Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 2 April 2026. © Richard Kemp

Iran’s entire defensive strategy has been upended by the current campaign. The ayatollahs never expected to find themselves in a sustained, direct, high-intensity war with the US and Israel. Their thinking had been based on gaining ascendancy in the Middle East by proxy groups and ultimately by nuclear weapons.

The rulers of Iran spent billions of dollars building a series of terrorist networks that would do their dirty work for them both for offensive action and defence. They expected retaliation against their belligerence would be limited to containable clandestine operations and cyber attacks, as they had experienced for many years.

But had they come under direct attack from either the US or Israel, they had some not-so-secret weapons up their sleeves: Hezbollah, Hamas and – very much in third place – the Houthis. These groups would simultaneously bombard Israel with many thousands of missiles, overwhelming IDF air defences and inflicting intolerable damage. That would have forced the US to back down in traditional fashion.

It didn’t work out like that. All three terror proxies have been very severely handled by Israel (and in the case of the Houthis, the US) since the brutal and ill-judged Hamas offensive on October 7, 2023. Their combined contribution to the defence of Iran over the last few weeks has consequently been strategically negligible.

So when the war came to Iranian territory, the ayatollahs had to find another way of making the US back down. That wouldn’t be achieved by striking Israel alone: the 12-day war last June showed that Israel is able to bat off most of the missiles and drones and in any case would never have stopped fighting or appealed to the US to do so.

But in the minds of the ayatollahs, attacking their Arab neighbours would achieve what they wanted. Fearing political and economic instability, the Gulf states would pressure Trump to call off the war.

In fact it had the opposite effect. Behind the scenes, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have reportedly urged the president to keep attacking until the job is done. Whatever they might say in public, the Arab states’ true position can be seen by the continued US use of bases in the region.

Indeed, Iran’s actions have further underscored a threat that Arab countries long feared, and consequently increased their reliance on protection from the US and Israel, especially in intelligence and air defence. Even those states that had long sought to stay neutral, such as Qatar and the UAE, both previously acting as mediators, have been forced to pick sides. A strategy that was meant to divide has instead consolidated opposition to Tehran.

Another strategic miscalculation has been the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. As a global economic attack, it gives further justification for the US and Israel to continue the war, including potentially widening strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure. It also reinforces the narrative that Iran is a worldwide threat and countries that have kept out of the conflict may well be drawn in – not on Iran’s side.

The closure may end up further straining relations with key partners such as China and India. Both have been significantly impacted, despite Tehran’s selective and inconsistent permission for some ships and cargoes to pass through the strait.

Additionally, the regime is probably inflicting greater harm on its own economy than it is on other countries. It depends on the Strait for both the import of food and other essentials, and for its own oil exports. Iran may be losing up to $100m per day in oil revenues alone – a major hit on an already very fragile economy that cannot withstand such stress for long.

Tehran’s strategic blunders arise from calculations based on decades of appeasement by the West and timorousness in the Middle East in the face of widespread aggression. But now the regime is faced by a different type of US president, as well as Arab neighbours that he has carefully cultivated, and an Israel stronger and more united since October 7.

Of course the old European cravenness remains as persistent as ever. While bleating about how Iran can’t be allowed to continue to threaten the world, many European countries have been calling for de-escalation – in other words, “let Iran continue to threaten the world”.

In stark contrast to the Arab nations, the European stance is made clear by restrictions on US use of bases by Britain, Spain, France and Italy. But the Tehran regime can’t even take a crumb of comfort from that because Europe has made itself irrelevant to this war.