For years, Iranian leaders believed that time was on their side.
After the United States withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Tehran effectively adopted what was later described as a “strategic patience” approach. Instead of immediately counterattacking, Iran chose to endure the economic pressure while waiting to see if diplomacy could be revived.
The logic behind the strategy was simple: Eventually, Washington would recognize that confrontation with Iran was against its own interests.
Today, that assumption is shattered.
The collapse of diplomacy and the outbreak of war have forced Iran's leaders to confront a painful reality: Their belief that the United States would ultimately act rationally may have been a profound miscalculation.
If Iran survives the current conflict, the lessons Iranian leaders draw from this moment may motivate them to pursue a nuclear deterrent.
The waiting strategy
After the first Trump administration withdrew from the JCPOA and launched its “maximum pressure” campaign in 2018, Tehran initially avoided a major counter-escalation. For almost a year, it largely stayed within the confines of the agreement, hoping that other signatories, particularly the Europeans, could preserve the deal and deliver on its promised economic benefits despite U.S. sanctions.
When that failed, Tehran began gradually increasing its nuclear activities by expanding enrichment and reducing compliance step by step, while avoiding a decisive breakout.
The pace accelerated after Iran's conservative-dominated parliament passed a law ordering a significant increase in nuclear activities, following the assassination of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. The shift was further reinforced by the 2021 election of conservative President Ebrahim Raisi.
The ultimate goal was to rebuild negotiating leverage, as Tehran believed broader geopolitical and regional trends were gradually shifting in its favor. From his perspective, the rise of China, Russia's growing assertiveness and growing fractures within the Western alliance suggested that Washington's ability to isolate Iran indefinitely could weaken over time.
At the same time, Iran pursued a strategy to reduce tensions with its neighbors, seeking to improve relations with Gulf states that had previously supported the United States' “maximum pressure” campaign. By the early 2020s, many Gulf Cooperation Council countries had begun to prioritize engagement and reducing tensions with Iran, culminating in measures such as the 2023 Saudi-Iran rapprochement, brokered by China.
In this context, even as tensions increased, Tehran continued to apply diplomacy. Years of negotiations with the Biden administration aimed at restoring the JCPOA ultimately produced no agreement. Subsequent diplomatic efforts under Trump's second presidency also failed.
Behind this approach was a fundamental assumption: that the United States ultimately preferred stability to war. Iranian officials believed that Washington would eventually conclude that diplomacy, rather than endless pressure or a major war, was the most realistic and least costly path forward.
The joint US-Israeli attack on Iran has revealed how deeply flawed that assumption was.
The return of deterrence
While Tehran based its strategy on mistaken beliefs about the rationality of American foreign policy, Washington is also misinterpreting the situation.
For years, proponents of the maximum pressure campaign argued that sustained economic and military pressure would eventually fracture Iran internally. Some predicted that the war would trigger widespread unrest and even regime collapse.
So far, none of those predictions have materialized.
Despite enormous pressure on Iranian society, there have been no signs of the regime's disintegration. Instead, Iran's political base – and in many cases broader segments of society – has united in the face of external attack.
Additionally, Iran spent years strengthening its deterrence capabilities. This involved expanding and diversifying its ballistic missile, cruise missile and drone programs and developing multiple delivery systems designed to penetrate sophisticated air defenses. Iranian planners also learned lessons from direct exchanges with Israel in 2024 and the June 2025 war, improving targeting accuracy and coordination between different weapons systems.
The focus was on preparing for a prolonged war of attrition: firing fewer but more accurate strikes over time while attempting to degrade enemy radar and air defense systems.
Now we see the results of this work. Iran has been able to inflict significant damage on its adversaries. The retaliatory strikes have killed seven Americans and 11 Israelis, putting increasing pressure on US and Israeli missile defense systems as interceptors steadily run out.
Iranian missile and drone attacks have hit targets across the region, including high-value military infrastructure such as radar facilities. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused turbulence in global energy markets.
Aside from the immense cost of war, the United States' decision to launch the attack against Iran may have another unintended consequence: a radical change in Iranian strategy.
For decades, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei maintained a long-standing religious ban on nuclear weapons. His assassination on the first day of the war may now motivate the country's new civilian and military leaders to rethink their nuclear strategy.
There may now be fewer ideological reservations about the pursuit of nuclear weapons. The logic is simple: if diplomacy cannot ease sanctions or permanently eliminate the threat of war, nuclear deterrence may seem the only viable alternative.
Iran's actions in this conflict suggest that many leaders now view patience and diplomacy as strategic mistakes. These include the unprecedented scale of Iranian missile and drone attacks across the region, attacks on US partners and critical infrastructure, and domestic political decisions that signal a tougher line, particularly the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader.
The election of Khamenei's son breaks a long-standing taboo in a system based on the rejection of hereditary rule and reflects a leadership increasingly prepared to abandon previous restrictions.
If a zero-sum logic of deterrence takes hold across the region, replacing dialogue as the organizing principle of security, the Middle East may enter a much more dangerous era in which nuclear weapons are seen as the supreme form of deterrence and nuclear proliferation can no longer be stopped.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
