With its supreme leader and military top brass dead, Iran’s war effort rests on a “mosaic defence” strategy 20 years in the making, which disperses power to more junior commanders.
Drawing on lessons from previous American wars in the region, the aim of the strategy is to withstand attacks on Tehran, such as the strike that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and let troops fight back based on “general instructions”.
The National has been told that pro-Iran groups across the Middle East, known as the Axis of Resistance, are similarly acting under a "shared understanding" rather than the joint command that planned attacks during the Gaza war.
"There is no central regional command room for the Axis of Resistance, but rather a shared understanding of the nature of the risks and challenges," said a source close to one of the groups, Hezbollah. "The forces of the axis have learned a great deal from the support war for Gaza, in planning, execution and public awareness of how the war unfolds, and they are benefitting from that experience now."
While there has been no collapse of the Iranian regime so far, Iran has sustained heavy damage in which hundreds of people have been killed. Attacks on Gulf countries have left Tehran isolated diplomatically.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi gave the plan away on the second day of the US and Israeli war. “Decentralised Mosaic Defence enables us to decide when – and how – war will end,” he said.
Long planning
The mosaic doctrine was developed in the mid-2000s, after the US invasion of Iraq. As described by state media, it allows the army and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to run a “large, dispersed militia force” that fights a war of attrition.
Mohammad Ali Jafari, the head of the IRGC from 2007 to 2019, split up military command into 31 cells that could function by themselves if others were destroyed. The IRGC has formidable firepower, including its own navy and air force.
Iran’s chain of command took a severe blow when Mr Khamenei was killed, along with the country’s defence minister, army chief of staff and the commander of the IRGC, on the first day of US and Israeli attacks on Saturday.
But the scale of the Iranian response has caught many by surprise, with days of drone and missile attacks across the Middle East that have caused casualties, grounded flights and disrupted the world economy. Gulf countries who had lobbied for peace talks have condemned the attacks as unjustified.
“We've had two decades to study defeats of the US military to our immediate east and west,” Mr Araghchi said. “We've incorporated lessons accordingly. Bombings in our capital have no impact on our ability to conduct war.”
Mr Araghchi told Al Jazeera that military units were acting in an "independent and somewhat isolated" way. He said they were operating "based on general instructions given to them in advance".
The strategy has also included, experts say, bringing members of the Basij volunteer militia into the war effort.
Proxy involvement
The Axis of Resistance has similarly been part of Iran's defensive doctrine for more than 20 years. During the Gaza war, The National revealed how armed factions across the Middle East were holding meetings in Lebanon to agree on targets and timing for attacks.
But members of the axis have taken different approaches in the present war. Lebanon's Hezbollah is in a full-scale war with Israel, while pro-Iran factions in Iraq have claimed some attacks and Yemen's Houthis have remained quiet so far.
A source in Sanaa with knowledge of the Houthis' plans said they would "intervene at the appropriate time, and the decision will be taken if there is a necessity to do so".
"The 'unity of arenas' has not ended. Yemen’s Ansar Allah [the Houthis] will enter the conflict if necessary and will be present on the military front," the source said. "If the United States succeeds in its confrontation with Iran, it will then move towards Sanaa, which is why Iran and Hezbollah will not be left alone from a military perspective.
"Iran does not currently need intervention or assistance from another party. The time has not yet come for Ansar Allah to enter the battle, but its military capability is ready."
Under pressure
Despite Tehran’s preparations, the US and Israel say they have made progress in stripping Iran of its firepower. Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defence, said on Wednesday that the Iranian navy was “no more”.
Israel said air raids on Wednesday had struck IRGC, Basij and intelligence headquarters in Tehran. Attacks have been reported across the country.
As Iran boasts of learning from US military defeats in the past, Mr Hegseth also played down comparisons to the war in Iraq, when American forces were bogged down in a counter-insurgency.
In Iran they are using “twice the airpower of the Iraq war of 2003, minus Paul Bremer and the nation-building”, he said, referring to the US "administrator" who ran Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
