When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, most people outside the global military community had never heard of the Iranian Shahed drone. The world learned about it from the low hum in social media videos of the swarms of the inexpensive drones over the Ukrainian battlefield. They were not very accurate or advanced, but their strength was in wearing down defenses over time. Ukrainian officials called them a “flying nuisance,” a weapon meant to exhaust defenses rather than deliver a decisive strike.
For Western capitals, particularly Washington, Iran’s decision to provide thousands of these drones to Russia marked a turning point in Iranian grand strategy. During nuclear talks in Vienna in 2022, several Western diplomats confided in me that Tehran had crossed an invisible line, demonstrating its readiness to shape events in conflicts far beyond its own borders. But for Iran, the conflict provided a different result. Ukraine became a testing ground. Russian battlefield improvements, developed through hard-won combat experience, enhanced drones’ effectiveness, extending their reach and impact.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, most people outside the global military community had never heard of the Iranian Shahed drone. The world learned about it from the low hum in social media videos of the swarms of the inexpensive drones over the Ukrainian battlefield. They were not very accurate or advanced, but their strength was in wearing down defenses over time. Ukrainian officials called them a “flying nuisance,” a weapon meant to exhaust defenses rather than deliver a decisive strike.
For Western capitals, particularly Washington, Iran’s decision to provide thousands of these drones to Russia marked a turning point in Iranian grand strategy. During nuclear talks in Vienna in 2022, several Western diplomats confided in me that Tehran had crossed an invisible line, demonstrating its readiness to shape events in conflicts far beyond its own borders. But for Iran, the conflict provided a different result. Ukraine became a testing ground. Russian battlefield improvements, developed through hard-won combat experience, enhanced drones’ effectiveness, extending their reach and impact.
The message was clear: Iran had started fighting a new kind of war, one focused on endurance instead of control. And in the multiple confrontations between Iran and Israel over the past several years, this proved effective. Iran was able to overwhelm several layers of Israeli missile interceptors with drones and less effective missiles, allowing the bigger ones to hit.
Today, as the United States begins to increase its military presence around Iran while making tentative diplomatic overtures, that lesson becomes more pertinent than ever. The current crisis is rapidly escalating to resemble the weeks leading up to June 2025, when Israel launched its latest war against Iran just as Washington and Tehran were about to engage in another round of nuclear talks.
Then, Iran’s negotiating strategy was simple: Zero nuclear weapons is acceptable, but zero enrichment meant no deal. The United States, on the other hand, approached the negotiating table with the opposite assumption in mind: Zero enrichment was simply the only acceptable path to a guarantee of no nuclear weapons. The difference was not merely a matter of technical and ideological definitions. Each side had a different definition of stability.
Since then, little has changed. Iran is still negotiating under growing military pressure.
Iranian leaders keep saying that diplomacy can prevent war, just as they did before fighting broke out in June 2025. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump keeps warning Iran that it has only days to make a deal before military action begins.
In Washington, more people are asking if a limited strike could force concessions without starting a larger war. But this idea may rest on a flawed assumption. Wars are not bound by plans; they are limited only when both sides want to keep them contained. Right now, it seems that shared interest may be gone.
Recently, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has moved away from “tactical restraint” and started using the language of “confrontation through the lens of Karbala.” This refers to the key Shiite story of Imam Hussein, who chose martyrdom over submitting to an unjust ruler.
For external audiences, such references may have a symbolic meaning. For Shiite political consciousness, however, Karbala is a moral and political code. It is the glorification of resistance in the face of existential threat over compromise. The idea of “dying on one’s feet and not living on one’s knees” challenges the United States’ logic of proportional response and coercive diplomacy.
By referencing historical tyrants such as Yazid, Nimrod, and Egyptian pharaohs, the Iranian leader makes it clear that the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy is increasingly based on resistance rather than capitulation. In this regard, a limited U.S. strike will not be seen as a signal of strength. Rather, it will be recognized as an attack that requires a response to maintain moral legitimacy. And, contrary to previous attacks, a face-saving response will make things worse this time, especially if it’s followed by unbalanced negotiations.
Washington sees military pressure as a means of diplomatic leverage. Tehran increasingly sees conflict as a challenge of ideological survival. The two may be speaking in entirely different strategic languages.
The United States’ military strategy has recently been based on calibrated force and punitive strikes aimed at restoring deterrence without escalating conflict. Previous military operations in Venezuela and Syria have reinforced the confidence that escalation can be managed through precision and signaling.
However, Iran is a different strategic environment. Carl von Clausewitz once described war as an activity that is characterized by friction, the gradual buildup of uncertainty that turns simple plans into complex and unpredictable events. Once escalation has begun on the grounds of existential threat, the boundaries of escalation become increasingly fluid.
Iran is not a nonstate actor that can be taken out with a single strike. It is a large country with widely spread capabilities, making it hard to control escalation. Its expanding arsenal is built on this idea. The Shahed drone program illustrates a warfare strategy that relies on persistence rather than precision. In addition to ballistic and cruise missiles, cyber warfare, Gulf maritime pressure points, and allied networks in the region, Iran’s deterrence strategy promotes horizontal escalation. Warfare expands across multiple theaters rather than deepening along a single axis.
The real question is not if escalation will happen, but where it will start. It is evident that Iran’s regional partners have been weakened. In Lebanon, Hezbollah took heavy blows in its war with Israel in 2024. Iraqi militias are now facing increasing internal pressures, and the regional environment has limited Iran’s escalation flexibility.
From Washington’s view, this weakening might look like less danger. But weaker deterrence systems are not always safer. When they feel threatened, they can become less restrained. During the 2024 conflict, Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies carefully measured their responses, partly due to reluctance and partly due to hopes that diplomacy would stop escalation. A situation characterized by the perceived danger of regime change in Tehran would completely upend these calculations.
Hezbollah, which is closely tied to the Islamic Revolution’s ideology, would face a major threat if the regime fell. In that case, restraint could turn into all-out resistance, fighting not just to survive but to assert its existence. The same could happen with Iraqi groups like Kataib Hezbollah. The Houthis in Yemen have their own goals, but their actions during the Gaza war showed they are willing to spread conflict further, using maritime attacks in the name of ideological unity. This would likely lead to horizontal escalation, with several semi-independent confrontations unfolding across different fronts rather than a single, organized regional conflict.
But what if a U.S. strike leads to a change of leadership in Tehran? Western observers often link Iran’s hard-line stance to Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But the Islamic Republic’s strength lies in a broader set of institutions. Within the Assembly of Experts, the constitutional body charged with selecting Iran’s supreme leader, an ideologically consistent group has been preparing for succession for years. Groups loyal to this current regime range from clerical institutions to thoroughly distrustful political institutions.
If Washington thinks military pressure will break Iran’s leadership, then it may miss the fact that succession plans have already been designed with the expectation of conflict and that those plans were accelerated after the June 2025 war. A strike meant to weaken hard-liners could actually speed up the uniting of leaders around a wartime mindset. The irony is striking: Efforts to force change could create a post-Khamenei establishment that is even more rigid and unpredictable than the current one.
The great Clausewitz famously wrote, “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult.” On a strategic planning map in Washington, a strike against a missile site may look like a controlled act of signaling. In Middle Eastern politics and ideology, however, the boundaries begin to dissolve once escalation begins. And when wars begin this way, they rarely stay limited for long.
