‘It will rain death and destruction from the skies all day every day.’
Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense
On 5 March, Reuters published a report that appeared, at first glance, removed from the illegal war the US and Israel had launched against Iran. It concerned Ukraine’s ‘missile starvation’ and its inability to respond to intensifying Russian attacks. One source told the agency that there had been ‘no interceptor to load on the planes for a month.’ That month, as one might reasonably suspect, was the period during which the current attack on Iran was being prepared.
Trump, who has a well-documented relationship with the truth, spoke of the ‘disappearance’ of Tehran’s nuclear programme after the so-called ’12-Day War’, the first large-scale US-Israeli assault. But analysts noted that the damage inflicted on Israel by Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes was severe enough that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, subject to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes, asked the US to pause operations so they could ‘be better prepared.’ Israeli tax records revealed that Iranian missiles left more than 30,000 homes damaged. The extreme censorship imposed by Israel prevents any reliable count of casualties, but the scale of destruction makes clear there were many.
The new offensive, from the attackers’ perspective, had to be prepared with sufficient interception systems in place to absorb the Iranian response that would inevitably follow.
The effort to destabilise the Iranian government appears, in retrospect, to have been part of this preparatory framework. This included the bloody crackdown on mass demonstrations at the end of 2025, during which thousands were killed, with former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledging that ‘Mossad agents marched alongside the protesters.’ Parallel talks in Vienna on Iran’s nuclear programme also appear to have served this wider context.
The extent of the concessions Iran had offered in those talks was laid bare by Omani Foreign Minister Sayyed Badr Albusaidi: zero uranium enrichment and the presence of US observers at UN inspections were among the most significant. Iran’s foreign minister had also visited every Gulf state and Azerbaijan to warn that if Iran were attacked and US bases on their territory were used, or if they provided any assistance to the US and Israel, they too would become targets. Iranian officials had consistently stated that any attack would trigger the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 25% of the world’s energy supply passes. The US was aware of these warnings. It judged them unlikely to be carried out, even as Iran was fighting for its survival.
The Omani minister’s disclosures came one day before the Israeli and US attack, a last attempt to establish, on the record, who bore responsibility for the disaster that was about to engulf the entire West Asian region.
While the Vienna talks were under way, the US was reinforcing Israel’s defence capabilities by every available means, including by stripping systems from other allied countries. Ukraine’s ‘missile starvation’ was the most visible consequence of this reallocation. The Gulf states’ defences, by contrast, were not being strengthened.
Israel’s motivations require little elaboration. Iran’s post-revolutionary support for the Palestinian cause, its backing for Palestinian resistance movements, and its support for Hezbollah, which helped prevent the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in 2006 and the broader project of an expanded Israeli state, made Tehran Israel’s primary strategic target. Netanyahu himself has spoken of the ‘forty years’ he spent pursuing this war, and his statements to that effect have long circulated publicly. For Israel, Iran represents the final and greatest obstacle on a path towards the elimination of Palestinian resistance, the subjugation of Arab states and the consolidation of regional dominance.
US objectives are less coherent and have shifted repeatedly. From Trump’s initial statement, invoking the 1979 hostage crisis and expressing concern for the Iranian people, to Hegseth’s declarations about raining ‘destruction and death’ on civilians without any such concern, the stated rationale for the war has been contradictory throughout. The most candid explanation came from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose account caused a stir precisely because it appeared to be truthful: the US entered the war because Israel had decided to attack, and Washington concluded that the US would become a target regardless. Iran, having already absorbed the ’12-Day War’, was entitled under international law to strike. It had refrained, both to preserve the space for dialogue and because it understood its own capabilities, capabilities the US had chosen to discount.
The first phase of the offensive, as envisaged by the US, centred on ‘decapitation’: the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior military officials. The strike killed Khamenei at home, where he was with his daughter’s family and close associates. According to statements carried by the Iranian press, he had chosen to remain at home rather than seek shelter because he did not wish to hide while the people had nowhere to go. Whatever the tactical reasoning, the political effect was the opposite of what Washington had intended. Rather than triggering the collapse of the regime or drawing out opposition forces capable of replacing it, the killing unified the Iranian population. It also galvanised the approximately 200 million Shia Muslims worldwide, including significant minorities and majorities across the Gulf states. The demonstrations in Bahrain, where Shia Muslims constitute more than 65% of the population but are governed by a Sunni administration installed under British colonialism, were a visible sign of this wider mobilisation.
Netanyahu had twice, even before the ’12-Day War’, addressed the Iranian people directly in public proclamations, urging them to rise against their government and floating the son of the last Shah as a prospective alternative. Some analysts with sources in Washington suggest that Trump had been persuaded by Netanyahu and his own circle of Zionist advisers that between 80% and 85% of Iranians wanted the regime to fall, and that he preferred to accept this assessment over the objections of his own generals.
The attack on a girls’ primary school, in which students were killed, was another act that served to unite Iranians rather than fracture them. According to the US media outlet Breaking Points, the date of the attack was chosen by Israel and fell on the Saturday before the Jewish festival of Purim, during which the passage from Deuteronomy calling for the extermination of the Amalek is read in synagogues. The US had expected the operation to be concluded by the following Monday, so as not to unsettle financial markets, with economic editors reporting that assurances had been given that it would be ‘finished in five days at most.’ As of writing, the war is in its eighth day.
Iran had anticipated the attack. It responded within 30 minutes of the initial strikes. It had, in a broader sense, been anticipating and preparing for such an assault for 40 years, since the end of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, during which the entire Western bloc had lined up behind Saddam Hussein. The missiles deployed so far are largely older technology, produced between 2012 and 2014. The strategy appears to be one of attrition: exhausting the interceptor systems of the attacking forces.
Military analysts note that Iran’s defence architecture is highly decentralised. Launch systems are distributed across 57 provinces, and local commanders are authorised to act independently, without requiring authorisation from the central government.
‘Those who should be worried are those Iranians who want to live.’
Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of Defense
The first shift in US strategy bore the hallmarks of the Secretary of Defense’s disregard for civilian life. The destruction of major Iranian naval vessels, which play a key role in controlling the Strait of Hormuz, was announced as an objective. Trump was heard declaring that he would ‘send warships’ to protect tankers in the strait. Then came threats of ‘destruction and death from the sky’, as US air superiority began to be deployed in double strikes, including on hospitals, schools and broadcasting infrastructure, replicating the pattern of conduct seen in Gaza. Despite the mounting civilian toll, Iran continued to fight. As former British diplomat and analyst Alastair Crooke has observed, ‘Iran is waging a 21st-century asymmetric war against 20th-century military options.’ The systematic disabling of radars, leaving US pilots effectively blind, and the construction of decoy targets helped further deplete the interceptor stockpiles of the attacking forces.
Within five days it had become apparent that airstrikes alone, however intensive, would not produce the outcome Washington sought. The Iranian population did not revolt. It mobilised. Iranians took to the streets despite the dangers. In the first four days, US aircraft flew more than a thousand sorties, a number comparable to the opening days of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The results, from a US perspective, were no more encouraging.
The next strategic shift followed: ground forces were now said to be required. Intelligence cooperation with Kurdish armed organisations, which the US had only recently abandoned, was reported to have begun. The Senate was briefed on operational details three days ago. Senators did not leave that briefing alarmed by the scale of the air campaign. They left because they had been told about boots on the ground.
The ensuing domestic debate within the United States about ground intervention, the vocal opposition from prominent figures within the MAGA movement, and Iran’s declaration that ‘we decide when the war ends’, in direct response to Trump’s demands for ‘complete surrender’, mark the opening of the second week of the assault on the Iranian people, in the middle of Ramadan and on the eve of Nowruz, the Iranian new year. Iran is bracing for a prolonged conflict, comparable in its duration to the war of the 1980s. The United States remains a dangerous and unpredictable nuclear power.
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