Iran faces a security paradox: there is a vast difference between what it excels at and what it fails to do.
In the wars of 2025 and 2026, the United States and Israel succeeded in surprising Tehran. Both wars erupted amid negotiations that had the potential to produce breakthroughs. Given its past experiences, Tehran was expected to be better fortified against surprises, or so it was assumed.
Last June, Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr of Johns Hopkins University wrote that, during the eight months following the 2025 war, “more institutional changes occurred than in the entire previous decade combined.” Regardless of how the authors measured these figures, there is no doubt that the regime’s resilience reflected successful changes and preparations for the war launched by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Similarly, there is no dispute that the regime exploited intermittent periods of engagement with the United States since last April to prepare for another round of conflict. However, this does not eliminate a major paradox.
All the preparations made after the 2025 war failed to prevent the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, along with a very large number of officials, possibly exceeding forty. The conclusion that can be drawn from the wars is that Iran knows how to endure, but does not know how to protect its leaders. This conclusion is problematic because it contradicts common sense: it is difficult to establish a resilient power base without ensuring the protection of its leaders. Iran managed the situation, but replicating this success in every conflict is challenging and may depend largely on chance.
Another question mark concerns the whereabouts and condition of the current leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. He survived the attack that killed his father but lost his wife and several other relatives. Had Mojtaba not survived, the regime’s situation would have been more complicated. For now, not everyone is certain that he actually survived. However, the ability of the “less favored” figures in the new regime, such as Iranian President Massoud Bezhkian and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, to meet with Khamenei increases the likelihood that reports of the leader’s survival are true.
It is possible that American and Israeli intelligence services have identified the location of Khamenei’s son, and that what prevented them from targeting him was the decision to leave room for negotiations to run their course and elections to take place. The Iranian government is making rapid changes to its governance, but it is racing against time as Washington and Tel Aviv continue to demonstrate their ability to track key figures within the government, across both political and security spheres.
It is worth remembering that the assassination of former National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani took place in the midst of the war, meaning that spies continued to operate on the ground even under bombardment. Therefore, the opening of the next war, if one breaks out, will be of direct interest. Will the next opening strike lead to the deaths of key Iranian leaders?
Should that happen, the resilience of Iranian institutions will suffer another blow. The regime is unlikely to collapse, but for the third time in a row, it will lose another layer of shock absorbers. For a leadership preparing for successive rounds of war, the success of such an opening strike would once again offer little reason for optimism.
