Iran Remains Defiant in Defeat

“They cannot do a damn thing.” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s choice words mocking American diplomats in June helped precipitate Israeli and, eventually, U.S. strikes later that very month. This same attitude encouraged the recent “snapback” of tough sanctions on Iran by the United Nations. Yet it also reflects his regime’s enduring belief that defiance always prevails against the United States.

Leaders in Tehran have recited this mantra throughout their decades-old standoff with America. Beginning with the formative hostage crisis in 1979-80, the slogan has been used to expand their nuclear program, announce missile tests, create negotiating leverage, minimize U.S. military threats, wave off sanctions, and rally support at home.

The United States has confounded Iran’s self-assurance only infrequently, and often temporarily. Fearing the United States was about to tip the scales decisively in Iraq’s favor in 1988, Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini “drank the poisoned chalice” by terminating a war in which he previously brooked no compromise. Starting in 2003, Iran suspended nuclear enrichment and full-scale weaponization—the only time it ever did so—out of concern it was next on the U.S. hit list after the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. In 2020, Iran’s most capable commander, Gen. Qassem Suleimani, was killed in a surprise U.S. drone strike. And this June, President Donald Trump pivoted abruptly from talks, where Iran enjoyed the upper hand, to unprecedented strikes on the regime’s nuclear sites.

In each instance, Tehran reacted on the assumption that, eventually, America’s instincts would revert to not doing a damn thing. The key variable is the amount of time Iran required to restore its strength and resume testing U.S. resolve. The regime was reeling from utter defeat after 1988, faced with an uncontested American superpower that swiftly evicted those same Iraqi armies from Kuwait and built major military bases across the Gulf. The regime thus spent the better part of a decade quietly rearming while avoiding direct tensions. After 2003, it waited only a couple of years for Iraqi and Afghan insurgencies to entangle U.S. forces before restarting enrichment and never meaningfully looking back. It escalated promptly in 2020, with lethal intent, by conducting overt missile attacks on U.S. targets after Suleimani’s death. Once it realized no response was forthcoming, despite crossing Trump’s red line, the regime steadily resumed the proxy attacks that prompted Suleimani’s death in the first place.

Yet the fallout from this sharp but short conflict, while significant, still pales next to the eight years of total war with Iraq. In the latter, Iran’s forces had been hollowed out and an entire generation bled white, not unlike the “weary, broken, burnt out, rootless, hopeless” post-1918 societies described in All Quiet on the Western Front. By contrast, current officials project undaunted confidence and tout their many victories, whether real or imagined. As much as Iran waited until Qatar’s al-Udeid airbase was mostly emptied of U.S. troops to launch a retaliatory attack in June, that was still its first-ever direct targeting of a U.S. base in the Gulf. And as in 2020, Tehran can claim it fired the last shot.

For Khamenei, this shows Iran “can act against important U.S. centers in the region whenever it deems necessary.” For his foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, it confirms “we have always been the ones to decide when, and how, aggression against our people ends.” This outcome “proved there is no military option for our nuclear program,” and so its atomic project can be revived. These statements recall the taunts of “America cannot do a damn thing” from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when Iran restarted enrichment in 2006, and from Khamenei after Iranian missiles landed the final blow in 2020.

By claiming they ended the 12-Day War, Iranian officers and legislators can also tell themselves their wartime threats to block the Strait of Hormuz—which went as far as loading naval mines onto attack craft—would have dealt further defeats to the United States. It helps that U.S.-Israeli strikes left untouched Iran’s sizable arsenals of missile boats, coastal missile batteries, minelayers, attack drones, and short-range cruise and ballistic missiles, together designed to hold the Gulf at risk.

On balance, therefore, Tehran already is girding itself for continued confrontation and defiance. It appears to be trying to reconstruct defenses and missile arsenals, harden underground nuclear sites, conduct undeclared missile tests, and triple prewar military budgets. It pursues Chinese and Russian help to restock the armed forces and circumvent destabilizing sanctions. It also is addressing vulnerabilities exposed this summer, reorganizing its strategic command to prevail over the long haul. And it evicted International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to better obscure its current nuclear status and future reconstitution.

These are all related to a larger effort, led by the IRGC and other hardliners, to stiffen internal resilience by centralizing control over foreign and defense policy. The regime is plugging intelligence leaks, accusing the IAEA director of sabotage, doubling down on internal repression, and co-opting secular nationalism in an effort to forge domestic unity, externalize blame for its own military and governance failures, and steel Iranian society for struggles to come.

The main question is how best to buy time, and avoid near-term escalation or loss of face, while these changes take hold. For Khamenei and other veto-wielding hardliners in the new decision-making structure, real diplomatic compromises could destabilize the regime by invalidating its self-serving narrative of U.S.-led besiegement. And they fear it could encourage America or others to sense weakness and push harder, producing another war that starts on terms unfavorable to Iran. Accordingly, the supreme leader warns that nothing good comes from meeting America face-to-face, and he vetoed even fig-leaf concessions to restart talks or avoid snapback of UN sanctions.

Yet Iran cannot be so outrightly hostile as to court renewed conflict while regathering its defenses. And thus the regime returns to past practice, exploiting the prospect of diplomacy to bide time and put its adversaries in their own state of suspension.

On the one hand, Khamenei, President Masoud Pezeshkian, and others want to avoid risks of renewed conflict, at least until Iran regains its strength. They reiterate the regime’s self-imposed, ostensible “ban” on developing nuclear weapons, and they publicly resist calls from hardliners to leave the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Yet at the same time, Iran shows no intent of complying with snapback or any other Western demands. Khamenei insists diplomacy is impossible under the current climate of U.S.-led pressure and arrogance, and his officials say they will entertain talks only once all their demands are met—and only if none are made in return. The “possibility of dialogue, of entering negotiations,” Pezeshkian tells his colleagues, “does not mean we intend to surrender.”

Many of these demands are purposely nonstarters. Iran’s diplomats and defense leaders assert the United States must show goodwill, somehow giving concrete yet undefined compensation for the last war and guarantees against another one. And they insist America accede to their core parameters for a deal as preconditions, before talks can begin. Araghchi says Iran’s proclaimed “right” to enrich is non-negotiable and must be recognized upfront, and his deputy says the country’s missiles are not up for discussion. This was backstopped by legislators in Tehran, who say snapback is an acceptable price to pay for refusing to abandon these preconditions.

Tehran also sticks to its obstruction of the IAEA that helped trigger snapback in the first place. It alludes to renewing engagement only after it receives immunity from all pressure—and only if Iranian hardliners can dictate what and where inspectors can visit. So far, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi is among the very few to point out that such conditions are the very subject of negotiations and existing agreements, and are not for Iran to decree unilaterally.

Insofar as it sees America regressing to the mean and doing rather little, Iran will regain strength and confidence to resume threatening the Middle East and America’s interests there. Thus it welcomes U.S. efforts to declare the matter closed after hitting its nuclear facilities in June. While it is advisable for Trump to keep ignoring Tehran’s bad-faith outreach, he should make clear there will be no return to the old status quo, that 2025 will not be like 2003 or 2020.

A new approach can leverage what was so unique in this latest bout of conflict: the tight fusion of Israeli initiative and U.S. capability. Absent Israel’s bold choices and adept use of U.S.-made weapons this summer, it is not difficult to imagine America standing by while Iran continued dragging out negotiations and undertook final legwork on a bomb. Unsurprisingly, Tehran now frames Israel as the bellicose spoiler of Trump’s peace efforts, hoping to buy precious breathing space for the regime by convincing the United States to sideline such a capable and ready partner.

The United States should seize this opportunity to redouble its impressive prewar and wartime collaboration with Israel. A credible combined military threat poses altogether new dilemmas for Iran. Rather than prejudicing future talks or provoking further conflict, it is the only way to challenge Tehran’s abiding and destabilizing belief that America cannot do a damn thing to stop its recovery.