Iran retaliates with strikes as United States-Israel conflict escalates

Iran warns against wider war as Trump asks allies to escort ships

The Iran’s Foreign Minister said Tehran has “ample evidence” U.S. bases in the Middle East have been used to target the Islamic republic

How the US war on Iran may provoke a terrorist attack – and how that may be the point

‘Of course there’s going to be retaliation,’ says one expert. ‘It may be that this is what Trump’s interested in’ For decades, the US and its allies have painted Iran as the world’s biggest sponsor of state terrorism – invoking its Islamic rulers’ supposed revolutionary fanaticism and determined support for militant proxies. Now a long-standing but mainly latent threat is coalescing, with the war waged on the country by the US and Israel, to raise the risk of an attack on American soil to levels unseen since the murderous al-Qaida assaults of 11 September 2001, experts say. Continue reading...

Iran’s asymmetric warfare

ISRAEL and, in this case, its proxy the US launched their war on Iran two weeks ago. Despite President Donald Trump claiming victory multiple times, no end to the hostilities is in sight because of Tehran’s asymmetric response. The stated objectives of the illegal war were the destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme (which, last year, Trump claimed his B2 bombers had decimated during the ‘12-day war’), the degradation of its missile production and launch capability and regime change. All Tehran needed to do was survive to claim the upper hand in the conflict. Yes, just survive. It seems to have done better than merely survive. At least so far. It hit back, and continues to do so, despite the strikes that took out its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several key military and IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) figures. And its retaliation commenced within hours of the Israel-US attack. Its decentralisation of command and assets with their strike target lists seems to have delivered after the decapitation attack. Bombs from planes and missiles have been slamming into Iran in their thousands. Yet, Iran retains its capacity to retaliate and, surprisingly retains, despite having no air cover, its command and control coherence. Statements have by and large been from the same page, implying its communications network has survived the massive aerial assault. Experts point out that Iran is larger than the combined landmass of France, Germany, Spain and the UK. Quite a lot of its terrain is rocky and mountainous. Therefore, even an air force the size of the US operating from UK bases on the mainland and Diego Garcia and Israeli bases and aircraft carriers have so far failed to attain the main military aims of silencing Iran’s missile launchers. It was clear to Iran’s astute military planners that a strategy was needed to cope with this challenge. There is a reason for that, as many experts have pointed out. They say that Iran observed the 2003 Gulf War with great interest. The US air superiority meant that within a matter of weeks Iraq’s military infrastructure and equipment from airports, air force, radars, tanks and missile launchers and artillery were degraded to the point where they had zero impact on the war. All this happened before the land invasion. It was clear to Iran’s astute military planners that a strategy was needed to cope with this challenge as crippling international sanctions meant they would not be able to have an air force that could provide them air cover and protection from far superior (numerically and technologically) enemy air forces. The nearly decade-long Western-backed war that began with Iraq’s attack on Iran and ingress into it taught the Iranians how to defend themselves against a better-equipped enemy in a ground war and also withstand air attacks. That war saw the rise to eminence of the IRGC as a military fighting force, not just a paramilitary force to protect the aims of the 1979 Revolution. The main lesson learnt from the 2003 Gulf war was not to repeat Iraq’s folly. Iran would not have the assets/ resources to protect its military assets on the ground as they’d be sitting ducks for the Israeli-US joint aerial attack. They took a leaf out of the North Vietnamese playbook. They took their entire warfare capacity underground, often buried in tunnels hundreds of metres under mountains of granite or similar hard rocky formations where, some experts, including those formerly of the US military, believe they were out of reach of even the massive ordnance penetrators or ‘bunker-buster’ bombs. Side by side, these tunnels are said to have many concealed openings which are covered by sand to enable missile launches. Missiles and drones are produced in underground units. Also, Iran has so far prosecuted a multipronged war on those attacking it or those it believes are complicit in the aggression by attacking with its effective drones and missiles, economic targets in the Gulf. So far, though, its main targets have been US bases and assets in the region including reportedly a billion-dollar hi-tech radar. Interceptor missile radars have also been degraded. This weekend’s US air attack on the Iranian oil terminal on Kharg Island in the northern Gulf has raised the spectre of Tehran’s retaliatory strikes against the Arab Gulf’s energy infrastructure. This could threaten to cripple oil supplies which could have resumed after some agreement on the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. A surprising decision was the US despatch of sending a nearly 2,500-strong Marine Expeditionary Force to the Middle East. This number is far from what may be required to consider a ground operation. A former US Navy admiral has said that Iran retains the capacity to mine the Strait of Hormuz which would take many months to clear even if there were no hostile fire coming from Iran. Another former UK diplomat and former British security analyst says that Iran has the ability to deliver from underwater shore tunnel openings both manned and unmanned submersible vehicles (small submarines and underwater drones) which can play havoc in the strait. He says the claims of ‘decimating’ some of Iran’s best and most lethal missiles that are yet to be used are as credible as of Hezbollah having become a spent force in Lebanon. You believe it at your own peril. The Houthis have also started to stir on the Red Sea. Without doubt, Iran has so far suffered huge losses. But its ongoing asymmetric response is threatening to derail the global economy and plunge the region into more chaos. The US economy can’t remain immune either. With Congressional mid-term elections due in November, surely poor US numbers will influence decisions. This week Trump had an hour-long phone conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. In two weeks, he is due to arrive in China. One hopes President Xi Jinping can talk some sense into the US leader. Smaller nations such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, too, can play, and are said to be playing, a role for a diplomatic solution. Coupled with Iran’s effective asymmetric warfare these efforts may pave the way for something positive. The writer is a former editor of Dawn. abbas.nasir@hotmail.com Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2026

Iran war entering decisive phase: Israel

US vs. Iran: Three generations of conflict

Three key moments that shaped Iranian and American attitudes toward each other — and show why mistrust endures.

The battle on the propaganda front intensifies

As the US and Israel battle to control the story of their war against Iran, their messaging gets harder to defend.

Two weeks into the war in the Middle East, what is to expect?

This Saturday marks two weeks since the US and Israel launched their first attacks on Iran. Where are we at in this conflict, what has it taught us, and where does it go from here? Scott Lucas, a Professor of US and International Politics at University College Dublin's Clinton Institute helps us tackle some of those questions.

Few easy ways out for US as war with Iran drags on

US-Israeli strikes on February 28 killed Iran’s supreme leader but have not toppled the government, which now, from its perch on the Strait of Hormuz, has put the entire world economy on the war’s frontlines. The initial US operation of assassinating former supreme leader Ali Khamenei has given way to a conflict that Washington cannot completely control, sharply limiting President Donald Trump’s options. Two weeks into a bloody air war, Iran holds many cards as it chokes the world’s oil supply and strikes US allies in the Middle East, including Gulf states that had for years staked their reputations on political and economic stability. It makes for a drastic turn from the early hours of February 28, when the first clouds of black smoke rose over Tehran. And yet — such strategies have “never been effective” in state-versus-state warfare, writes American professor Robert Pape in his book Bombing to Win, a study of military air campaigns. And Iran itself is no stranger to history. “We’ve had two decades to study defeats of the US military to our immediate east and west,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said recently. “We’ve incorporated lessons accordingly.” The government quickly put in place a new supreme leader, while its decentralised “mosaic defence” allowed the military to retaliate without losing much of a step. The military doctrine was developed in 2005, after the United States toppled the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, French researcher Elie Tenenbaum, of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), said. It was meant to help a decentralised military command evade a debilitating loss of top leadership, and “the regime seems pretty intact, despite the fact that it has lost some very senior leaders”, said Ali Vaez, Iran project director at International Crisis Group. That allows Tehran to roll out a “three-part strategy”, Vaez said: “First, ensure survival. Second, keep enough retaliatory capacity to be able to stay in the fight. And then third was to prolong the conflict” so that “you can end it on your terms”. All of which spells trouble for Trump as the war draws in US allies and drives up the cost of living at home and abroad. Worldwide fallout With its missiles and a vast supply of relatively cheap drones, Iran has struck a marina in Dubai and oil tankers at sea, expanding the war to US allies in the Gulf, Turkiye, Cyprus, and elsewhere. Meanwhile in Lebanon, Hezbollah is trading missile fire with Israel, and Iranian forces have all but closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery that normally hosts a fifth of the world’s crude oil traffic. Oil and petrol prices have spiked or sparked rationing in countries from the United States to Bangladesh to Nigeria. Air traffic has slowed and foreigners are fleeing the Gulf, whose image of business-friendly stability has taken a huge hit. Oil importing countries around the world have released some 400 million barrels of strategic fuel reserves, though it has hardly eased the pain. In Kenya, tea sellers are watching stocks pile up unsold as maritime trade lines come under pressure and shipping insurance spikes. Bangladesh has rationed fuel and deployed the military to ward off unrest. “We knew that this will open up a Pandora’s box of chaos,” said the Gulf International Forum’s Aziz Alghashian, a Saudi analyst. He also said there was “anger” among Gulf states that had put “so much investment in” diplomacy with Iran. False confidence? The worldwide fallout has sparked questions over Washington’s strategy. Trump has called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender”, while Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the operation’s goals are “laser focused”, as the administration dodges questions over the war’s ill-defined, shifting objectives. “There is a stark difference between the operational superiority that we have over Iran — we know where everyone (is) and where we can hit them — and the strategic understanding of Iran,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a senior fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. Jonathan Paquin, a political science professor at Canada’s Universite Laval, told AFP: “The American administration was undoubtedly presumptuous in believing it held all the cards.” There were reasons Washington could find a way to assure itself of such confidence, Paquin noted: a US operation toppled the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro at the beginning of the year. The government in Iran, meanwhile, has been struggling through US sanctions, and was shaken by major demonstrations in December and January, sparking a security crackdown that killed thousands. US elections, Iranian defections Yet in the short term, Tehran still has plenty of pressure points it can hit via oil and shipping threats, including via Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who previously disrupted shipping through the Red Sea with their own missile attacks. Iran is taking “the global economy hostage” as a means of “putting pressure on Trump,” said Crisis Group’s Vaez. All the while, Iranian missiles launched at US allies are eating up American interceptors, including expensive Patriot and THAAD systems. And domestically, Trump — who ordered the surprise strikes without seeking public support for a war — is facing upcoming congressional elections. As price-sensitive voters prepare to head to the polls, “certainly Republican representatives and senators calling the White House to say they risk losing their districts,” said Paquin, the political science professor. Not that Iran — facing its own political, military and economic upheaval from the war — is without its own long-term difficulties. “I think the most likely scenario is that of a zombie state,” said IFRI researcher Clement Therme — a government that maintains its security apparatus but struggles to fulfil functions such as revenue collection or oil exportation. “They are already struggling to pay public salaries this month,” he claimed. No exit? With no easy exit, Trump is likely to “revise the concept of victory, setting aside the prospect of surrender or regime change” and claiming that the Iranians should rise up on their own, said Paquin. But while Trump might want to walk away boasting of killing Khamenei and degrading the Iranian military, “Iran might not give him that off-ramp,” said Nate Swanson, of the Atlantic Council. The remaining options seem increasingly bloody. Iran could keep up the hostilities even after the United States lays down its arms. Or, Trump “doubles down. We put some form of troops on the ground”, whether for special operations or long-term fighting. The last possibility, worried Swanson, is that the war is “outsourced into an ethnic conflict” by Washington and Israel arming Iranian opposition groups. For now, the missiles continue to rain down, inside Iran and increasingly further afield.

The escalation trap: how the Iran war could become more costly and complex

Iran’s is trying to create wedges between Gulf states and the US, but Trump is very comfortable on the ‘escalatory ladder’ In its current phase, the Israeli-US war against Iran and its proxies has become a proving ground for two competing concepts of military escalation, each of which threatens to become a trap. On one side, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have failed thus far in their ill-defined and shifting strategic aims. Despite killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other key leaders in the opening salvo of the campaign, the clerical regime remains and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is unsecured. Airstrikes are intensifying and hitting a greater number of targets. Continue reading...

As Iran war rages, Gulf neighbors worry about security

As Israel and the United States continue to pummel Iran and Iran retaliates with rockets throughout the region, experts say a return to diplomacy is needed to end the war.