Nearly three weeks into the US-Israel war on Iran, Tehran remains defiant and continues to defend itself and inflict pain on Washington’s Gulf allies.
Sanctioned, economically challenged and besieged, Iran has carried on without an air force, anti-missile defences or committed allies.
Its ability to choke maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and propel oil prices skywards, however, has defied expectations and caught the US by surprise.
If survival was its key aim at the outset of the war, Iran could be said to be winning. It is, however, paying a high price in terms of death and destruction.
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Swathes of its leadership are dead. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders and national security chief Ali Larijani have been killed, while Khamenei’s son and successor Mojtaba is in hiding after being wounded.
Iran’s health ministry has reported more than 1,400 people – mainly civilians – have been killed, with at least 18,500 injured, and at least 3.2 million have been displaced.
As for the US, despite access to the best intelligence and far superior firepower, the war has been marked by Donald Trump’s overambitious and confused agenda.
He has called variously for Iran’s surrender, regime change and dismantlement of its nuclear programme, which he has claimed was bombed by the US and Israel to “oblivion” last June.
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed there has been no activity at Iran’s nuclear sites since then.
Trump reportedly expected the war to last four to five days. It scored early military successes in targeting key regime figures and military assets.
But the conflict has continued for close to three weeks and shows no signs of ending.
The fact that the US is now moving air defences and additional troops into the region, while Trump berates Nato and others for not sending their navies to the Gulf region, are hardly signs of thorough planning.
Israel, on the other hand, could be said to be making more headway based on its aims.
Binyamin Netanyahu has waged this war to decapitate the regime and destroy Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and manufacturing plants, command-and-control centres, radar sites and IRGC bases.
Israel has slain senior Iranian figures and largely attained its military goals.
However, the IRGC has assumed control, and Iran retains a store of domestically made drones and cruise missiles that have been shot at the US-allied Emirates, Oman, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
While the frequency of firings has diminished as stocks have shrunk, Iran retains enough weapons to continue and has received satellite intelligence for targeting from Russia. China has backed Iran diplomatically and has reportedly supplied spare parts for missiles.
Despite the battering it has received, Iran still holds key advantages: geography, a high tolerance for hardship and an ability to fight asymmetrically. The longer the conflict drags on, the higher the costs for everyone else.
