Glimpsing Victory in Iran

Two weeks after the United States and Israel launched their combined military campaign against Iran’s clerical regime, the outlines of victory are beginning to emerge. Military campaigns of this kind—especially those aimed not only at degrading military capability but also at creating conditions for political change—unfold in phases. The first phase of this conflict was bound to be the most important: stripping the Islamic Republic of its ability to wage war against America and its allies, threaten its neighbors, and intimidate global markets. The early results are promising, though much remains unfinished. A regime still reeling from last year’s 12-day war now faces a far more punishing assault. American and Israeli aircraft are operating over Iran with near-total freedom, striking military infrastructure, command nodes, and strategic assets across the country. Iran’s air-defense network has been badly degraded, and its navy reduced to a fraction of its former capacity. Its ballistic-missile program—the backbone of Tehran’s ability to coerce the region—has suffered immense damage. Israeli military assessments indicate that 160 to 190 launchers have been destroyed and roughly 200 more disabled, while perhaps 150 remain active. Missile inventories have been sharply diminished, and production lines and storage facilities repeatedly struck. Ballistic-missile launches have fallen by more than 90 percent since the war began, and Iran’s one-way-attack-drone launches have dropped by more than 95 percent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Friday. [Michael Schuman: China’s axis of autocracy isn’t looking so hot] Just as important, the human system behind the arsenal is fraying. Missile crews are reportedly reluctant to leave cover, desertions are increasing, refusals to obey orders are surfacing, and American and Israeli forces continue hunting launchers daily. Indeed, each Iranian launch is becoming a suicide mission for those conducting the firing. The damage extends beyond hardware. Israel’s campaign began with an unprecedented decapitation strike that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and it has continued with attacks on senior figures tied to the regime’s military, nuclear, and internal-security apparatus. Among those killed were Ali Shamkhani, Aziz Nasirzadeh, and Mohammad Pakpour—men once seen as central to regime continuity. Israel claims that 40 senior Iranian commanders were killed in its opening decapitation strike alone. Israel likewise claims that its strikes have taken out thousands of Iranian security personnel. The regional network that Iran spent decades building has offered scant relief. Hamas has issued little more than condemnations. Hezbollah is under massive bombardment as Israeli ground forces intensify operations in Lebanon. Iraqi militias have absorbed repeated strikes. The Houthis have threatened escalation but have not yet materially altered the battlefield. Iran is also more diplomatically isolated than at any point since 1979. Its missile-and-drone campaign against Israel, American positions, and Gulf Arab states appears to have produced the opposite of what Tehran intended: Instead of splitting the region, it has united it against the regime. Gulf Arab states have now lined up openly against Tehran; 135 countries co-sponsored a United Nations resolution condemning Iran. Even the United Arab Emirates—long one of Iran’s economic lifelines—is weighing restrictions on Iranian assets. The United States and Israel have already achieved once-unimaginable strategic gains for the free world. And yet Phase 1 is still not complete. The first unresolved danger is the Strait of Hormuz, where the U.S. military is working to degrade the Islamic Republic’s remaining threats to commercial shipping: mines, fast-attack craft, anti-ship missiles, and drones. Roughly one-fifth of globally traded oil passes through that corridor. Disruption has already pushed oil above $100 a barrel, even as Saudi and Emirati pipelines cushion part of the shock. More than 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports pass through Kharg Island, generating most of Tehran’s roughly $78 billion in annual oil revenue—about half the annual state budget, and equivalent to several years of spending for Iran’s military-security apparatus and proxy network. But Kharg is not only an oil terminal. It also functions as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps military platform in the northern Gulf. President Trump’s strike on Kharg Island has destroyed important threats to the tanker community and placed Tehran’s economic jugular at risk. American forces shattered military defenses, radar, and IRGC protection around the regime’s most important export hub while deliberately sparing the oil terminal itself. Neutralizing Kharg’s military assets helps the United States clear the Strait of Hormuz while preserving, for now, the regime’s economic artery as strategic leverage. What much commentary misses is that military campaigns proceed sequentially. United States Central Command has planned for a Hormuz contingency for years: First dismantle Iranian offensive power, then shift to maritime protection. That sequencing is already visible. First, air and naval forces need to focus on reducing Iran’s launcher capacity. The movement of the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group down the Red Sea suggests that naval capacity is being positioned for the next phase. Once launcher capacity is sufficiently reduced, U.S. forces can shift toward providing tanker protection and maritime escorts. The regime rightly sees the Battle for Hormuz as its last stand. If Central Command succeeds in setting the conditions for tanker traffic to resume—and potentially, for the United States to cut off the regime’s financial lifeblood on Kharg—the stage would be set for history-changing events to follow. The second unresolved danger is nuclear. Although facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan have suffered major damage, Iran reportedly still retains a significant stock of highly enriched uranium. Before last summer’s war, the International Atomic Energy Agency estimated that Tehran possessed more than 400 kilograms enriched to 60 percent—dangerously close to weapons-grade and sufficient for roughly 11 nuclear weapons if further enriched. The enrichment sites were already damaged in the 12-day war. Hardened facilities such as Pickaxe Mountain, where Iran appears to be building a deeply buried complex that could support future enrichment or weaponization work, represent a tougher problem. Some targets may ultimately require more than air power. If underground facilities, dispersed stockpiles, or weaponization assets cannot be reliably destroyed from above, limited special-forces operations may become necessary. To be sure, more options become available when the United States and Israel own the skies over Iran at multiple flight levels. As military pressure intensifies, the political dimension becomes increasingly important. Washington is targeting its messaging to IRGC personnel, military officers, and senior officials: Surrender brings amnesty; continued loyalty risks ruin. That logic may already be visible in what appears to be Phase 2. Roughly 3,000 members of an elite protest-suppression unit reportedly received warning messages that they were being targeted. Within a day, their headquarters near Tehran’s Azadi Stadium lay in ruins. Phase 1 degrades military power and holds hostage the regime’s economic lifelines. Phase 2 raises the cost of repression inside Iran. Drones operating over Tehran have reportedly struck and killed IRGC and Basij personnel manning checkpoint units. For the first time, repression forces may fear for their own survival just as protesters have for years. Phase 3 could present itself in more ways than sudden collapse—perhaps looking more like sustained erosion: a weakened regime, tightening economic pressure, diplomatic isolation, and eventually internal upheaval. The announced selection of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader may accelerate that erosion rather than stabilize it. A polished cleric in the mold of Hassan Rouhani could again provide the IRGC political cover and revive illusions of moderation abroad. Mojtaba offers no such illusion. His elevation signals a harsher, weaker, more corrupt order—and therefore a more fragile one. Phase 3, however, belongs to the Iranian people. Without sustained American pressure, Mojtaba and the IRGC will declare victory. That cannot be allowed. The regime has always feared domestic unrest more than external attack, which is why it repeatedly shuts down internet access during protests. Restoring connectivity would give Iranians a tool that the regime understands all too well. [Read: An achievable goal in Iran] Protesters also need the means of self-defense. January’s massacre of more than 30,000 Iranians by regime security forces remains a brutal reminder of what peaceful demonstrators face when confronting a coercive state. The United States should declare its commitment to Iran’s territorial integrity while arming the opposition—not only among Kurdish, Baluchi, and Arab minorities in the periphery, where local resistance could tie down security forces, but also among Persians in major cities. With continued dominance in the air and deep penetration on the ground, Israel should continue striking the repression apparatus while America supports the political conditions for internal fracture. The Islamic Republic has survived for 47 years because it has proved adaptive, ruthless, and willing to absorb immense pain. But it has never faced simultaneous leadership decapitation, military degradation, economic strangulation, regional isolation, and internal legitimacy collapse on this scale. That does not guarantee the regime’s end. It does mean that something once improbable is now imaginable: The long arc of the Islamic Republic may finally be bending toward an end. If that happens, military force will have created the opening. Operation Epic Fury is only two weeks old. The campaign has already delivered major wins for American national security, and more are likely to emerge in coming days. But something much bigger and more historic is starting to come into view—something that can be unlocked with a little more patience from the American public as the United States degrades Tehran’s ability to wage war outside its borders and Israel degrades the regime’s ability to wage war against its own people. Victory can be defined in many ways when a campaign delivers multiple layers of success in destroying capabilities that threaten the United States. But the ultimate goal should be enabling the Iranian people to rid the world of this radical, terror-sponsoring regime. And achieving that goal—total victory—seems ever more possible.