Erfan Fard is a counter-terrorism analyst and Middle East Studies researcher based in Washington, D.C.
(Oct. 23, 2026 / JNS)
Wars are not always lost on the battlefield. Sometimes, they are lost afterward, when military superiority is mistaken for strategic victory, intelligence achievements are surrendered to diplomatic illusions, and an adversary is granted the time necessary to rebuild what it has lost.
This is the central danger confronting the United States in its unfinished struggle with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The initial U.S.-Israeli military campaign fundamentally altered Tehran’s security environment. The killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the elimination of other senior regime figures and the degradation of military capabilities shattered the image of an untouchable ruling establishment.
Yet the most consequential question remains unanswered: Can the United States translate intelligence superiority and military success into a durable strategic outcome, or will Tehran survive by exploiting Washington’s political hesitation?
For nearly half a century, the Islamic Republic has operated through an architecture of power extending far beyond Iran’s borders. Its revolutionary ideology, intelligence services, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its Quds Force, diplomatic missions, financial intermediaries and terrorist proxies form interconnected instruments of statecraft.
Tehran’s foreign policy cannot be understood through conventional diplomacy alone. Its embassies and consulates may perform legitimate diplomatic functions; however, cases of Iranian intelligence activity under such cover demonstrate why these institutions’ security implications deserve sustained scrutiny.
The distinction matters. A conventional state employs diplomacy to manage conflict and advance national interests. The Islamic Republic has repeatedly combined diplomatic engagement with clandestine operations, coercion, ideological confrontation and proxy warfare.
Tehran’s foreign policy cannot be understood through conventional diplomacy alone
Iran’s representatives speak the language of negotiation while its security apparatus maintains capabilities designed to threaten adversaries abroad. This dual structure is not incidental to the regime’s behavior; it has become one of its defining strategic characteristics.
The regime’s historical reliance on Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, the Houthis and other armed networks illustrates a doctrine built around asymmetric power.
Tehran cannot consistently match American conventional military superiority. Instead, it seeks to impose costs through deniable operations, maritime disruption, regional instability, intelligence penetration and political intimidation. The objective is not necessarily to defeat the United States militarily. It is to make American strategic success sufficiently expensive, complicated and politically exhausting that Washington eventually accepts an unsatisfactory settlement.
The Strait of Hormuz exemplifies this calculation. Tehran does not need to defeat the U.S. Navy to influence global energy markets. Threats against commercial shipping, maritime mines, drones and uncertainty surrounding transit can generate economic consequences disproportionate to the military resources employed.
Thus, energy insecurity becomes political leverage. Every increase in transportation costs and every disruption to maritime commerce potentially strengthens Tehran’s bargaining position.
This is where intelligence becomes decisive.
The CIA and Mossad possess capabilities that conventional military assessments cannot replace. Understanding the Islamic Republic requires penetrating its decision-making structures, mapping its security networks, identifying vulnerabilities within the IRGC, evaluating nuclear capabilities and distinguishing genuine military intentions from calculated deception.
Intelligence superiority can expose the distance between Tehran’s public threats and its actual operational capacity.
Mossad’s seizure of Iran’s nuclear archive in 2018 demonstrated the extraordinary strategic consequences of successful intelligence operations. The assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020, widely attributed to Israel, further exposed vulnerabilities within Tehran’s counterintelligence defenses.
These episodes challenged the regime’s claims of internal security and illustrated how clandestine capabilities can influence a confrontation without conventional territorial conquest.
U.S.-Israeli intelligence cooperation represents a formidable strategic advantage, although cooperation should not be confused with proof of joint participation in every operation. The significance lies in the combination of intelligence collection, analytical depth, technological superiority and ability to identify weaknesses in an otherwise opaque security establishment.
However, while intelligence success creates opportunity, it does not automatically produce political victory.
There is also a dimension Washington cannot afford to overlook: Iran is not the Islamic Republic.
U.S. President Donald Trump now confronts the central paradox of the Iran crisis. His administration has demonstrated military resolve against Tehran, but the return to negotiations raises the possibility that the Islamic Republic could recover diplomatically from losses suffered militarily.
The regime understands the American political calendar, the sensitivity of energy prices, the approaching midterm elections and the domestic pressures accompanying prolonged confrontation.
For Tehran, time itself can become a strategic weapon.
A government struggling to restore military capacity may find diplomatic delay more valuable than immediate agreement. Negotiations can preserve ambiguity, complicate American decision-making, divide international partners and create space for institutional recovery. What appears in Washington as a search for peace could be interpreted in Tehran as an opportunity to survive.
History offers an uncomfortable analogy: Neville Chamberlain believed that the Munich Agreement could secure peace with Adolf Hitler. The circumstances of 1938 and today’s Middle East are different, but the enduring lesson concerns the danger of mistaking diplomatic documents for strategic transformation. An agreement does not change an adversary’s intentions merely because signatures have been exchanged.
The Islamic Republic’s ideological foundations make this problem especially significant. Khomeinism established a system of clerical supremacy in which hostility toward the United States and Israel became intertwined with revolutionary legitimacy.
Thus, Iran’s institutions were designed not simply to govern Iran but to preserve an ideological order through internal repression and external confrontation. A diplomatic agreement that leaves this architecture untouched cannot, by itself, eliminate the security challenges the regime generates.
The death of Khamenei created a historic rupture, but the disappearance of a dictator does not necessarily mean the disappearance of dictatorship. Security institutions, ideological networks, financial interests and mechanisms of coercion can outlive individual rulers. The decisive issue is whether the regime’s capacity to regenerate survives the destruction of its leadership and military assets.
Khomeinism established a system of clerical supremacy in which hostility toward America and Israel became intertwined with revolutionary legitimacy.
There is also a dimension Washington cannot afford to overlook: Iran is not the Islamic Republic.
The Iranian people have endured decades of repression, corruption, executions, international isolation and the consequences of the regime’s regional adventurism. Many opponents of the Islamic Republic welcomed the military setbacks suffered by its leadership and viewed Trump as a symbol of possible political change. His portraits appeared at demonstrations abroad, reflecting the hopes of Iranians who distinguish their country’s future from the survival of its ruling establishment.
Those aspirations introduce a political dimension that cannot be resolved through intelligence operations alone. Regime change and political transition are not interchangeable with military destruction. A credible transition depends on domestic legitimacy, institutional continuity, protection of civilians and the ability of Iranians themselves to determine their political future.
For Washington, the challenge is therefore larger than negotiating uranium stockpiles or reopening maritime routes. Nuclear restrictions, independent verification, counterterrorism enforcement and maritime security are essential components of any settlement. But the deeper strategic question concerns whether the Islamic Republic retains the institutional ability to resume coercion once immediate pressure subsides.
Trump’s historic opportunity is not simply to claim another military victory or secure another diplomatic agreement. It is to establish whether American power can produce lasting security rather than another cycle of confrontation, temporary restraint, reconstruction and renewed crisis.
The enduring lesson of intelligence history is that knowing an adversary’s weaknesses is not the same as possessing a strategy to exploit the resulting opportunity. Tactical brilliance cannot compensate for strategic ambiguity. Nor can the destruction of military infrastructure substitute for a clear understanding of the political order that may emerge afterward.
Washington’s unfinished business with Tehran is ultimately a question of strategic consequences. If the Islamic Republic survives with its coercive institutions substantially intact, then today’s military and intelligence achievements may become the opening chapter of another confrontation. If a legitimate political transition in Iran brings an end to the regime’s machinery of repression and state-sponsored terrorism, the consequences could reshape the security architecture of the Middle East.
Trump still possesses an opportunity to transform a moment of military superiority into an enduring historical legacy. The ultimate measure will not be how many targets were destroyed, how many negotiations were conducted or how many agreements were signed. It will be whether the system responsible for decades of repression and international terrorism is finally replaced by a political order that no longer threatens its people or the world.
With regime change in Iran and the end of the Islamic Republic’s machinery of terrorism, Trump’s name could remain permanently inscribed in history. Hopefully, he recognizes that before the opportunity disappears.