Iran’s fast response to the US and Israeli attacks demonstrates that the regime knows it faces an “existential threat” so has to look like it is hitting back, a leading open source analyst has told The National.
Tehran also understands that the chance of regime change is much higher now because it is facing not just Israel but the military might of the US from the outset, said Tal Hagin.
“The fast two-hour response time by Iran today was a little bit more surprising than in June and that has to do with Iran's strategic understanding of what this conflict is about,” he said, referring to attacks by Israel and the US in 2025.
“It understands that the US policy is regime change and so this is a very much an existential threat for Iran, and it seems that they have the capabilities to respond quite fast.”
The US knows that it is still very hard to defeat Iran through air strikes alone, so it is causing “as much harm as possible to garner support for the local Iranians who are against the government”.
Mr Hagin suggested that the coming hours will demonstrate precisely how strong Iran’s military response could be, with more missile strikes alongside shipping and proxy terror attacks.
“However, it’s not just about what Iran is capable of doing but whether it is capable militarily, because if a lot of the military [higher] echelon is killed by Israel or the United States, then it's going to be a lot harder for the troops on the ground to know what to do,” he said, speaking from a bunker in Tel Aviv.
In June, the Iranians did not want to risk killing American troops because of the potential backlash from Washington but, given that the regime understands it has nothing to lose, they are striking back as fast as possible, he added.
“That tells me that they they've changed that strategy as to how to handle the United States.”
America recently removed its refuelling tankers away from Gulf states to Israel as it knew its regional bases would be attacked.
However, Iran’s ability to launch missiles should fairly rapidly diminish because every time they fire, using radar, they will be detected and destroyed by air strikes. Once launchers are destroyed, Iran’s missiles will be redundant. Also, Iran is likely to have only a limited stockpile of missiles as many were used or destroyed in the war last June.
In the coming days, “they can do a lot of damage to Israel, but only for a short amount of time,” said Mr Hagin. “I don't think that they have the ability to go long term.” But the regime does have the ability to hide in bunkers to “stay alive for a very long time”.
Other defence sources have indicated that once Iran’s air defences are removed in the continuing SEAD (suppression of enemy air defences) operation, ground force operations could take place.
This could be either targeted assassination of regime elements or to enter the nuclear facilities to “thoroughly and utterly destroy them”, a source said.
