Foreign Affairs
Iran’s Theory of Victory
Tehran’s Fight for Great-Power Status in the Post-American Middle East
Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr
October 9, 2026
A banner of Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, Tehran, September 2026
Majid Asgaripour / Reuters
NARGES BAJOGHLI is an anthropologist and Associate Professor of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She is the author of Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic.
VALI NASR is Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and the author of Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History.
When it comes to Iran, the Trump administration has a decidedly dismal record. It failed to wear down the Islamic Republic with months of intense bombings. It could not bend Iran’s will at the negotiating table. Yet despite seven months of setbacks, U.S. officials believe that they have turned the page. They have implemented fresh sanctions while maintaining the existing American blockade of the country’s southern coast, throttling its access to outside commerce. As a result, they have concluded that the Islamic Republic will soon either concede or be downed. “We are going to economically asphyxiate this regime,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared on September 1.
There is no doubt that Washington has dealt significant damage to Iran. But the Islamic Republic does not believe it is unraveling. In fact, Tehran thinks that it will defeat the United States—and it isn’t hard to see why. The Iranian government did not merely survive the U.S.-Israeli bombardment. It retaliated ferociously, damaging American military bases and obstructing the Strait of Hormuz. Its people are paying a hefty economic price thanks to damage caused by the war and Washington’s cutoffs, but much of the population has rallied around the flag and seems to accept that hardship is necessary if Iran is to defend itself. As a result, Tehran has been emboldened. Its officials may not see eye to eye on each tactic. But they share the same ambitions: evicting U.S. forces from the Persian Gulf, forcing Washington to remove all its sanctions, and getting the United States to accept that Iran is a great power.
This agenda might sound overly audacious, given that Iran has been materially weakened. But the Islamic Republic thinks its aims are within reach. It believes its military can drive U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf by continuing to strike American bases directly and by getting Arab countries to push the United States to leave. It thinks that by wreaking havoc on energy markets, it can force Washington to lift economic restrictions, as well. Tehran’s theory of victory, in other words, is that it can hold out and inflict enough pain that the United States will end its containment of Iran.
CLOSING RANKS
No one doubts that Iran has been battered by war. Months of American and Israeli bombs have damaged the country’s industries and infrastructure, spiking unemployment and pushing more Iranians into poverty. Washington’s sanctions and naval blockade have caused rampant inflation. And the American and Israeli militaries can count many tactical successes, including the assassination of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
But strategically, the conflict has been disastrous. U.S. officials believed that punishing aerial bombardments and sweeping efforts to degrade the Iranian economy would bring the Islamic Republic to its knees. They didn’t. Washington hoped that assassinating Khamenei would prompt a mass antigovernment uprising. That scheme also failed. Instead, Khamenei’s death brought out the Islamic Republic’s ardent supporters. They marched every night in the country’s main cities and were eventually joined by Iranians of other political hues, who rallied in support of their homeland. When the war started, Turkey planned to accommodate 70,000 Iranian refugees. But few people fled. In fact, as the war progressed, many Iranians living abroad returned home, including long-exiled cultural figures, journalists, and politicians, such as the singers Mohsen Namjoo and Bijan Mortazavi.
This surge in nationalism is not an endorsement of the Islamic Republic. Many Iranians remain deeply unhappy with the country’s leadership. But the anger at their government has been subsumed by their anger at Washington. Previously, most Iranians were skeptical of the Islamic Republic’s claim that the United States was bent on their country’s destruction and in fact hoped Tehran would seek better relations with Washington. But the bombings of Iranian cities and U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to annihilate the country’s civilization (saying, for example, that he might “blow the entire nation up” and drive it “into hell with no chance of survival”) have changed attitudes. Iranians across the political spectrum now do think that the United States wants to obliterate their country—or at least make it capitulate to every American demand.
Iranians do not see the U.S.-Israeli war as liberating.
This conclusion was apparent in our lengthy conversations with Iranians of all ideologies, which we started conducting when Washington first bombed Iran, in June 2025, and have continued to the present, tracing their political attitudes over that period. The vast majority expressed deep distress and anger at their government after the massacres that took place in response to January’s mass protests. But we found that political opinions have shifted drastically as the war has dragged on and as Trump has upped his annihilatory rhetoric. “We believed so much in the American promise,” Ali, a 45-year-old long-time dissident who has spent years in prison for his activism on social and political issues, told us. “Yet with this war and everything that Trump and his administration have said and done, it’s obvious the Americans sold us a false bill of goods. They want nothing but Iran’s total submission, and that’s not acceptable to us.” Mahsa, a writer and artist in her 30s, relayed similar sentiments. “Everything we believed the [United States] stood for, freedom and respect and democracy, I now see as lies,” she said. “As angry as I’ve been at our state over the years, this is our homeland, and no outside country has the right to kill our leaders and drop bombs on our children and attempt to destroy us.”
Little wonder, then, that Khamenei’s July funeral procession drew millions of mourners, even though the country was in the midst of conflict. At the event, people handed out red flags, symbolizing their desire for bloody vengeance. Shortly after, Iran attacked commercial vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz, unraveling the precarious cease-fire the country had struck with the United States three months earlier.
Many U.S. officials seem to think that stiff economic pressure will ultimately prompt a shift in opinion—that if they suffer enough, Iranians will decide to try overthrowing their government or that the Islamic Republic, fearing for its survival, will submit to American demands. But this is magical thinking. Iran has spent the past 15 years developing an economy specifically designed to withstand American economic warfare. Iranian officials, for instance, have forged strong relations with neighboring traders and made the country nearly self-sufficient when it comes to food. As a result, even though Iran’s economy is hurting and inflation is high, cities and towns have had no shortages of important goods or services to date. “It’s incredible how well-run everything has been inside of the country,” Hamid Reza, an engineer who regularly travels between Isfahan and Tehran for work, said. “Things are expensive, but there have been no shortages whatsoever across the country. Everything has been managed internally with a lot of care.”
That is not to say that Iranians feel optimistic about their country. They are anxious about the future, and they yearn for a return to calm and economic relief. But they do not see the U.S.-Israeli war as liberating. Instead, they see it as gratuitous aggression, and the resulting nationalism has blurred the lines between political factions and diminished the likelihood of another political uprising. The war, then, has strengthened the Islamic Republic.
PAIN AND GAIN
Much like its population, the Iranian government has adopted a more hostile view of Washington since the conflict began. The country’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has moved trusted lieutenants to key roles (even as he himself remains in hiding), and they are largely hard-line figures tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. These people, including Mohsen Rezaei, the national security adviser, and Hossein Taeb, the commander of Iran’s main domestic paramilitary forces, think deterring further attacks requires a decisive, aggressive response to any provocations. They are skeptical that Washington is serious about diplomacy. They point out that the United States has twice attacked Iran amid negotiations and then walked away from the memorandum of understanding it signed with Iran in June—and thus argue that it cannot be trusted. In fact, they believe that if the United States shows interest in talks, it might even be planning for renewed attacks, as it was in June 2025 and February 2026.
Iran’s relative moderates feel somewhat differently. These elites, which include Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, former President Hasan Rouhani, and former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, have consistently argued that Tehran should keep looking for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Pezeshkian and Ghalibaf have highlighted the economic hardships facing ordinary people. But the distance between them and the country’s hard-line leaders is not as great as it might seem. As one analyst familiar with these figures told us, “No one is saying Iran should surrender.” They may see economic relief as a top priority, yet their solution is to force the United States to implement the memorandum of understanding it signed in June. That deal, in Iran’s view, committed Washington to unfreezing all of Iran’s assets, lifting all sanctions, never striking the country again, and paying reparations in exchange for nothing more than a cease-fire and renewed commerce through the Strait of Hormuz (on which Iran could still charge fees). Since the end of summer, Rezaei and Ghalibaf have declared that diplomacy must start with the United States returning to the memorandum. As the same analyst told us after recent UN meetings in New York, these figures think that “Trump is not ready” for real talks. Instead, they believe that Trump will return to this deal only if he comes to terms with Iran’s victory, and that means increasing the war’s costs for the United States.
Iran’s behavior will therefore be unrestrained and disproportionate. If the war resumes, it will attack across the whole region, not just in the country’s immediate vicinity. The dominant view in Tehran is that prudence and predictability will only invite greater U.S. pressure and will do nothing to advance its main military goals: making Washington pull all its troops from the Persian Gulf and accept Iran’s primacy. Iran’s repeated attacks on American military bases and facilities in Jordan, Syria, and across the Persian Gulf are already aimed at this objective. To an extent, they have succeeded. The strikes have seriously damaged several U.S. assets, forcing the United States to move many of its operations and military resources to Israel and Jordan and rely on a base in the central Indian Ocean for logistical support. The threat of Iranian attacks has even pushed Washington to withdraw all its B-1 bombers from a base in the United Kingdom.
Iran believes it can coerce Washington into some kind of economic understanding.
Tehran is simultaneously trying to get Washington’s Gulf partners to close U.S. military bases in their countries. To do so, it has openly declared that peace and security in the Persian Gulf will depend on pushing out the American military and has repeatedly bombed Gulf states it suspects of aiding the U.S. war effort. Iran is ultimately unlikely to end the United States’ military presence in the Gulf region. But it has done enough to make Arab states think twice about relying on the American security umbrella, which could mean a smaller U.S. military footprint in the region.
Iran, of course, could force the American military out of its neighborhood without obtaining economic relief. In fact, the Trump administration announced “economic D-Day” in part because the military was fatigued and because Iranian attacks on the U.S. Navy have forced Washington’s ships farther away from Iranian shores. But Iran believes it can coerce its adversary into some kind of economic understanding by causing sufficient financial suffering. To that end, Tehran has worked to drive up the price of oil, gas, diesel, jet fuel, and other oil derivatives by attacking several energy facilities in the Gulf region, including Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas field (in retaliation for an Israeli attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field) and oil facilities in the United Arab Emirates’ Fujairah port. Iran is also striking tankers ferrying oil and natural gas. And it is trying to consolidate its control over the Strait of Hormuz, which it sees as sovereign Iranian territory. Washington has fought back hard against this effort, and has recently succeeded at helping tankers pass through the chokepoint. But these operations have required enormous naval resources, and the United States cannot sustain them forever.
Iran’s regional partners are also lending it a hand. Iranian-backed Iraqi forces have attacked a vital oil pipeline carrying Saudi Arabia’s oil to facilities on the Red Sea, which will markedly reduce global oil supplies for months. Its Houthi allies in Yemen have also consistently attacked Saudi oil facilities. The Houthis have even captured vast new territory and reached the Bab el Mandeb Strait, helping them menace the Red Sea—through which 12 percent of world trade passes. These attacks also showed that, although Iran’s network may be battered in Lebanon and Syria, it remains quite capable overall.
STEADY AS SHE GOES
The United States may think that it has cornered Iran. But Tehran disagrees. It does not see itself as on its heels or out of options. Instead, it believes that it has won great-power status. It is proud of its military performance and feels as if it commands newfound international respect. Officials in Tehran cheered images of Iran’s delegation being enthusiastically received by member states at the September meetings of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the non-Western BRICS consortium.
Iran is still facing monumental challenges, and it has not found a way to turn what it has won in the war into enduring, peacetime gains. But it is ready to fight on, if and when it needs to. The government believes, as one Iranian senior analyst close to the country’s policymakers put it, that the Iranian people “are willing to endure economic pain and the suffering, if it means that [they] are going to win.” And its elites have coalesced around a shared strategy. Tehran, in other words, is confident that it can prevail by staying the course. No compromises are necessary
