Washington expected a fast collapse, hitting the center, breaking the chain of command and watching the system fall apart. The plan worked in Iraq before. But Iran is a different country. The collapse never came because Tehran did not panic.
Following that, Iran played its hardest card: the Strait of Hormuz. That was not just a military move but strategic leverage, a message to the world: “If you choose to fight us, the global economy will falter.”
So where did the United States miscalculate?
To understand that, we need to go back to 2003, when the U.S. dismantled Saddam Hussein’s centralized military command in only three weeks. The leadership was removed, and the army disintegrated.
While all this happened, Iran was watching closely, and one of the officers paying attention was Mohammad Ali Jafari. Jafari understood something fundamental that centralized armies die when their head is cut off. So Iran redesigned its structure.
After 2007, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reorganized the country into 31 provincial commands, and each province developed its own operational capacity: missiles, drones, fast-attack boats and local militia integration.
Authority was partially delegated and contingency orders were prepared in advance. The doctrine was built around a single scenario: What if the supreme leader dies?
Article 110 of Iran’s Constitution vests full military command exclusively in the supreme leader. Ali Khamenei held that authority and issued pre-delegated directives.
After his death, his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was named successor, yet he has not publicly consolidated command, and no clear, verifiable nationwide military directive has reset the system.
In such a structure, if pre-authorized operational autonomy exists, the machine continues to run, not because commanders are rebelling but because they are following standing orders.
The U.S. assumed that decapitating leadership would paralyze the system, but Iran had already adapted to that model of warfare. There is no single headquarters whose destruction ends the campaign, no single switch that turns everything off.
Iran’s military doctrine is perhaps not designed for a swift victory, but it prevents collapse. While winning a war quickly requires centralized shock, enduring requires distributed command.
Secondly, Iran knows that the Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s energy arteries and closing it would transform a bilateral conflict into a global economic crisis. Therefore, Iran uses it to escalate tension strategically without entering into total war, which can be interpreted as a deterrence policy through disruption.
By doing so, Iran gives Washington two choices: either escalate further or search for an exit.
What both powers aimed for and how they strategized have contrasted from the beginning. While America sought a short war and targeted the center, Iran prepared for a long one and diluted the center. Thus, we can say that what we are witnessing is not improvisation but the result of lessons learned in 2003.
As Iran watched how Saddam’s army collapsed in three weeks, it decided never to collapse that way.
Starting a war can be swift; ending one built for endurance is something else entirely.
