The US and Israel have commenced what is likely to become a protracted war on Iran.
US air force personnel are embedded at most Israeli airbases and large refuelling tankers (and F-22 Raptors via RAF Lakenheath) have flown into Israel too. The sheer size of the US force has not been seen since the Iraq invasion. It cost $630million just to position it and far more after it crossed into combat mode.
Netanyahu and Trump calculate that Iran has been so weakened, by the loss of some of its regional proxies and its air defences and radars, following last summer’s Israeli-American air assault, as well as by the internal protests which rocked the regime a month ago to its lowest point, that one final blow might topple the Islamic regime for ever.
Indeed, some of Iran’s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), such as Mohammad Pakpour, the IRGC commander, and defence minister Amir Nasirzadeh are reported to have been killed, while the regime has spread and delegated executive powers fearful of it being decapitated.
In reality, a severely weakened Iran, with everything to lose, is much more dangerous to the region and the world, than the intact version. There have already been strikes on Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and even the Fairmount Hotel in Dubai, the Arab emirate home to many Brits. Saudi Arabia may come next. If it is now at its lowest point, what does the regime lose from attacking whoever and whatever it deems fit, including US warships.
Protestors supporting Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demonstrate against US and Israeli strikes outside a mosque in Tehran on 28 February (Photo: Atta Kenare/ AFP via Getty Images)In so far as there appears to be a strategy from Israel and the US, it is that air power alone can so degrade the regime that a ground invasion becomes superfluous. Instead, a popular insurgency would take its place.
What no can answer is who takes over once the regime has crumbled? There is no alternative leadership lurking within the IRGC, despite its command structure being violently altered, as there was in Venezuela, and moreover as has been clear for decades, the IRGC has a very deep substitute bench.
So-called reformists are as patriotic as the principalist hardliners, and the actual opposition is leaderless. The idea of foisting an Americanised Shah Reza Pahlavi on Iran is for the birds.
Iran has immediately opted for a major regional counterattack rather than carefully calibrated missile attacks on Israel and a couple of the 13 US bases in the wider region.
While Iran only has 2,000 long range missiles, it has 10,000 shorter range versions, as well as a sophisticated Shahed drone fleet which can create paths for faster missiles by exhausting interceptor missile stocks. Last summer, a single US THAAD battery in Israel loosed off $1.2 billion of interceptor rockets alone. Interceptor stocks are very low. Hamas and Hezbollah may have been degraded, but Iran still has Popular Mobilisation Militias in Iraq and the Houthi who America ineffectually attacked for a month last year.
A protester holds up crossed out portraits of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a demonstration near the Iranian embassy in Baghdad on January 16, 2026. (Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP via Getty Images)The IRGC is to close the Strait of Hormuz and will probably use the Houthi rebels, once again. Oil prices would surely rocket. Another option is to activate it’s other proxy, Hezbollah or the hit squads who targeted UK-based individuals in London. Cyberwarfare may soon be on the cards, a tactic much used by malign forces.
Iran’s strategy is to regionalise the war at a time when many regimes, from Turkey to Saudi Arabia, are more afraid of an arrogant and rampant Israel than of Tehran. Iran’s aim will be for the Gulf Arab countries it has targeted to exert diplomatic pressure on Trump, whose family has extensive crypto and hotel business ties in the region, before the Iranians really play their trump card of attacking oil processing installations (as they did at Abqaiq in 2019) and tankers traversing the Straits of Hormuz.
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The last resort would be attacks on US warships, notably the two US aircraft carriers in the region – each of which have crews of about 3500-4000 mariners. Luck plays a role here as in any war. It took a single explosive laden speed boat to lethally damage the USS Cole in Aden in 2000.
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Any significant loss of life, let alone any extended military campaign against Iran, would rebound badly on a president who has repeatedly vowed to keep the US out of ‘forever wars’ of choice, which are deeply unpopular way beyond the MAGA camp especially without any congressional approval. Hence the outright lies Trump has told about imminent threats to the US and it’s allies, falsehoods very reminiscent of the 45 minutes to destruction version told about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. Or what about his desire to ‘obliterate’ nuclear installations, which he simultaneously avers were already ‘obliterated’ by B-2 bombers last June.
Trump has now set in motion something he cannot control, as doubtless his chief military advisor General Dan Caine tried to tell him. After looking so angry and crushed after last week’s Supreme Court decision against his illegal tariffs- the cornerstone of his economic policy – a revived Trump appeared bullish in his white ‘USA’ baseball cap as he announced the start of his ‘bombing and hope for the best’ air campaign. He’ll be hoping that events do not run beyond his control, and that his political base are more belligerent than they seem to be. What remains certain, is that this conflict has the potential to spread its tentacles far and wide.
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