Iranian leaders have long believed that time was on their side.
After the United States withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iranian government effectively adopted an approach that later became known as “strategic patience.” Rather than strike back immediately, Iran chose to endure economic pressure and wait to see if diplomacy would be revived.
The logic behind this strategy was simple. Eventually, the US government will realize that a confrontation with Iran is against its interests.
Today, that assumption remains shattered.
The collapse of diplomacy and the outbreak of war forced Iran’s leadership to confront a painful reality. Their belief that the United States would ultimately act rationally may have been a grave miscalculation.
If Iran survives the current conflict, the lessons learned from this moment could motivate Iranian leaders to pursue nuclear deterrence.
waiting strategy
After the first Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and launched a “maximum pressure” campaign, the Iranian government initially avoided large-scale counter-escalation. For nearly a year, other signatories, particularly European countries, largely stayed within the agreement in the hope that they would be able to maintain it despite U.S. sanctions and realize the promised economic benefits.
When that failed, Iran began to gradually ramp up its nuclear activities by increasing enrichment and gradually reducing compliance while avoiding definitive disruption.
The pace accelerated after Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament passed a law mandating a significant increase in nuclear activity following the assassination of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. This change was further reinforced by the election of conservative President Ebrahim Raisi in 2021.
The ultimate goal was to rebuild bargaining power, as the Iranian government believed that broader geopolitical and regional trends were gradually shifting in its favor. From that perspective, the rise of China, Russia’s growing assertiveness, and widening rifts within the Western alliance suggest that the United States’ ability to isolate Iran indefinitely may weaken over time.
At the same time, Iran pursued a strategy of de-escalating tensions with its neighbors and sought to improve relations with Gulf states that had previously supported the United States’ “maximum pressure” campaign. By the early 2020s, many Gulf Cooperation Council countries began to prioritize engagement and de-escalation with Iran, culminating in moves such as China-brokered Saudi-Iranian rapprochement in 2023.
Against this backdrop, the Iranian government continued its diplomacy despite rising tensions. Years of negotiations with the Biden administration to revive the JCPOA ultimately failed to reach an agreement. Subsequent diplomatic efforts under Trump, the second president, also failed.
Underlying this approach was the basic premise that the United States ultimately preferred stability to war. Iranian officials believed that Washington would eventually conclude that diplomacy, rather than unbridled pressure or major war, was the most practical and least costly way forward.
The joint US-Israel attack on Iran revealed just how deeply flawed that assumption was.
Restoration of deterrence
While the Iranian government bases its strategy on mistaken beliefs about the rationality of U.S. foreign policy, Washington is also misreading the situation.
For years, proponents of the maximum pressure campaign have argued that sustained economic and military pressure would eventually tear Iran apart. Some predicted that the war would cause widespread unrest and even the collapse of the regime.
So far, none of these predictions have come true.
Despite the heavy strain placed on Iranian society, there are no signs of the regime’s collapse. Instead, Iran’s political base, and in many cases broader segments of society, rallied in the face of external attacks.
Additionally, Iran has spent years building up its deterrence capabilities. This included the expansion and diversification of ballistic missile, cruise missile, and drone programs, and the development of multiple delivery systems designed to penetrate advanced air defenses. Iranian planners also drew lessons from direct interactions with Israel in the 2024 and June 2025 wars to improve targeting accuracy and coordination between various weapons systems.
The focus shifted to preparing for a prolonged war of attrition, firing fewer but more accurate attacks over time while attempting to degrade the enemy’s radar and air defense systems.
You can see the results of this work. Iran was able to inflict significant damage on its enemy. The retaliatory strikes have killed seven Americans and 11 Israelis, and are increasing the strain on U.S. and Israeli missile defense systems as interceptors steadily deplete.
Iranian missile and drone attacks have hit targets across the region, including high-value military infrastructure such as radar facilities. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has thrown global energy markets into turmoil.
Apart from the huge war costs, the US decision to launch an attack on Iran could have another unintended consequence: a fundamental change in Iranian strategy.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has maintained a long-held religious ban on nuclear weapons for decades. His assassination on the first day of the war may now motivate the country’s new civilian and military leaders to reconsider their nuclear strategy.
There may now be fewer ideological reservations about pursuing nuclear weapons. The logic is simple. If diplomacy cannot ease sanctions or permanently remove the threat of war, nuclear deterrence may appear to be the only viable alternative.
Iran’s actions in this conflict suggest that many leaders consider patience and diplomacy to be a strategic mistake. These include the unprecedented scale of Iranian missile and drone attacks across the region, the targeting of US partners and critical infrastructure, and domestic political decisions that signal a more assertive stance, particularly the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader.
The choice of Khamenei’s son breaks a long-standing taboo in a system based on the rejection of hereditary rule and reflects the leadership’s increasing willingness to abandon previous constraints.
If a more zero-sum logic of deterrence takes hold across the region and replaces dialogue as the organizing principle of security, the Middle East could enter a more dangerous era in which nuclear weapons are seen as the ultimate form of deterrence and nuclear proliferation can no longer be stopped.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
