While much has changed in the Middle East since the Israel-Iran conflict in June 2025, the regime in Tehran and its hostility towards Israel have not.

John Raine
Senior Adviser for Geopolitical Due Diligence

International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)

All parties are claiming victory in the ‘12-day war’, which ended on 25 June. United States President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Iranian leadership have all made claims, in their widely different idioms, that they won. But those claims, and Trump’s additional assertion that he will bring peace to the Middle East, require qualification. The strategic outcome of the war is likely to prove inconclusive, bringing neither peace nor an end to military action. It may instead, as previous conflicts have done, simply mark a new phase in the institutional hostility between Iran and Israel.

The Revolution survives

The most important post-conflict continuity is the survival of the Iranian Revolution in Tehran. The 30 commanders and 19 nuclear scientists killed by Israeli strikes did not include leading religious figures who, more than officials and commanders, embody the Iranian Revolution. Their survival represents the survival of the regime’s character, if not its executive capability. Neither did the attacks expose critical cracks in the regime’s cohesion, spark the emergence of a credible, alternative leader and programme, or mobilise widespread opposition. 

The Iranian leadership may indeed have unexpectedly benefited from the war: the historic irony of aerial bombardments is that while they weaken an adversary’s capabilities, they can strengthen its resolve. The Iranian people, under fire, found a new, nationalist voice, which the leadership was quick to exploit as an indication of national unity.

The regime has also retained control of its key instruments of power, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – despite the death of its commander-in-chief, Hossein Salami, in the attacks – and the Basij militia. These will enable Tehran to secure itself against internal threats and to launch a counter-espionage campaign against Israel.

Speculation on the regime’s vulnerability will continue and invite comparisons with other fallen regimes in the region. But Iran’s circumstances are unlike those of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Muammar Gadhafi’s Libya. In Syria and Libya, the incumbent regimes were opposed by armed internal opposition groups backed by external powers. In the case of Iraq, opposition was diffuse and less well-organised, but it was backed by a massive deployment of foreign forces that neutralised Saddam’s armed forces and security machinery. In Iran, there is no widespread opposition, nor has there been anything approaching the scale of the armed intervention in Iraq. Neither is there currently any credible opposition figure inside or outside Iran to whom such a pledge of support could be given.  

Nuclear-programme remnants

Among the remaining Iranian instruments is its nuclear programme, which, while heavily damaged, has not so far been independently assessed to have been eliminated. Some sites are already being repaired, and accurate estimates of the extent to which the programme was set back are likely to prove difficult to obtain. That is unsurprising given the depth and resilience of the programme and the precautionary measures Iran took while Israel and the US were considering the attacks.

Tehran now has choices about how it uses what remains of the programme. A ‘dash for the bomb’ would risk an immediate resumption of a bombing campaign – this time pursued more relentlessly. It would also be contrary to the stated policy of Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei, which is to disavow nuclear weapons, and it would cost Iran dearly within the Gulf. It would also be technically challenging, given the apparent destruction of critical weapons facilities at Isfahan and Fordow.

The early indications are that the Iranian leadership is doubling down on its commitment in principle to the production and enrichment of uranium for civilian purposes. The Iranian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, has described it as Iran’s ‘inalienable right’. Abandonment of the programme – which both the US and Israel demand – appears to remain non-negotiable. What the leadership must therefore calibrate is the nature of any rebuild: it needs to be sufficient to give credibility to its public claims, but not extensive enough to trigger Israeli intervention. This could make for some tension over the coming months. 

So too could Iran’s reconstitution of its air-defence capabilities. For Israel, air domination was a critical strategic objective of the 12-day war and one it is committed to maintaining. As the Iranian leadership seeks publicly to reassert itself domestically and against Israel by advertising its repair of its air-defence network, it will risk provoking Israel into raids to degrade its new capabilities and re-establish air dominance. So far the claims are limited to domestic replacements but any indication of more sophisticated, foreign-purchased systems might well trigger an Israeli response.

Israel’s problem in the future

While Israel has claimed success for its military operation in the 12-day war, its long-term solution to the Iranian nuclear threat – the denial of infrastructure and expertise – requires it to preserve both aerial dominance and intelligence penetration of Iran indefinitely and to permanently be prepared to strike.  

A precedent for such a sustained, suppressive air campaign is Operation Southern Watch, a US-led coalition of France, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and the US in the 1990s, which ran for 11 years over southern Iraq. Although it covered a much smaller area than Israel would have to cover in Iran, the operation demanded a heavy commitment of resources, especially as it proved escalatory as counter-strategies were developed, and it alienated many in the region. More significantly, it contained but did not set conditions for the removal of the incumbent regime. Furthermore, maintaining political support within the coalition over time proved difficult. Political support in Israel may prove less certain for such a campaign in large and distant Iran than it is for the similar strategy Israel is adopting towards Hizbullah in neighbouring Lebanon.

Iran’s options and outlook

Tehran can be expected to make political capital out of its survival. Domestically, this may take the form – as it has already – of a more inclusive approach towards its people, embracing the theme of nationalism and establishing a unity of purpose in resisting external aggression. A survivor of the strikes, Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to the Supreme Leader, has been calling for ‘mutual understanding’ to resolve Iran’s internal disputes. Conciliatory messaging may extend into tactical domestic concessions as it has done before. That will not end the corruption, economic crises and authoritarianism that are the subjects of Iranians’ grievances, but it may be enough to discourage broad mobilisation against the regime.  The widespread security crackdown the regime is conducting – intended to dismantle Israel’s deep intelligence penetration – may hazard the mood of national unity but it will also make organisation amongst oppositionists, who are being targeted, more difficult.

Israel’s attacks on Iran have brought to the fore the younger, more radical elements of the Iranian security apparatus. Their criticisms of the regime are that it is too weak, not too strong. Ironically, Salami had lamented publicly that the Revolution was failing to appeal to younger Iranians. That may be broadly true, but as in other populations the Israel Defense Forces targeted, the long-term effect of military operations conducted without a political process is radicalisation rather than reconciliation. How such an approach by Israel towards Iran will affect Tehran’s posture remains to be seen. The Iranian leadership has previously cradled rather than abandoned its enmities when attacked by military force.   

Tehran’s statements, although defiant, suggest it is likely to incline towards de-escalation while it recovers. Any prospect of a deal with Trump is not looking imminent and should in any case not be confused with the possibility of a deal with Israel. The level of trust is too low, and the level of animosity too high. But hostilities may take a different form or tempo. Throughout the history of the Iranian Revolution, military setbacks have been followed by strategic adaptation. The Iran–Iraq War was followed by the prioritisation of asymmetric warfare through partners and proxies over conventional capabilities. The question is not whether but how to continue resistance to Israel.

Both Tehran and Tel Aviv have broken taboos: Israel by striking targets in Iran, Iran by striking a US base in Qatar, which was arguably its closest ally. There are legacies to both actions. The former will make Tehran worry that it must recalibrate its threshold for an Israeli response. The latter leaves Tehran with important relations to repair – it engaged quickly with the Qataris after the strike on 23 June 2025. However, for Tehran, these will be new parameters to be tested, not a deterrent to future operations.

Iranian leadership will seek in the short term to de-escalate, but that will not be at the expense of the Revolution’s cardinal principle of resistance to Israel. Israel may have won temporary security in its 12 days of combat, but its enemy remains.