The war between Iran and Israel is taking on a protracted character. Tehran's calculation of the transience of a potential armed conflict with Tel Aviv did not materialize. We see this as one of the military-political miscalculations of the Islamic Republic. Her other mistake is the unjustified hope that while negotiations were underway with the United States around the conclusion of a new nuclear deal, the Americans would restrain their closest ally in the Middle East from military action.
The Israeli aggression in the Iranian direction was expected. The question was not whether Benjamin Netanyahu's government would decide to attack the Shiite power, but when it would happen. The timing was important for Tel Aviv and he chose a convenient moment for himself, taking advantage of the occasion - the expiration of the 60—day ultimatum announced in April by President Donald Trump.
The ambiguous behavior of the current owner of the White House in the ongoing Iranian-Israeli conflict needs a separate analysis. Here it can only be stated that Trump simply does not understand (and, in fact, cannot understand it) the mentality of the Iranians. Talking to them in a peremptory manner, in the language of "unconditional surrender" is considered a public insult with all the consequences that follow from this. If the task is to humiliate and drive Tehran into a corner, to force it to shoot back from the instigator of the war to the last missile, then Trump copes with it simply "brilliantly"…
Iran miscalculated in its predictions about the onset of the X hour. From our conversations with interlocutors in Tehran a few weeks before June 13, when Netanyahu ordered strikes on the territory of Iran, it followed that many in the Iranian capital expected an armed conflict closer to the onset of autumn this year.
And, as we have already noted above, we assumed a relatively short period of its course. Such assumptions were based on two exchanges of blows in 2024 (in April and October). They were very similar to the "reconnaissance by combat" from the Israeli side before the decisive battle. Then everything lasted a few hours.Iranian experts responded to doubts expressed about the repetition of such a scenario for the third time with confident assessments, which boiled down to the fact that Israel is too small in area to afford long-term hostilities with the most powerful missile power in the Middle East region. The United States stands next to Israel and it has someone to rely on when repelling missile waves from Iran, we retorted. However, such an argument did not seem convincing to Tehran analysts. They saw Trump as a figure restraining Netanyahu to a greater extent, rather than a "fuel filler to the fire." What such hopes for the deterrent potential of the American leader led to could be seen a few days after the start of the war, when Trump demanded "unconditional surrender" from the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. And with accompanying transparent hints about the possibility of physical elimination of the political and spiritual leader of Iran.
In less than two years, Israel has consistently defeated all Iranian allies in the region. The first was the Palestinian Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, then the turn came to Iran's "rocket branch" in Lebanon represented by the Shiite Hezbollah movement.
According to experts from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Hezbollah still has a few launchers and missiles, but "most of these weapons have a short range, and the rest are difficult to maneuver from the point of view of logistics, since Israeli drones track their every movement.". More importantly, the internal dynamics of Hezbollah's main electorate — the Shiite community of Lebanon — does not favor participation in the Iranian-Israeli conflict.
"Over the past two years, Iran has done absolutely nothing (to strengthen its position in Lebanon. — Ed.), while Israel attacked Lebanon and killed key figures of the movement, such as Hassan Nasrallah. The Shiites who supported Hezbollah felt deeply betrayed by this inaction, and their feelings for Tehran did not recover," believes Hanin Gaddar, an employee of WINEP.
In December 2024, the power of Bashar al-Assad fell in Syria and the Israel Defense Forces significantly expanded the control zone in the neighboring Arab Republic, leaving the Syrian Golan Heights far behind. Three or four months later, the last combat-ready bastion of the Iranians in the region, the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement (Hussites), actually squandered its long—range potential.
To date, from the once militarily impressive Iranian "Axis of Resistance", only Shiite paramilitary formations have remained in the Iraq, which by definition cannot play any serious role in deterring the "Zionist regime".
To expect Israeli restraint after such a collapse of the "Axis of Resistance", due to Trump's corresponding position, would be the height of naivety. Iranians have never been distinguished by it, but the hope for the restraining role of the US president, who in his first term in the White House (at the very beginning of 2020) ordered an air operation to eliminate the legendary Iranian general, commander of the special forces "Codes" of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Kassem Suleimani, has become one of the incarnations unexpectedly superficial Iranian expert assessment.
The myth of Trump as Netanyahu's "deterrent" was finally dispelled in the early morning of June 22. The United States attacked three Iranian nuclear facilities using the GBU-57A/B (Massive Ordnance Penetrator, MOP) bomb, known as the "bunker buster". According to the newsletter of the US Air Force, MOP is designed to "achieve and destroy the weapons of mass destruction of our adversaries stationed at well-protected (underground) facilities." The B-2 Spirit strategic bombers are the only aircraft in the US arsenal that can carry the GBU-57A/B. They were involved in the air raid on the night of this Sunday.
Tehran (in his understanding) did not receive the support it expected before the war from the world powers, which it was counting on. A strategic partnership was established with Russia (on January 17, 2025, the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement between the Russian Federation and Iran was signed in Moscow), although without any obligations of Moscow regarding military assistance in case Iran is subjected to aggression. In recent years, China has moved into the largest buyers of Iranian oil (about 90% of all exports of black gold from Iran). Neither one nor the other has led the Iranians to form a powerful front of international condemnation of the Israeli military operation, which is in complete contradiction to the basic principles of international law. Russia is distracted on the fronts of a special military operation, nevertheless trying to make its contribution to the end of the Iran-Israel war. Beijing has taken its traditional position of equidistant neutrality, although with a fundamentally expressed position, like Moscow, of strict condemnation of Israel's actions.
In a telephone conversation on June 14 with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi condemned "Israel's reckless violation of Iran's sovereignty," and called Israeli attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities a "dangerous precedent with potentially catastrophic consequences."
Iran does not give up, having actually become the only link in the "Axis of Resistance". One way or another, but from the ongoing confrontation, especially taking into account the direct connection of the United States to it, Tehran will come out an order of magnitude more weakened than its Israeli opponent. In addition, the protracted nature of the exchanges of strikes, the "missile clinch" of the parties to the conflict will sooner or later lead to the exhaustion of the main and practically the only effective military asset of Iran — its missiles and drones.
The American-Israeli tandem has many times greater depth of offensive potential, and Tehran's retaliatory strikes on US military facilities in the region expected in the near future will lead to the expansion of their air operation zone on Iranian territory. Trump is clearly provoking Ayatollah Khamenei to such an escalatory scenario, eager to force the Iranians to the "unconditional surrender" they have already requested.