Jonathan Whittall
Since October 7, 2023, the United States and Israel believed that sustained diplomatic and military pressure on Iran would deter and degrade its capacity to fight. In the process, they degraded something else entirely: Iran’s willingness to remain constrained. The missiles and drones now striking across the Gulf show that Iran is no longer holding back.
For years, Iran operated under a doctrine of “strategic patience”. This was a deliberate, calculated form of restraint that guided how Tehran and its network of allies delt with Washington and Tel Aviv. Rather than confrontation, Iran built and leveraged a web of deterrence: Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, and the Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq were its allies surrounding Israel, and helped to apply brakes on any major Israeli aggression.
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