TEHRAN—Inside a building in the Iranian capital, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi did not seem to be seeking an exit from conflict. Rather, he appeared to be preparing the nation for its continuation. Above ground, in broad daylight, the city had adjusted to the rhythm of interception fire and public display. Men and women gathered in the streets, some dressed in burial shrouds, carrying flags and portraits of assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. When the air defense systems fired above, their “Allahu akbar” chants rose periodically from the streets. The atmosphere reflected a system already conditioned for shock.
But this isn’t the full picture. There are still those who feel the burden of no hope for the future, with or without war.
Only hours earlier, news of the assassination of Iranian security chief Ali Larijani had begun circulating widely, confirmed by Israel but not yet formally acknowledged by Iran. Yet the machinery of government showed little visible disruption. Conversations moved quickly from the report itself to whether my interview with Araghchi should proceed.
It did. I was escorted to the meeting without a phone or filming equipment. The minister’s team exercised complete control over the process. Access was permitted—but strictly on their terms. “The Islamic Republic has a strong structure,” Araghchi said. “The presence or absence of individuals does not affect it.”
This statement reflected doctrine rather than mere rhetoric. This is the premise underlying the emerging strategic divergence. The United States and Israel are operating according to a familiar logic: that sustained strikes, leadership decapitation, and pressure on infrastructure can produce rapid political collapse. Iran, by contrast, is signaling that it is preparing for duration.
Once again, the danger is not simply escalation but miscalculation over time. Here, there is a comparison with Ukraine. This is not about territory or occupation but trajectory. In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, expecting a short war. Instead, it encountered a state capable of absorbing the initial shock, adapting to sustained pressure, and extending the conflict far beyond initial assumptions. The result was not only a grinding military confrontation but global economic disruption, particularly in energy markets. A similar dynamic may now be emerging in the Middle East.
Iran’s leaders appear to believe its system is structurally capable of absorbing shocks. Araghchi’s statements were unequivocal. Even losing the supreme leader, he suggested, would not disrupt the functioning of the state.
The ongoing targeted killing campaign illustrates both the reach and the limits of this approach. Israeli and U.S. strikes have eliminated several senior figures within Iran’s security establishment, individuals whose roles included preventing precisely such penetrations. Their deaths represent a significant symbolic blow.
But symbolism and systemic effect are not the same. The Iranian system has been constructed with overlapping chains of command, parallel institutions, and built-in redundancy. Authority is distributed, duplicated, and, when necessary, rapidly reassigned. Removing individuals, even at senior levels, does not necessarily produce paralysis. In some cases, it may reinforce cohesion and accelerate internal consolidation.
Araghchi acknowledged this logic directly, even including himself in it. “Anyone could become a target,” he said. “But like everyone else, we are standing firm.” This is not simply defiance. It is a doctrine of endurance. A system that anticipates loss is inherently harder to coerce.
This has clear implications for the strategy currently pursued by the United States and Israel. If the expectation is that decapitation tactics and sustained pressure will produce political concessions, then the possibility that these same tactics instead reinforce a long-war posture must be taken seriously.
At the same time, the structure of the conflict itself is complicating any containment effort. Iranian officials say the war is already regional in nature and cannot be geographically contained. The United States is not engaging from its own territory but from a network of military bases across the Middle East. Iran cannot attack the United States directly. It can only target U.S. assets and associated infrastructure within the region. “We did not expand the war,” he said. “This is the nature of this war.”
Whether one accepts this framing or not, the geographic reality is clear. U.S. military infrastructure is embedded across the region, often in proximity to civilian and economic assets, including ports, energy facilities, and urban centers. As strikes and counterstrikes intensify, the distinction between military and economic targets becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.
The conflict already includes energy. Strikes on Iran’s South Pars gas field, one of the world’s largest, signal an expansion of the battlespace. Iranian attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure further raise the stakes. The Strait of Hormuz remains a central point of vulnerability.
Roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes through Hormuz, along with significant volumes of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Even limited disruption has immediate global consequences. Prices rise. Insurance costs increase sharply. Shipping routes are reconsidered. Markets react in real time.
The effects extend far beyond the region. European energy supplies are affected. Asian importers compete more aggressively for available LNG. Russia, despite sanctions, gains renewed strategic relevance as an alternative supplier. Energy becomes not just a commodity but an instrument of weaponization, and it has been weaponized.
Here’s where Ukraine becomes most relevant. Russia’s war in Ukraine did not remain confined to the battlefield. It transformed global energy markets, reshaped political alignments, and imposed costs far beyond the immediate zone of conflict. What began as a regional war became a global economic event. A prolonged war involving Iran could follow a similar pattern.
Another dimension, however, may prove even more consequential—how Iran defines the end of the war itself. Araghchi was explicit: Iran is not interested in a cease-fire.
“We do not believe in a cease-fire,” he said. “We believe in ending the war … on all fronts.”
This is a fundamentally different framework. A cease-fire implies a pause, a temporary halt in hostilities that can be reversed. What Iran is describing is something far more ambitious and far more difficult: a comprehensive resolution across multiple fronts.
By that definition, war is not limited to Iran. It encompasses Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and other arenas. Ending the war, therefore, requires stability across all these fronts simultaneously. At one level, this can be read as a positive signal for a broader regional settlement. At another, it establishes a condition that makes diplomatic exit significantly more difficult.
A bilateral cease-fire is no longer sufficient. De-escalation requires alignment across multiple actors, each with distinct interests, timelines, and constraints. At the same time, this framework reinforces the logic of duration. The longer the conflict continues, the stronger the case for a comprehensive settlement to end it. This way, time itself becomes part of the strategy.
This dynamic echoes developments in Ukraine, where definitions of victory and security expanded over time and the space for compromise contracted accordingly. The result is a widening gap between what is militarily achievable in the short term and what is politically defined as an acceptable end state.
There is no certainty that this conflict will last. Wars can and do end abruptly. But the conditions that sustain long wars are increasingly visible: a belief in rapid coercion on one side, a doctrine of endurance on the other, a battlespace that extends beyond immediate borders, and a global system that channels the conflict’s effects outward.
In Tehran, the message was clear. This is not a system on the verge of collapse. It is a system preparing to absorb. So the greater risk is not escalation but entrenchment. This is a conflict in which neither side is likely to achieve a rapid victory, in which the political end state remains elusive, and in which the economic consequences extend far beyond the battlefield.
This conflict will not replicate Ukraine. Geography, alliances, and military dynamics differ. But it may share its defining characteristic: the shift from expectations of speed to the reality of duration. In that reality, as Iran expert Mohammad Ali Shabani argues, the central question is no longer which side can strike hardest but rather which side can endure longest—and how much strain the global system can absorb before it, too, becomes part of the conflict.
This is the emerging risk: not simply a larger war but a longer one.
