are this moment again, pursuing their sinister ambitions.”

Reaffirming Washington’s longstanding position, Trump pledged that the Islamic Republic would not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon — a moment that drew visible bipartisan reaction in the chamber, with lawmakers from both parties rising as he reiterated the policy.

The president stressed that negotiations with Tehran were ongoing but warned the United States remained prepared to act if necessary.

For weeks, Trump has pointed to a large US naval buildup near Iran, including two aircraft carriers and multiple warships positioned in the region. Analysts say the scale of the deployment is comparable to past major US military operations, with advanced warplanes and strike capabilities in place.

“We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal, but we haven't heard those secret words ‘we will never have a nuclear weapon,” he said.

‘32,000 killed’

During the address, Trump also acknowledged the massacre that followed recent nationwide protests calling for an end to the Islamic Republic.

“And just over the last couple of months, with the protests, they've killed at least it looks like 32,000 protesters in their own country,” he said, adding that authorities had “shot them and hung them.”

“For decades since they seized control of that proud nation, 47 years ago, the regime and its murderous proxies have spread nothing but terrorism, death and hate,” Trump said.

Trump also referenced the US killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020 during his first term.

“We took out Soleimani. I did that during my first term. Had a huge impact. He was the father of the roadside bomb.”