Trump is threatening to hit Iran harder over the Strait of Hormuz. For Tehran's hardliners, war is the gift that keeps on giving.
While Americans rested comfortably in their beds last night, U.S. missiles were battering targets across Iran with no reprieve in sight. Now, with President Donald Trump threatening to extend his bombing campaign to bridges and power plants after five days of consecutive strikes, the average Iranian citizen has little to be thankful for.
But for the hard-line chiefs of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps —the military cadre steering the nation's fate—the war is a gift that just keeps on giving. During his second presidential campaign, Trump billed himself as the only man who could stop foreign conflicts and admonished his predecessors for their costly forays in Iraq and Afghanistan. The duration and profound consequences of those two conflicts often see them described as "forever" or "endless" wars.
Trump is now in danger of overseeing a third. In doing so, he would be rewarding the regime he supposedly wants to change. War? Yes Please!
To understand Tehran’s refusal to capitulate under pressure from Trump’s bombs is to understand a simple truth: what’s good for the people of Iran is not the same as what’s good for the IRGC.
"A protracted conflict benefits the IRGC because it strengthens every part of its political model," Andreas Kreig, an expert in Middle East security and Associate Professor at King's College London's School of Security Studies, told Newsweek. "It keeps Iran in a permanent state of mobilization, justifies social repression, sidelines civilian institutions and allows the IRGC to present itself as the indispensable defender of the country.
"It also preserves Iran’s most effective source of leverage: the ability to disrupt Hormuz, threaten hydrocarbon flows and impose costs on the global economy far beyond Iran’s conventional military weight. " This is the concept of asymmetric warfare in practice. Iran’s military capabilities, reliant almost exclusively on its reserves of missiles and cheap drones, are no match for the might of the U.S. war machine on paper.
But a healthy stockpile of these simple projectiles is all Tehran needs to strangle one of the world’s most vital waterways, upend the global economy, and demonstrate to every one of the Gulf States that their alliance with Washington comes with a hefty price. If the IRGC plays its cards right, the benefits may not end there.
As the only nation capable of guaranteeing safe passage through the crucial waterway, Iran could potentially offset the cost of U.S. sanctions by striking trade agreements with other nations—unrestricted access to the Strait and Iran’s petroleum for preferential economic deals. Peiman Salehi, a Tehran-based political analyst, told Newsweek: "I'd frame this conflict less as an Iran-US war and more as a contest between an existing hegemon and an emerging multipolar order.
"If Iran collapses and Saudi Arabia emerges as the region's unchallenged power, that complicates the roughly 40 percent of Middle Eastern energy exports flowing to Beijing. China therefore has a direct stake in Iran retaining control of the Strait of Hormuz.
" Trump, meanwhile, has backed himself into a corner from which there is no easy escape. Airstrikes can compromise Iran’s infrastructure and subject its people to yet more hardship, but they cannot reliably eliminate its offensive capabilities. And, as countless analysts and military historians have pointed out, they almost certainly will not spark a regime change. The only way to dismantle the Iranian regime and its network of airborne threats would be a lengthy and likely very costly ground campaign.
Tehran can confidently bet that not even Donald Trump could strong-arm Congress or sell that to the American people.
"Washington can escalate, but it can’t achieve its maximalist aims at an acceptable cost. The IRGC understands this. They believe Iran can tolerate pain for longer than Trump can tolerate higher energy prices, military casualties, domestic political pressure and disruption to global trade," Kreig said. Careful What You Wish For From this standpoint, it’s easy to see why Iran’s hard-liners are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of a long war with the United States.
Get too greedy, though, and their opportunity to secure the Islamic Republic’s indefinite freedom from decades of U.S. coercive control will end in disaster. No amount of leverage over Hormuz could help Tehran endure an endless blockade, spiraling infrastructure damage, and vanishing investment. An economically deprived, socially repressed population can only tolerate such misery for so long.
Senior research fellow for Middle Eastern Security at the RUSI think tank, Burcu Ozcelik, told Newsweek: "Wave after wave of U.S. strikes may strengthen the IRGC’s symbolic standing as guardian of the Islamic Republic, but the reality is that Iran is hurting.
"If President Trump goes ahead with the threat of striking national infrastructure—especially petroleum production and export capabilities—that would be a new level of escalation. "It would be difficult to predict what the domestic response would be after that, but ordinary Iranians would face unprecedented daily challenges. " Kreig added: "The regime needs cash flow. It needs oil revenue, access to foreign reserves, and enough economic activity to pay salaries, sustain subsidies and finance reconstruction.
If this does not happen, the state will at some point face a much bigger problem than an external attack.
"A population that sees no economic future and a government that only offers repression—that's the IRGC’s real long-term vulnerability. " Even if the IRGC does not face a popular uprising, overplaying its hand could see its increased bargaining power on the world stage crumble into long-term subservience to greater powers. China, which is far and away the largest buyer of Iranian oil, is currently incentivized to provide the Islamic Republic with some diplomatic cover and financial support.
However, should Beijing come to believe that Tehran’s hard-liners are unwilling to make some concessions to prevent long-term disruption to its flow of energy, that support could dry up overnight—replaced by demands for discounted oil prices.
"In their quest to guarantee strategic autonomy, the IRGC could drive Iran to strategic dependency on China," Kreig concluded. Do We Really Have To Keep Fighting? From local elections to global conflagrations between nations, the word "optics" is often the most important in politics. In the case of Iran and the U.S., it's no different.
Each side is so vehement in its opposition to the other, and their priorities so distant, that neither can afford to admit defeat. For a peace to sustain, both Trump and the IRGC must be able to sell a success story to their people. Trump, for his part, is not a man averse to changing strategy; most analysts question whether he had a strategy to begin with.
He is, however, averse to admitting fault and is committed to occupying the role of a dominant leader.
"Trump is likely to climb down if he can turn it into a spectacle of victory," Kreig said. "He needs a narrative in which his pressure campaign worked. If he can announce that Iran has pledged not to build a nuclear weapon and that shipping has resumed, he will take a deal.
"A prolonged conflict contradicts America First, exposes U.S. forces, destabilizes energy markets and makes Washington more dependent on Gulf states. But he will only accept it when the political packaging is ready.
" Tehran needs the same kind of political fiction. It must claim that resistance forced Washington to retreat, that it has won some leverage over Hormuz, and that sanctions relief was achieved without surrendering its sovereignty. Right now, though, there is no clear off-ramp. Ozcelik argued that a lack of clarity in the Memorandum of Understanding , signed by Washington and Tehran last month to form the foundation of peace negotiations, dooms the ceasefire to fail in its current state.
"One of the MOU’s many shortcomings was that the sides did not agree to the same terms, and they interpreted the conditions of freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz differently. "Tehran sees the MOU as recognizing its right to determine and coordinate safe passage for traffic through Hormuz. The U.S. expects the Strait to be open unconditionally. That gap is simply irreconcilable under the current MOU.
"Another fundamental flaw is the absence of a dispute resolution or verification clause. Now that implementation of the initial agreement has failed, both parties lack a clear way back to the negotiating table," she concluded. Kreig put it simply: "Neither side is close to a genuine settlement, but neither wants full-scale war either. That means a prolonged cycle of talks, threats, and strikes is the most likely outcome for the foreseeable future.
"threatening to extend his bombing campaign to bridges and power plants after five days of consecutive strikes, the average Iranian citizen has little to be thankful for. But for the hard-line chiefs of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps —the military cadre steering the nation's fate—the war is a gift that just keeps on giving.
During his second presidential campaign, Trump billed himself as the only man who could stop foreign conflicts and admonished his predecessors for their costly forays in Iraq and Afghanistan. The duration and profound consequences of those two conflicts often see them described as"forever" or"endless" wars. Trump is now in danger of overseeing a third. In doing so, he would be rewarding the regime he supposedly wants to change.
’s refusal to capitulate under pressure from Trump’s bombs is to understand a simple truth: what’s good for the people of Iran is not the same as what’s good for the IRGC.
"A protracted conflict benefits the IRGC because it strengthens every part of its political model," Andreas Kreig, an expert in"It keeps Iran in a permanent state of mobilization, justifies social repression, sidelines civilian institutions and allows the IRGC to present itself as the indispensable defender of the country. "It also preserves Iran’s most effective source of leverage: the ability to disrupt Hormuz, threaten hydrocarbon flows and impose costs on the global economy far beyond Iran’s conventional military weight.
" This is the concept of asymmetric warfare in practice. Iran’s military capabilities, reliant almost exclusively on its reserves of missiles and cheap drones, are no match for the might of the U.S. war machine on paper.
But a healthy stockpile of these simple projectiles is all Tehran needs to strangle one of the world’s most vital waterways, upend the global economy, and demonstrate to every one of the Gulf States that their alliance with Washington comes with a hefty price. As the only nation capable of guaranteeing safe passage through the crucial waterway, Iran could potentially offset the cost of U.S. sanctions by striking trade agreements with other nations—unrestricted access to the Strait and Iran’s petroleum for preferential economic deals.
:"I'd frame this conflict less as an Iran-US war and more as a contest between an existing hegemon and an emerging multipolar order.
"If Iran collapses and Saudi Arabia emerges as the region's unchallenged power, that complicates the roughly 40 percent of Middle Eastern energy exports flowing to Beijing. China therefore has a direct stake in Iran retaining control of the Strait of Hormuz.
"Airstrikes can compromise Iran’s infrastructure and subject its people to yet more hardship, but they cannot reliably eliminate its offensive capabilities. And, as countless analysts and military historians have pointed out, they almost certainly will not spark a regime change. The only way to dismantle the Iranian regime and its network of airborne threats would be a lengthy and likely very costly ground campaign.
Tehran can confidently bet that not even Donald Trump could strong-arm Congress or sell that to the American people.
"Washington can escalate, but it can’t achieve its maximalist aims at an acceptable cost. The IRGC understands this. They believe Iran can tolerate pain for longer than Trump can tolerate higher energy prices, military casualties, domestic political pressure and disruption to global trade," Kreig said. From this standpoint, it’s easy to see why Iran’s hard-liners are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of a long war with the United States.
Get too greedy, though, and their opportunity to secure the Islamic Republic’s indefinite freedom from decades of U.S. coercive control will end in disaster. No amount of leverage over Hormuz could help Tehran endure an endless blockade, spiraling infrastructure damage, and vanishing investment. An economically deprived, socially repressed population can only tolerate such misery for so long.
:"Wave after wave of U.S. strikes may strengthen the IRGC’s symbolic standing as guardian of the Islamic Republic, but the reality is that Iran is hurting.
"If President Trump goes ahead with the threat of striking national infrastructure—especially petroleum production and export capabilities—that would be a new level of escalation. "It would be difficult to predict what the domestic response would be after that, but ordinary Iranians would face unprecedented daily challenges. " Kreig added:"The regime needs cash flow. It needs oil revenue, access to foreign reserves, and enough economic activity to pay salaries, sustain subsidies and finance reconstruction.
If this does not happen, the state will at some point face a much bigger problem than an external attack.
"A population that sees no economic future and a government that only offers repression—that's the IRGC’s real long-term vulnerability. " Even if the IRGC does not face a popular uprising, overplaying its hand could see its increased bargaining power on the world stage crumble into long-term subservience to greater powers. China, which is far and away the largest buyer of Iranian oil, is currently incentivized to provide the Islamic Republic with some diplomatic cover and financial support.
However, should Beijing come to believe that Tehran’s hard-liners are unwilling to make some concessions to prevent long-term disruption to its flow of energy, that support could dry up overnight—replaced by demands for discounted oil prices.
"In their quest to guarantee strategic autonomy, the IRGC could drive Iran to strategic dependency on China," Kreig concluded. From local elections to global conflagrations between nations, the word"optics" is often the most important in politics. In the case of Iran and the U.S., it's no different. Each side is so vehement in its opposition to the other, and their priorities so distant, that neither can afford to admit defeat.
For a peace to sustain, both Trump and the IRGC must be able to sell a success story to their people. Trump, for his part, is not a man averse to changing strategy; most analysts question whether he had a strategy to begin with. He is, however, averse to admitting fault and is committed to occupying the role of a dominant leader.
"Trump is likely to climb down if he can turn it into a spectacle of victory," Kreig said. "He needs a narrative in which his pressure campaign worked. If he can announce that Iran has pledged not to build a nuclear weapon and that shipping has resumed, he will take a deal.
"A prolonged conflict contradicts America First, exposes U.S. forces, destabilizes energy markets and makes Washington more dependent on Gulf states. But he will only accept it when the political packaging is ready.
"It must claim that resistance forced Washington to retreat, that it has won some leverage over Hormuz, and that sanctions relief was achieved without surrendering its sovereignty. Ozcelik argued that a lack of clarity in the Memorandum of Understanding , signed by Washington and Tehran last month to form the foundation of peace negotiations, dooms the ceasefire to fail in its current state.
"One of the MOU’s many shortcomings was that the sides did not agree to the same terms, and they interpreted the conditions of freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz differently. "Tehran sees the MOU as recognizing its right to determine and coordinate safe passage for traffic through Hormuz. The U.S. expects the Strait to be open unconditionally. That gap is simply irreconcilable under the current MOU.
"Another fundamental flaw is the absence of a dispute resolution or verification clause. Now that implementation of the initial agreement has failed, both parties lack a clear way back to the negotiating table," she concluded. Kreig put it simply:"Neither side is close to a genuine settlement, but neither wants full-scale war either. That means a prolonged cycle of talks, threats, and strikes is the most likely outcome for the foreseeable future. "
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