It has been 12 days since the United States and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran, and President Donald Trump is demanding “unconditional surrender,” but the Iranian regime is “digging in” for a protracted conflict.
“The Islamic regime is digging in for a war of attrition,” Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, told The Daily Signal Wednesday.
The regime, now under the leadership of radical Islamic hardliner Mojtaba Khamenei, wants to survive with a “functioning security architecture, not even civil architecture,” Roman said.
“They don’t care if they can feed their people. They just care if they have the weapons to be able to fend off or at least survive long enough to make the price for trying to take them out high enough” so that the U.S. and Israel stop the war, he added.
While Iran might want to create a war of attrition, the Trump administration has repeatedly stressed it is not interested in a “forever war” scenario with Iran, and neither is Israel, according to Eylon Levy, former spokesman for the Israeli government.
For 20 years, Israel had a “war of attrition with Hamas in Gaza,” he explained, and “that was a threat we tolerated until it exploded on Oct. 7.” He told The Daily Signal Israel is not interested in another “war of attrition” with Iran.
Hamas killed 1,200 people in Israel and took another 251 hostages during the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks.
Iran still has the capability to launch drones, but the U.S. has eliminated a significant amount of Iran’s missile launchers, so while Iran can remain a “nuisance,” it is likely not “thinking strategically at all,” said Victoria Coates, a former deputy national security adviser to President Donald Trump.
“I think they are in utter disarray,” Coates, who now serves as vice president of the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, said of the Iranian regime.
“The leadership is completely incapacitated,” she said. “It’s possible the new supreme leader doesn’t even know that he’s supreme leader, he’s so severely injured and nobody else would take the job.”
The regime chose Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to be the new leader of Iran, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing Israeli intelligence that Khamenei was “lightly wounded” in the joint Israeli-U.S. strikes.
Despite the “disarray” the regime finds itself in today, it is still managing to extract a price on the U.S. and U.S. allies in the region.
Drones
Iran is firing fewer missiles and the regime has been weakened following more than 5,500 U.S. strikes, but Iran is inflicting a cost on the U.S. and Israel, Janatan Sayeh, a research analyst focused on Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, explained.
Iran is firing “cheap” drones at Israel and U.S. allies in the region, and expensive Patriot missiles are being used to intercept these drones, which bears “a very heavy cost on us, and our allies,” Sayeh said.
“So by launching all these cheaper materials against us and the U.S. intercepting [them] with more expensive equipment, that does create a war of attrition,” he said.
Strait of Hormuz
A central “cost” Iran has been able to leverage against the U.S. is the security of the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil shipping lane.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say they will not allow “export of a single liter of oil” through the passage. Oil topped $100 a barrel early this week, causing gas prices to jump above $3.50 a gallon, up from $3.20 a gallon a week ago.
Oil prices came down after Trump indicated the war might be coming to an end, but on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Iran’s military command threatened that oil prices would rise to “$200 a barrel.”
The Gulf Arab states targeted by Iran, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, “need to step up,” Roman said, and “mitigate any efforts by the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and its navy to close off the Strait of Hormuz.”
The U.S. has struck more than 60 Iranian ships since Operation Epic Fury began on Feb. 28, according to U.S. Central Command.
Iran’s threats to attack ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz “underscore the importance of America destroying the Iranian Navy,” Levy said.
“A regime that is willing and eager to inflict such economic damage on the whole world cannot be allowed to possess the warships and speedboats with which they can hold the whole world to ransom,” Levy said.
If Iran maintains the ability to “block the Strait of Hormuz whenever they want,” Levy argues, “they won’t hesitate to do it because they’re nuts, and that’s why Trump is saying this needs to end with unconditional surrender, and/or Iran not having an ability to wage war anymore.”
Coates estimated that “Iran has weeks, not months” left before it is no longer able to continue the fight.
