Key Points – The Iranian regime’s “extreme hubris,” born from decades of surviving revolution, a grueling war with Iraq, and successfully sponsoring regional proxies, led it to fatally miscalculate the strategic situation prior to Israel’s devastating June 13th strike.
-Confident in its missile and drone capabilities, Tehran failed to recognize that its strategic position had severely weakened in late 2024 after its key allies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Assad regime in Syria, were neutralized.
-Believing it could continue to act with impunity, Iran sleepwalked into a direct conflict with a technologically superior Israel, leaving its complacent military leadership and vulnerable infrastructure exposed.
How Iranian ‘Hubris’ Led to a Devastating War with Israel (Op-Ed)
In January 2024, Iran was riding high. Its proxies and allies in the region were fighting a multi-front war against Israel. Hamas in Gaza had carried out the worst mass terror attack against Israel in history just three months prior. Hezbollah was targeting Israel daily from Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen were attacking ships and threatening to cut off Israel from the Red Sea. They were also attacking Israel with drones and missiles.
Iraqi militias, backed by Iran, were also targeting Israel with long-range drones. A year and a half later, Iran is reeling from Israel’s June 13 surprise attack. Iran’s air defenses have crumbled. Its ballistic missiles appear to be running out. How did it fail so badly to understand the changing situation?
Iran in History
The Iranian regime’s hubris has roots going back decades. The regime came to power in 1979 by overthrowing the Shah, whose army had the latest US-supplied arms and appeared to be secure in power. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had returned to Tehran to lead the revolution aboard a Boeing 747 from France. Soon, Iran’s new revolutionaries were storming the US embassy and taking hostages. The regime that came to power had no fear of the US or the Soviet Union. It felt it could do as it pleased. Even after Iran was invaded by Iraq in 1980, it was able to not only push back the Iraqi army but also launch offensives into Iraq. Iraq had the latest Soviet weapons, but Iran’s newly recruited young “revolutionary guards” were able to defeat Saddam Hussein’s legions.
The regime that resulted from this crucible of war believed it could beat the West and regional powers. It sent assassins to Europe to hunt down dissidents. It backed Hezbollah and other groups to kidnap and kill Americans in Lebanon. It unleashed terror in the Gulf.
By the early 2000s, the men who rose to power in Iran were all veterans of the war with Iraq. They felt there was very little that stood in their way on their march to regional dominance.
Iran got a boost in the lead-up to the Iran deal in 2015. With Saddam’s Iraq toppled and Iraq weakened, Iran felt it could now empower proxies to take over more countries. It invested in militias in Iraq and Yemen. When the Syrian civil war broke out, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members went to Damascus to back the Assad regime. IRGC Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani went to Russia and encouraged Moscow to intervene in Syria.
By the time of the Iran deal, Iran felt it had outplayed the US and US partners such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. In January 2016, Iran even captured ten US sailors and broadcast a video of them being humiliated.
Iran’s Hubris
This outlay is the source of the Iranian regime’s extreme hubris. It believed it could attack the US Navy, kill Americans in Iraq, and use proxies against Saudi Arabia and Israel, and face no consequences.
By 2019, the regime felt it was ready to confront Saudi Arabia directly. It used drones and cruise missiles to attack Abqaiq, a giant energy facility. Five years later, in January 2024, Iran was ready to show off its latest ballistic missiles. It launched the new Kheiber Shekan ballistic missile at a target in Syria.
Many widely interpreted this action to be a show of force whereby Iran was showing it could precision target sites in Israel. Iran also carried out a missile attack on Pakistan. In April and October, Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel. This volley was the peak of Iran’s sense that it could do anything it wanted in the region.
Why did Iran overestimate its capabilities and not see that Israel’s threats to strike its nuclear program might come true? Iran misread the regional chessboard as things changed in 2024. In November 2024, the Lebanese government and Israel agreed to a US-backed ceasefire. This accord clipped the wings of Hezbollah. Hezbollah had entered the conflict with Israel with some 150,000 missiles.
By the time of the ceasefire, Hezbollah’s commanders had been killed, and its missile arsenal was destroyed or depleted. Less than two weeks after the ceasefire, the Assad regime fell to Syrian opposition fighters.
By 2025, Iran had lost key parts of its regional alliance. Rather than Israel facing a multi-front war ringed by Iranian proxies, the situation had changed. Iran was now the weaker player. Iran doesn’t have a modern conventional army. It also doesn’t have a strong navy or air force. Iran has relied on its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to bolster its military capabilities. The IRGC has invested in drones and ballistic missiles.
However, drones and missiles don’t win wars. Russia has used drones and missiles against Ukraine since 2022, but Kyiv has not been beaten. Russia is much stronger than Iran, and Ukraine lacks the F-35s and modern military that Israel possesses. Iran didn’t learn from this. Instead, Iran’s regime continued its zombie-like sleepwalking into a war with Israel.
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Iran spent the first months of 2025 expecting that it could browbeat the Trump administration into a new nuclear deal. It purposely slow-played the talks in Oman, demanding indirect talks. If Iran had read the chessboard correctly, it would know it should have run for the chance for a deal.
Instead, it failed to seize the day. On June 13, when Israel attacked, Iran’s military commanders were out in the open with no sense that they might be targeted. Men who had fought in the 1980s against Iraq had become complacent and arrogant. They didn’t realize the situation had changed.
This paved the way for Israel to pick apart Iran’s military capabilities in the first week of the war.
About the Author: Seth Frantzman
Seth Frantzman is the author of The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza (2024) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is a Senior Middle East Analyst for The Jerusalem Post. Seth is now a National Security Journal Contributing Editor.
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DOYLE-2
June 18, 2025 at 5:25 pm
Iran at first was sheperded, then afterward waylaid and ambushed by the US-EU-ISRAEL global conquest conglomerate.
In 1953, the US and UK toppled the legitimate govt of iran and installed the corrupt pro-west Shah as ruler.
The Shah used iran money to massively finance and purchase western arms. While many ordinary citizens lived or struggled with prolonged poverty.
But the hotly never-resolved palestinian crisis in the mid-east region finally brought the whole situation to a boil, at first during the 1974 asian games in tehran and later the 1979 internal crisis.
Later came the really bloody iran-iraq war and the robocop-style high-handedness of the US Navy in the persian gulf and the latent and fast rising nuclear threat from Israel.
Thus iran has now arrived at the very spot it has found itself in today in 2025.
Iran’s story or predicament of today, is, or can be easily and very exactly replicated in the western pacific in another day or time.(Remember THIS.)
Who’s fault is it. Certainly not iran’s or western pacific’s fault. Genghis’ !
PAGAR
June 18, 2025 at 8:14 pm
It’s clear the world today revolves around its daily routine via force of armed might. Real harsh might.
In haiti, gangs of violent individuals rule the streets, in mexico, cartel groups control society, while in the middle east, state actors now rule the region in accordance with their own rules and laws.
All of those above employ or use the method of dishing out punishment on anyone who opposes them through force of violence available to them by the latest modern weaponry and killing tools they possess.
Haitian gangs, mexican cartels, IDF units and US air and naval forces today all share a common love for violence through their sharp modern weaponry and their well-trained personnel.
So What to do now, for those not so inclined to a life of terrible violence.
Answer: Make sure you have weapons to defend tourself.
Make sure you and ya family understand that it’s fear that guards the family vineyard. Take out, clean ya spears and shine and polish them. And put them out on display.
Like in the case of north korea. North korea today is still alive and well and in one piece thanks to its nuke arsenal. Fearing for its life, north korea rejuvenated its ailing nuclear program and made it into a complete stunning success.
What happened to those countries which failed to acquire or develop nuke arsenals, like libya, iraq and syria.
Well, they were chucked down the sewer pipe.