U.S.-Israel Strikes on Iran: Preliminary Assessment

The joint U.S.-Israeli military operations against Iran announced Saturday, February 28, 2026, represent a dangerous escalation in Middle Eastern tensions—one rooted in strategic miscalculation and contradicted by America’s own intelligence assessments. The military campaign aims to topple Iran’s ruling leadership, dismantle its missile and naval capabilities, and encourage popular uprising following the strikes.

Initial reports from regional and international media indicate sharp escalation following the coordinated strikes. Iranian retaliation has reportedly targeted U.S. interests and allied positions across the Middle East. A representative from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reported Saturday that ships in the region are receiving radio communications declaring a prohibition on all maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of the world’s oil passes.

President Trump framed these “major combat operations” as necessary to counter an imminent Iranian missile threat to the American homeland. Yet according to multiple sources familiar with classified intelligence, this claim lacks evidentiary support. A 2025 unclassified Defense Intelligence Agency assessment states that Iran could develop a “militarily-viable” intercontinental ballistic missile by 2035—and only “should Tehran decide to pursue the capability.” Current intelligence indicates no active Iranian ICBM program targeting the United States.

Iran does possess substantial short- and medium-range ballistic missiles threatening U.S. bases and personnel throughout the Gulf region, as recent retaliatory strikes underscore. However, the conflation of regional capabilities with intercontinental threats fundamentally distorts the strategic picture. Beyond these intelligence contradictions, the fundamental challenge lies in the scale and complexity of the undertaking itself.

Before policymakers embrace this as a pathway to regime change, historical evidence demands caution. Regime change in Iran would be exponentially more complex than the post-9/11 “Forever Wars.” Iran spans territory roughly six times larger than Iraq—double the combined size of Iraq and Afghanistan. With approximately 92 million people, more than twice California’s population, the scale alone presents enormous military, political, and logistical challenges.

For regime change to succeed, several conditions typically must be present: elite buy-in, credible civilian and military opposition, and defections among senior and rank-and-file military leaders. At present, none of these factors appears meaningfully in place in Iran.

The deeper miscalculation may be political rather than military. Trump appears to believe that overwhelming force—aircraft carriers, advanced weaponry, regional deployments—will compel Tehran’s theocratic leadership to capitulate. History and strategic analysis suggest otherwise. For Iranian hardliners, capitulation poses a far greater threat to regime survival than war with the United States. Multiple studies have suggested that Iran is more likely to escalate or absorb pressure than capitulate outright.

Calling for immediate surrender of the regime, Trump declared: ‘I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or in the alternative, face certain death. You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death.’

Iranian leaders appear to calculate that they can survive a conflict, particularly in the absence of U.S. ground troops. Surrender, by contrast, would likely fracture their already-narrowed domestic support base, which now consists largely of more radical and hardline constituencies essential to regime survival.  Losing them could be fatal politically; enduring war, however costly nationally, may preserve regime cohesion. This dynamic explains Tehran’s willingness to absorb punishment rather than negotiate from perceived weakness.

According to investigative journalists Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain, Iran unleashed in retaliation ‘a series of ballistic missile and drone strikes aimed at Israel and U.S. military facilities across the Persian Gulf, as well as in Jordan,’ targeting U.S. assets in Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.

Historical evidence demonstrates that air campaigns and precision strikes alone have a poor record of achieving regime change. The United States spent more than $7 billion bombing Yemen under Presidents Biden and Trump yet failed to dislodge the Houthis.

The broader lesson is sobering: since the first Gulf War, the United States has struggled to produce clear, stable political outcomes from major military interventions in the Middle East. That history makes the current confrontation especially dangerous. The longer it continues, the greater the risk of regional spillover, resource depletion, and a renewed long-term U.S. entanglement in the Middle East.

These immediate tactical responses point to broader strategic risks that extend well beyond the current strikes. The U.S. administration hopes for a quick and decisive victory. However, if the intervention extends, it risks depleting munitions—such as Tomahawk missiles and various interceptors already in short supply.

America’s adversaries would welcome seeing the U.S. bogged down in another protracted military intervention in the Middle East, diverting attention and resources from America’s long-term strategic challenges in Asia. A report in the Wall Street Journal notes that Iran’s ballistic-missile stockpile and production capacity provide enough medium- and short-range missiles to pose a serious threat to Israel and U.S. regional bases.

The International Crisis Group’s Iran Project Director Ali Vaez articulated this reality bluntly: ‘History shows external attack tends to consolidate regimes, not topple them.’ Airpower alone does not manufacture political alternatives or regime change.

This new phase of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East follows a familiar pattern: preemptive strikes not based on imminent threats to the United States and conducted without congressional approval. As with earlier preemptive wars, the consequences for the targeted country, its people, and the broader region are likely to be significant.

By maximizing military assets in the region while offering little diplomatic off-ramp, Washington may have unintentionally raised the probability of the very protracted conflict it repeatedly sought to avoid. The coming weeks and months will test whether deterrence, escalation control, or miscalculation defines the next chapter.

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