Who Has the Upper Hand in Iran?

One of the strangest habits in modern war analysis is how quickly survival gets confused with victory. Iran has not collapsed overnight. The regime still broadcasts threats, launches missiles and drones, and floods television and social media with declarations of imagined strength. From that surface-level reality, a growing chorus of commentators has rushed to claim that Iran has embarrassed the United States, exposed Israeli weakness, and seized control of escalation through its ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz. Much of that analysis mistakes continued existence for strategic success and ignores nearly every measurable indicator of national power.

Wars are not scored like debates on cable television. They are judged through military capability, economic endurance, political cohesion, freedom of action, strategic leverage, and the ability to sustain power while degrading an opponent’s. By those standards, Iran is substantially weaker today than it was before the war began. The United States and Israel still hold the upper hand because the foundations of Iranian power have been systematically reduced in ways that will take years to rebuild, if they can be rebuilt at all.

The scale of military destruction alone is extraordinary. Much of the senior leadership structure that spent decades constructing Iran’s regional military network is dead. Senior IRGC commanders, missile force leaders, intelligence officials, nuclear scientists, operational planners, and even the Supreme Leader himself have been eliminated. Mohammad Bagheri, Hossein Salami, and other senior figures who represented the institutional backbone of Iran’s military strategy are gone. Entire command relationships were shattered during the opening phases of the war, leaving surviving leaders scrambling to maintain continuity while under constant pressure.

The damage extends far beyond personnel losses. Nuclear facilities that represented decades of investment and strategic ambition now sit buried under rubble after sustained strikes on enrichment sites, underground complexes, centrifuge production facilities, research centers, and supporting infrastructure. Analysts continue to speak as though Iran can simply restart enrichment at industrial scale in a matter of months. That misunderstands what was destroyed. Advanced centrifuge production depends on precision manufacturing, specialized tooling, secure facilities, trained personnel, supply chains, and protected infrastructure. Large portions of that ecosystem no longer exist.

Iran once believed it could steadily push its nuclear and missile programs toward a threshold where the military cost of stopping them would become politically unacceptable for any outside power. That strategy shaped Tehran’s thinking for years. The regime hoped to create a fait accompli, a hardened shield of missiles, proxies, underground facilities, and enrichment capability that would eventually deter meaningful intervention. Instead, the war demonstrated that the shield was penetrable and that the consequences of crossing certain lines were far greater than Tehran anticipated.

Its missile enterprise has suffered similar devastation. Before the war, Iran had steadily expanded ballistic missile production and stockpiles as the centerpiece of its deterrent strategy. Analysts estimated the regime could manufacture roughly one hundred ballistic missiles per month. Today many of the machine tooling centers, fuel production facilities, assembly plants, storage depots, and transport infrastructure that sustained that output are destroyed or inoperable. Production has effectively collapsed under sustained strikes, economic isolation, cyber operations, and industrial disruption. A state can expend missiles quickly in war. Rebuilding the industrial base that creates them is a much slower process.

Iran’s naval capabilities have also absorbed severe damage. Large portions of the Iranian Navy and IRGC maritime forces were destroyed or rendered ineffective during the campaign. Tehran had invested heavily in asymmetric maritime warfare through fast attack craft, anti-ship missiles, naval mines, IRGC naval units, and swarm tactics intended to threaten global shipping. Many of those capabilities were directly targeted. Naval staging areas, missile launch infrastructure, command facilities, and key maritime assets were destroyed in strikes specifically designed to prevent Iran from controlling chokepoints or sustaining attacks on international commerce. Iran can still create disruption. It can still threaten shipping lanes and inject uncertainty into global markets. But threatening commerce is not the same thing as commanding the sea.

The debate over the Strait of Hormuz reflects a broader misunderstanding about power itself. Many analysts point to Iran’s ability to threaten oil markets as evidence that Tehran somehow controls escalation and can ultimately force the United States and its allies into retreat. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described this dynamic accurately when he referred to Iran’s use of the Strait as an “economic nuclear weapon.” By openly threatening the world economy through coercion and instability, Iran may have accomplished the opposite of what it intended. It reinforced for regional governments and global powers why the regime can never again be allowed to hold that level of leverage unchecked.

Across the Gulf, states are already accelerating efforts to bypass dependence on the Strait through pipelines, expanded port infrastructure, and alternative export corridors. The UAE’s growing alignment with Israel reflects a wider regional shift underway. Governments that once viewed Iran as a difficult but necessary regional power increasingly see it as the primary source of instability threatening economic growth and long-term security. Tehran spent years trying to convince the region that resistance movements and proxy militias represented strength. The war has increasingly exposed them as engines of destruction that drag entire societies toward crisis.

The same flawed black-and-white thinking shapes discussion of Iran’s nuclear material and enrichment program. Some analysts insist Iran will never negotiate, never surrender enriched uranium, and inevitably race toward a bomb again the moment fighting stops. No serious strategist can predict with certainty how the regime behaves under sustained military and economic pressure. The material could ultimately be removed through negotiation, coercive diplomacy, or force. What matters strategically is that Iran has once again validated every warning that drove decades of nonproliferation concerns. The regime demonstrated how close it intended to move toward nuclear weapons capability while simultaneously funding proxy terrorism, threatening maritime commerce, and destabilizing the region through armed militias.

Iran’s air defenses and air force have also been badly degraded. Israeli and American aircraft operated repeatedly over Iranian territory after dismantling much of the country’s integrated air defense system. Radar sites, command nodes, surface-to-air missile batteries, and air bases were systematically targeted. Iran’s air force, already aging and technologically outmatched before the war, was further devastated through losses in aircraft, infrastructure, maintenance capacity, and operational readiness. Once a country loses the ability to contest its own airspace in a meaningful way, every other vulnerability becomes magnified.

Economically, the pressure is immense. Oil exports, industrial production, energy infrastructure, shipping, and foreign investment have all suffered major disruption. Analyses from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies estimate economic losses well into the hundreds of billions when direct damage, lost production, sanctions pressure, and long-term contraction are combined. Even if the war ended tomorrow, recovery would likely take years. Sustained military destruction layered onto sanctions creates compounding effects that spread through every sector of a national economy. Inflation rises. Currency stability erodes. Capital flees. Supply chains fracture. Public frustration deepens.

Political stress inside the regime is becoming increasingly visible as well. Iranian leaders have publicly contradicted one another over retaliation, negotiations, military strategy, and relations with outside powers. That matters because authoritarian systems depend heavily on projecting unity and control. Visible disagreement signals strain throughout the governing structure. The regime has also kept internet access heavily restricted for much of its population since the war began, fearing unrest and uncontrolled information flow. Governments confident in their domestic stability rarely isolate their own citizens from the outside world during conflict.

Iran’s regional proxy network has suffered devastating setbacks. Hamas’s senior leadership and much of its military infrastructure were destroyed in the war that followed the October 7 attacks. While Hamas still exists as a political force in portions of Gaza, it no longer resembles the organization that once coordinated large-scale cross-border assaults, sustained prolonged combat operations, and relied on steady external resupply from Iran and its regional network. Its tunnel systems, weapons production capacity, command structure, and foreign support pipelines have been systematically dismantled or severely degraded. Cut off from many of its external backers and facing constant military pressure, Hamas has been reduced from a regional instrument of Iranian power projection to a battered and isolated insurgent remnant struggling to survive.

Hezbollah, long marketed as Iran’s crown jewel of deterrence, suffered equally devastating blows. Senior leadership figures were eliminated, experienced commanders lost, weapons stockpiles destroyed, and critical infrastructure across southern Lebanon heavily damaged. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria and sustained interdiction campaigns also severed or severely disrupted many of the logistical corridors that once allowed Iran to move missiles, weapons systems, and advanced military equipment into Lebanon. Hezbollah remains dangerous, but the image of an untouchable proxy army capable of dictating escalation across the region has been badly shattered.

The Houthis have also suffered major attrition and remain increasingly isolated and under pressure even if they retain some disruptive capacity. Shiite militia groups tied to Tehran across Iraq and Syria face operational constraints, leadership losses, and growing scrutiny from local governments. For decades Iran relied on proxy warfare because it offered strategic depth at relatively low direct cost. That model is now strained across nearly every theater simultaneously.

Some analysts continue to argue that because Iran can still fire missiles, threaten shipping, or survive politically, the United States is strategically cornered and desperate for an exit. That argument confuses the ability to inflict pain with the ability to achieve strategic success. Damaged powers can remain dangerous for long periods of time. History is full of weakened states capable of lashing out violently even while losing the broader balance of power around them. Serious strategic analysis requires measuring what Iran has lost alongside what it can still do.

Many analysts want to simplify a deeply complex war into slogans. Iran is winning. America is losing. Trump is trapped. Those narratives often avoid confronting the measurable destruction Iran has suffered, the years required to rebuild its military-industrial base, and the strategic value of preventing a terrorist regime from reaching a no-turning-back threshold in nuclear weapons capability and missile production. They also dismiss the importance of preserving freedom of navigation, protecting regional partners, and degrading a state that spent decades funding terrorism and destabilizing the Middle East.

No one can predict the future with certainty. No analyst possesses a crystal ball capable of forecasting whether the Islamic regime can survive the long-term political and economic consequences of this war. But based on every serious measure of national power, Iran is weaker today than before the conflict began. Its military has been shattered across multiple domains. Its economy is under severe strain. Its proxies are degraded. Its deterrence credibility has suffered. Its strategic ambitions have been rolled back. The United States and its partners still hold the upper hand because the foundations of Iranian power have been systematically reduced, and rebuilding them may take far longer than many observers are willing to admit.

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John Spencer is the Executive Director of the Urban Warfare Institute

He is the author of 20 Times I Almost Died: Life Lessons from the Edge of Survival and coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.

Learn more at www.johnspenceronline.com

X: @SpencerGuard

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.