Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, stated that he believes the United States and Israel pursued a strategy of targeting Iran’s senior leaders until someone agreed to surrender. He described this as a miscalculation, arguing that Iran’s leadership fears surrender far more than war.

According to Parsi, former U.S. President Donald Trump assumed that deploying aircraft carriers to the Gulf would intimidate Iran into submission. However, Parsi explained that Iran’s rulers believe they can survive a war but not a surrender. He warned that if no one in Iran agrees to surrender, the approach would require not only removing successive leaders but effectively destroying the entire country.

Parsi added that the Trump administration did not understand how long such a campaign might take or whether it was even possible. During that time, he said, Iran’s strategy would be to inflict as much damage as possible on the United States, its forces, the global economy, neighboring states, and international markets to make such an initiative prohibitively costly.