Trump’s Iran miscalculation: When power meets a civilisation that refuses to collapse

Donald Trump’s confrontation with Iran appears to have been built on a fundamental misreading of the country he chose to confront. The assumption in Washington seemed to be that a sudden decapitation strike against Iran’s leadership could trigger a rapid political collapse. In that scenario, eliminating senior figures would produce confusion inside the system, spark internal competition for power and potentially encourage political actors inside the country to align themselves with the United States. Variations of this strategy have appeared before in American foreign policy thinking, particularly in states whose institutions are weak or heavily dependent on a single leader. Yet the reaction that followed the opening phase of the war demonstrated that Iran operates under a very different political […]