This article previously was published in Italian in il manifesto on June 27.
From the first shots targeting the Islamic Republic’s leadership, the United States and Israel waged an illegal war against Iran that was doomed to fail. Articles 1 and 2 of the United Nations Charter prohibit the violation of another country’s sovereignty. But the US–Israeli alliance clearly recognized that the European nations and their Gulf-state allies would remain silent on this clear breach of international law. Indeed, in the early days of the war, not only did these nations remain silent on the aggression against Iran, but they also successfully ratified UN Security Council Resolution 2817, sponsored by Bahrain and championed by France, condemning “the deplorable armed attacks by the Islamic Republic of Iran” against the territorial integrity of the Gulf states. The resolution made no references to the US–Israeli attacks on Iran, and the fact that Islamic Republic’s attacks targeted the American military bases in those countries.
This war was undertaken with a certain imperial arrogance, born out of a profound misreading of the Iranian situation. The US and Israel, like many of their allies, assumed that Iran had neither the capacity to resist the military campaign nor the diplomatic currency to muster political support around the world. They were wrong, and their misperceptions are worth detailing.
- Misunderstanding the Islamic Republic’s power structure. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the Islamic Republic has been understood as a totalitarian theocracy. Yet despite ostensible parallels in structure and ideology, the Islamic Republic is neither theocratic, nor totalitarian. Although its constitution affords the office of the Supreme Leader unchecked governing authority, in practice, it operates as an arbiter to create equilibrium between different factions within the polity. The conceptual and practical differences between an authoritarian and totalitarian state matter here. Unlike what one expects from a totalitarian theocracy, factional politics, electoral processes, and mass social movements all condition the structure of political power and inform the terms of governance under the Islamic Republic. That has turned it into a pragmatic state rather than a state motivated by ideology or theocratic convictions. The Islamic Republic is not a “regime” that operates based on the authority of a person whose assassination could lead to its speedy overthrow. Those who promoted the war failed to appreciate how multiple sources of authority have been institutionalized in Iran, and how capable they are in sustaining the political order.
- Misunderstanding the Iranian peoples’ relations with their state. In the attacks in June, 2025 and the recent war begun in late February, 2026, the United States and Israel invested in the likelihood that the war would create a space for Iranians to mobilize to topple the Islamic Republic. The White House and Israeli intelligence mistook widespread discontent with the social and economic conditions that had led to mass protests, and popular anger at the state’s brutal suppression of those protests, for the peoples’ desire for external military intervention. In practice, the bombing destroyed the gap between the nation and the state, generating a massive rally-around-the-flag effect, despite popular grievances that had remained unanswered. For days people gathered in public squares condemning the war, and when President Trump threatened that the U.S. would obliterate the country’s infrastructure, people—seemingly of their own volition—formed human chains on bridges and other vital public structures. No matter how fleeting the collapse of that gap between nation and state might be, it undermined the assumption that people will rise up and collaborate with foreign powers to topple their own state.
- Miscalculating Iranian military power and planning. Although both the US and Israel were aware of the Iranian military capabilities, they were mistaken about how the Iranian state was anticipating attacks of this magnitude. The Iranians deliberately spread their missile and drone production and energy infrastructure around the country to make it logistically difficult to destroy those sites with a few aerial bombardments. In addition, after years of brazen Israeli assassinations, they created several layers of command and control, foreseeing the campaigns to take out their top military commanders. They established regional command centers that could operate independently from the central command in Tehran. Not only did these defensive postures catch the Israelis and Americans by surprise; but the capabilities of the new generations of the Iranian ballistic missiles also dumbfounded them.
- A Paper Tiger? Could Iranians be rational actors? Since 2010, Israeli agents have assassinated or attempted to kill more than a dozen nuclear scientists to disrupt the Iranian enrichment program. In April, 2024, Israel attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing sixteen people, including two high-ranking Revolutionary Guards commanders. In January, 2020, the US assassinated General Qasim Suleimani, one of the most revered Guards commanders, near Baghdad airport. Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the political wing of Hamas and its chief negotiator, in Tehran, while he was attending the inaugural ceremony of the new Iranian president. In all these cases, the Islamic Republic reacted with timid and cautious measures, carefully designed to avoid escalating these encounters into a full-blown war. To the Israeli and American intelligence and military circles, the Iranian muted responses to these acts of aggression registered as weakness. They saw a clear cleavage between the Islamic Republic’s belligerent rhetoric and its willingness to act upon it, but did not view that as a rational and calculated strategy to engage militarily only when Iran is fully prepared. They deemed the Islamic Republic to be a paper tiger: formidable and threatening on the surface, while in reality weak, ineffectual, and unable to withstand challenges. When the Islamic Republic warned that it will turn any military attack on Iran into a regional war with global consequences, the American and Israeli strategists believed that it had neither the capability nor the intent to deliver on that threat.
Today, a different reality has settled in. The United States was forced to sign a memorandum of understanding that is essentially a document of capitulation, an admission of defeat. The encounter with Iran showed that the Israelis cannot simply replicate their genocidal war in Gaza anywhere they wish with the same impunity. The Americans, who, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, had grown accustomed to sitting at the helm of the unipolar world order, now face the real possibility of its sunset. A new map of the Middle East is emerging, but not the one that the United States and Israel envisioned with their Abraham Accords. The question of sovereignty will become a key predicament for many states in the region, especially as many Gulf states have just experienced the US military presence in their territory as a liability rather than a boon to their security.
The Islamic Republic has reestablished its regional and domestic authority during a time that many observers believed that the collapse of the Iranian state was imminent. From domestic mass protests to the loss of regional allies’ operational capacities, the Iranian “regime” appeared doomed to collapse. Now, however, its leaders feel invincible. The question is how they will translate that invincibility to their relationship with the Iranian people, those who rose up in defense of the nation despite their opposition to the state. The Islamic Republic needs to translate the indomitability of its power against imperialism into an accommodationist domestic politics in which voices of dissent are heard and peoples’ grievances are remedied.
Behrooz Ghamari is affiliated with the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of Toronto. He taught history and sociology at UIUC for 14 years. He is the author of four books on different aspects and historical context of the Iranian revolution of 1979 and its aftermath.