On February 17, as American and Iranian negotiators sat in separate rooms at the Omani embassy in Geneva, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stepped before thousands of supporters in Tehran and invoked the most sacred story in Shiite Islam. He quoted Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad who chose death over submission at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD: “Someone like me will not pledge allegiance to someone like Yazid.” Then he pivoted to a military warning. “The strongest army in the world may at times receive such a slap that it cannot rise,” he said, before adding that more dangerous than any aircraft carrier “is the weapon that can send it to the bottom of the sea.”
For Western audiences, this sounded like bluster from an 86-year-old cleric under pressure. For those who read Shiite political theology, it was something else entirely — a signal that the Islamic Republic’s calculus has shifted from deterrence to existential defiance. A sharp new analysis from Ali Hashem, a research affiliate at Royal Holloway’s Centre for Islamic and West Asian Studies, argues that Washington is dangerously misreading these signals — and that the assumption a limited strike could force concessions without triggering a wider war may be built on sand.
Karbala as Strategic Doctrine
The Karbala reference matters because it rewires the cost-benefit analysis that American planners rely on. In Washington’s framework, military pressure raises costs for the adversary until compliance becomes rational. But Khamenei’s “apocalyptic tone amid a major U.S. military build-up in the region is significant, as is his invocation of historic Shiite religious figures who chose martyrdom over negotiation and accommodation.” The Foundation for Defense of Democracies noted that despite intense military and diplomatic pressure following the most violently repressed protest movement in contemporary Iranian history, Khamenei appears unmovable — nor does he appear to be reaching for the “poisoned chalice” of compromise pursued in 1988 by his predecessor to end the eight-year war with Iraq.
State-aligned commentators and officials increasingly describe the confrontation in existential terms. Military figures have shifted their rhetoric from deterrence to preparedness, suggesting Iran is ready not only to withstand conflict but to prevail. Structural weaknesses or social tensions are interpreted not as vulnerabilities, but as trials to be endured. This perspective reflects a theological logic deeply embedded in the system’s ideological foundations. Victory, in this view, depends not solely on material advantage but on steadfast adherence to divine principles. Even loss or sacrifice can be reframed as spiritual triumph.
This is not posturing for domestic consumption alone. It defines what kind of response a US strike would produce. In Hashem’s reading, a limited American attack would not be received as a signal of strength. It would be treated as an assault requiring retaliation to maintain moral and political legitimacy — and unlike last June’s 12-Day War, a face-saving response may no longer be enough.
The Horizontal Escalation Problem
The military math complicates things further. The current American air force buildup is the largest air force presence in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The US military is stationing a vast array of forces in the Middle East, including two aircraft carriers, fighter jets and refueling tankers. “The boss is getting fed up,” one Trump adviser told Axios. “Some people around him warn against going to war with Iran, but I think there is 90% chance we see kinetic action in the next few weeks.”
But Iran’s defense doctrine is built precisely to frustrate this kind of overwhelming force. Its strategy promotes what military theorists call horizontal escalation — spreading conflict across multiple theaters rather than deepening it along a single axis. Satellite imagery from February 10, 2026, shows Iran continuing to harden tunnel entrances at the underground complex near Natanz, with fresh concrete visible at both entrances. At the Parchin military complex, Iran has completed a concrete sarcophagus around a nuclear facility and is covering it with soil. ISIS president David Albright warned the facility “may soon become a fully unrecognizable bunker, providing significant protection from aerial strikes.”
Iran’s regional network, though weakened, has not vanished. Western intelligence suggests that Iran has resumed missile deliveries to Hezbollah via overland routes through Iraq and Syria, aiming to replenish the group’s arsenal following its 2024 confrontation with Israel. Despite domestic economic and military constraints following the Iran-Israel war, Iran has prioritized rearming its regional allies. The Houthis retain the capacity to threaten Red Sea shipping. Some 2,500 US troops in Iraq and 1,000 in Syria sit in small outposts without the missile defense systems that protect larger Gulf bases.
Vali Nasr of Johns Hopkins University captured Iran’s strategy bluntly: “The Iranian tactic is trying to convince the United States that war is going to be costly. This is not like June. This is not going to be like Venezuela, that the United States will have to face certain costs and it has to calculate those costs before it actually strikes Iran.”
The Succession Trap
Perhaps the most counterintuitive argument in Hashem’s analysis concerns what happens if a strike succeeds in destabilizing Iran’s leadership. Western observers often assume that pressure on Khamenei might crack open the regime. But war veteran and former IRGC commander Ali Shamkhani, who survived an Israeli attempt on his life during last year’s war, was appointed this month as secretary of the Defense Council, with the aim of “comprehensively strengthening defense preparations.” Hamidreza Azizi of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs said Shamkhani’s appointment signals that Iran is preparing for the possibility of a US decapitation strike — potentially targeting the Supreme Leader himself.
The Assembly of Experts — the constitutional body charged with selecting Iran’s supreme leader — has been preparing for succession for years, with those plans accelerated after the June 2025 war. A strike designed to weaken hardliners could instead unite Iran’s institutional structure around a wartime footing, producing a post-Khamenei establishment that is more rigid and less predictable than the current one. Violently removing the supreme leader could prompt Guard commanders or its regular military to more overtly seize power, setting off a bloody conflict over control of the oil-rich country of 85 million people.
Thursday’s Geneva session may be the last real window before military logic overtakes diplomacy. The paradox is stark. Negotiation is intended to prevent war. Yet the very act of negotiating — and the concessions it might entail — can appear more dangerous to the system than war itself. Washington and Tehran are not just bargaining over enrichment levels. They are operating in entirely different strategic languages — one rooted in cost-benefit rationality, the other in theological legitimacy. Clausewitz wrote that in war, “everything is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.” When the two sides cannot even agree on what constitutes victory, the simplest things become impossible.
Original analysis inspired by Ali Hashem from Foreign Policy. Additional research and verification conducted through multiple sources.
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Categories: Iran | USA | War, Defense & Security | Middle East
