On September 10th, 2025, the day after the Israeli strike on Qatar, I attended Professor Vali Nasr’s book launch at Johns Hopkins SAIS. With escalating tensions in the Middle East, understanding Iran’s strategic calculations has never been more critical. Professor Nasr, an expert on Iran, confronts these pressing challenges in his new book, “Iran’s Grand Strategy.” The event highlighted a pivotal insight: Iran’s approach is not just ideological, but a calculated response to shifting regional power dynamics. This realization underscores the urgency for scholars and policymakers to reassess Iran’s place in the geopolitical landscape.
The book launch centered on three interconnected themes: Iran’s nuclear ambitions, its internal political culture, and the collapse of its forward defense strategy against Israel. Central to the debate was how the West should understand and perceive Iran’s calculations.
An Analytic Overview
Iran’s path to its current position involves historical, political, and socio-economic factors. After the 1979 Revolution, Iran cut ties with the U.S., asserting independence. Key moments like the Iran-Contra Affair and nuclear talks highlight Iran’s standalone stance, which it believes has been vindicated. Some groups see themselves as outliers, misjudged by the West, while the ruling elite views itself as opposed to the global order. However, no matter how different these groups may be, the 1979 revolution’s break from the West remains central to their identity. While sanctions cause hardship, leadership sees this as necessary resistance.
The West often oversimplifies Iran’s motives as purely ideological or irrational, suggesting Tehran’s actions aim to disrupt stability driven by religious extremism. Inside Iran, resilience and pride in resistance are key to its long-term confrontational strategy, seen as a stand against Western imperialism. This strategic mentality shapes policy and identity. Such elite-driven strategies, common in developing countries, promote exceptionalism to unify the nation. In Iran, political exceptionalism is portrayed as resistance and survival. However, what Iran’s leadership frames as strategic resilience and national pride, the West often interprets as political failure and isolation—a fundamental disconnect that shapes mutual perceptions and policy responses.
Since 1979, Iran’s leadership has positioned itself as fighting imperialism, drawing more from anti-colonial theorists like Frantz Fanon than from purely religious doctrine. The Iran-Iraq war transformed Iran into a security-focused deep state and intensified national protectiveness. Over time, public attitudes have shifted: recent conflicts have not triggered the mass protests seen in earlier decades, reflecting society’s evolving relationship with the state’s confrontational posture. Within Iran’s power circles, debates continue about the country’s losses in what Israel calls two six-day wars—a twelve-day conflict that exposed vulnerabilities in Iran’s regional strategy. Some Iranian strategists argue that maintaining robust defense capabilities and forward engagement remain essential to national security, while others question the sustainability of this approach given its economic and diplomatic costs.
Leadership Styles and Consequences
October 7th was not just a failure on Israel’s part; it was also an intelligence failure of the Iranian regime with respect to Hamas. Illustrating this point, there is a joke about the level of security in Iran: Hamas claims they do not share information with Iran, because if you tell Iran, it means Israelis know as well. Specifically, two critical missteps stand out. Firstly, Tehran underestimated the importance of maintaining a robust intelligence network capable of independently verifying Hamas’s intentions, which led to a dangerous overreliance on second-hand reports. Secondly, the Iranian regime failed to adapt quickly to emerging regional dynamics, leaving its intelligence apparatus unprepared for Hamas’s strategic shift in priorities.
On a related note, Nasr criticized the attack on General Suleimani, stating he should not have been assassinated. Amidst all the technological advancements, the fundamentals of human nature are often overlooked. Suleimani was a war-hardened leader with deep connections in the Levant and the Arab world. Hasan Nasrallah, his successor, was different. Hamas did not favor Nasrallah’s leadership style; this may explain why Hamas withheld information about the attack, which they had been planning even before the Israel-Saudi talks.
One revealing theme at the launch related to timing and symbolism: the tense climate in the West Bank and Jordan was heightened by Israel’s far-right minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visits to the Temple Mount (Al-Aqsa compound), especially on significant dates like Tisha B’Av. Historically, the Temple Mount has been a flashpoint for conflict, as seen during Ariel Sharon’s 2000 visit, which contributed to the outbreak of the Second Intifada. These incidents escalated regional outrage right before Hamas launched its attack, seizing a moment when unrest was already high. Neither Hamas nor outside analysts had anticipated the subsequent scale of destruction, which altered the course of events in the region.
Had Suleimani not been killed, the regional dynamics might have evolved differently. His authority and control over Hezbollah were unparalleled, and he possessed the strategic acumen and personal relationships necessary to navigate complex regional crises. The Iranian public’s frustration with their government’s regional policies has become increasingly visible, particularly as economic hardships mount at home. Many Iranians reject what they perceive as imposed moral obligations to support foreign causes when their own survival is threatened. This sentiment reflects a broader shift in public opinion: Iranians increasingly prioritize domestic concerns and self-preservation over the state’s regional ambitions, questioning why they must continue bearing the costs of policies that bring economic hardship and international isolation.
Meanwhile, for Israel, Hezbollah has remained a central concern. Israeli officials describe Hezbollah as the most serious military challenge they face, one that could draw the country into a full-scale regional war if mismanaged. These risks intensified after Suleimani, while serving as commander of Iran’s Quds Force, built Hezbollah into the centerpiece of Tehran’s forward-defense strategy. His assassination revealed a critical vulnerability: much of Iran’s regional deterrence depended not merely on institutional structures, but on the personal authority, relationships, and strategic vision of individual leaders. This personalization of power, while effective in the short term, created systemic fragility that became apparent after Suleimani’s death.
This context explains why Iran’s strategy, often caricatured in the West as ideological posturing, is better understood as defensive pragmatism. This entails maintaining external engagements specifically to keep Israel and its proxies engaged beyond Iran’s borders, thus ensuring they cannot pose a direct threat to Iran itself. The logic is simple: Iran’s actions are strategically calculated to preserve its security and sovereignty. After the war in Gaza, many Iranians acknowledge this reasoning, though they also question why they must continue paying the price through economic hardship and international isolation.
The Midnight Hammer
On June 22, 2025, following a series of Israeli strikes beginning on June 13 (Operation Rising Lion) against Iranian military and nuclear infrastructure, the U.S. Air Force and Navy attacked Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. This operation involved Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs (MOPs) dropped by B-2 stealth bombers, along with Tomahawk missiles from a submarine. These attacks marked a significant escalation after the initial Israeli operations.
It shocked both Iranian leaders and the public. People braced for the worst, even war, but Washington saw the bombings as an effort to cool tempers rather than escalate. Some considered it a “war stopper,” a strike intended to force restraint rather than all-out conflict.
But what did the war achieve? Interpretations diverge. Iran views the strikes as humiliating—proof that Israel could penetrate its defenses. Yet the nuclear program survived, unlike in Iraq or Libya. The regime is weakened but not toppled: a wounded enemy, not defeated. For Israel, this outcome presents a strategic dilemma: the ambiguity of partial success may incentivize further strikes while Iran remains vulnerable, yet such action risks escalating into broader regional conflict. Israeli strategists must weigh whether to consolidate gains through diplomacy or pursue additional military operations to more decisively degrade Iran’s capabilities.
Inside Iran, frustration grew. Accepting a ceasefire was seen as a mistake, with blame directed at “the state” rather than the supreme leader. The nuclear program, Tehran’s key bargaining chip, is now more vital. Without it, Iran risks becoming isolated and vulnerable, like Venezuela. Some believe pursuing the bomb is inevitable, but the decision isn’t simple. Iran lacks reliable deterrence against Israel, has gaps in air defenses, and must seal security leaks. The program is both a shield and a liability.
Meanwhile, a war of narratives and perspectives continues. Perceptions of destruction and success vary dramatically depending on one’s vantage point. What one side characterizes as “obliterated,” another describes as “insufficiently obliterated,” revealing how deeply subjective assessments of military outcomes can be. This divergence in perspective applies across the region: international observers, regional actors, and local populations each interpret the same events through fundamentally different frameworks shaped by their strategic interests, historical experiences, and political objectives. These competing narratives complicate efforts to achieve a diplomatic resolution, as parties cannot even agree on basic assessments of the current situation.
Edited By: Ana-Maria-Elena Radu