Even as the US-Israel combine unleashed Operation ‘Epic Fury’ and Operation ‘Roaring Lion’, Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi posted on ‘X’ about a new military tactical strategy in place that talks of resilience led by decentralisation. It is towards this format that the conflict is seemingly headed.
Araghchi’s post said: “We've had two decades to study defeats of the US military to our immediate east and west. We've incorporated lessons accordingly. Bombings in our capital have no impact on our ability to conduct war. Decentralised mosaic defence enables us to decide when—and how—war will end… complete decentralisation of its command and control to ensure resilience and continuity in the event of decapitation strikes.”
The fulcrum of the ‘mosaic defence’ strategy would be small self-contained military units with their own command and control centres but united with other units in ideology.
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The Iranian strategy will be to prolong the war as much as possible that would play towards economically wearing out the US-Israel combine so that the organised military forces of the US-Israel combine is pitted against the disparate, broken up and decentralized command structure of the Iranians—almost akin to fighting a bunch of well-armed and well-equipped guerrilla combatants.
As Prof Seyed Hadi Sajedi, who teaches at the University of Tehran, told THE WEEK: “Owing to sustained media pressure and persistent threats from the Trump administration, the Iranian population had partly acclimatised to the prospect of conflict. The prevailing belief was that the conflict initiated last year had not concluded but had merely entered a period of suspension, capable of reigniting at any moment.”
“Consequently, both citizens and state authorities undertook preparedness measures, including the stockpiling of essential goods, sanitation supplies and military materiel.”
A short war would be as advantageous for the US-Israel combine as a prolonged one for the Iranians who will try their best to lengthen the war.
The signs of an Iranian preparation were already there. Deceased Iranian supreme leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei would visit eminent mosques before an imminent conflict in a symbolic gesture of seeking spiritual guidance. On January 31 too, with an impending attack by US-Israel, Khamenei made a quiet visit to the South Tehran grave of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.
And exactly a month later on February 28, the US and Israel launched the widespread and coordinated air strikes across Iran that claimed almost the entire rung of the Iranian leadership.
Foremost on the mind of the US-Israel military would have been five primary objectives. First, to decimate the top leadership. Second, to destroy Iran’s military and purported nuclear capabilities. Third, to incite the masses and anti-government forces to organise a revolt. Fourth, to effect a regime change. And fifth, force the adversary into just a short war with ‘shock and awe’ tactics.
Clearly, after 10 days of fighting, the conflict is veering towards a long-drawn out and prolonged affair.
With ‘shock and awe’ tactics, the US-led front wants a short war because besides political imperatives for a domestically troubled US President Donald Trump and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, to minimise disruptions to global economy and trade, and also to decimate the Iranian military capability as much as possible so that the Iran military cannot regroup and fight back.
On the other hand, Iran would want to prolong the war because a long war would build up pressure on Trump and Netanyahu and other powers like Russia and China may come to the aid of Iran. Russia, in particular, because a long war in Iran will imply waning military support and supplies for Ukraine.