10 Days of War and 30-something Waves of Operation True Promise 4
What I am tracking and where I remain puzzled
It has now been ten days since Iran launched Operation True Promise IV in response to the U.S. and Israel initiating Operation Epic Fury and Operation Lion’s Roar, respectively. Much of my own analysis during this period has been shaped by the sheer number of unknowns and by a healthy skepticism toward many of the claims circulating online
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There are structural limits to what analysts can confidently assess in real time. We do not have satellite imagery of every strike site, and several of the large data aggregators collecting battlefield information have been cautious about what they release publicly to researchers. There are developments I feel reasonably confident about based on the information available, but there are also many claims—about damage, targeting, and operational outcomes—that I remain hesitant to treat as definitive.
For that reason, rather than attempting to produce a day-by-day accounting of strikes or targeting patterns (topics I am covering in pieces currently in progress), I think it is more useful to step back and focus on the major trends and analytical questions that may shape the remainder of the war.
Elite Schisms
The internal political picture in Tehran is one of the most consequential variables to watch as the war unfolds. With Mojtaba Khamenei formally appointed Supreme Leader on March 8, some degree of elite jockeying was always expected. Yet even before the succession question formally emerged, several power centers were already visible in the wartime decision-making process.
In the immediate aftermath of the appointment, key political leaders, the IRGC, and the armed forces quickly pledged their backing. On the surface, this signals cohesion. The rapid alignment around Mojtaba likely reflects a deliberate effort by the system’s core institutions to project stability at a moment of profound external pressure. In many ways, Mojtaba appears to function as a continuity candidate: a figure acceptable to the principal power centers within the Islamic Republic, including the IRGC leadership, segments of the clerical establishment, and senior political elites.
That consensus itself is revealing. In a moment that Iranian leaders are likely framing internally as an existential crisis, the priority appears to have been regime continuity rather than elite competition. Mojtaba’s appointment likely reflects a calculation among Iran’s core institutions to maintain a recognizable leadership structure and avoid prolonged succession disputes as essential to preserving regime stability during wartime.
At the same time, it remains unclear whether Mojtaba’s elevation represents a long-term consolidation of power or a temporary consensus arrangement designed to stabilize the system during the conflict. Iranian political history suggests that moments of crisis often produce provisional arrangements that are later renegotiated once immediate pressures subside.
Even with the leadership question formally settled, the Iranian system has never operated as a simple hierarchy. Several influential actors appear to be playing prominent roles in shaping the regime’s wartime posture.
Figures such as Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and Ali Larijani have been particularly visible in political messaging and regional outreach. Both are seasoned political operators with deep ties across Iran’s security and political institutions, and their reemergence in prominent roles suggests that the system is relying on experienced figures capable of managing both domestic politics and regional diplomacy.
At the same time, the operational dimension of the war appears to be increasingly shaped by Khatam al-Anbiya, the central operational command structure responsible for coordinating large-scale military operations. In practice, this suggests that wartime authority may be distributed across multiple nodes: political leadership managing messaging and diplomacy, while the IRGC and military command structures retain significant influence over operational decisions.
This dynamic reflects a longstanding feature of the Islamic Republic: power is dispersed across overlapping institutions rather than concentrated in a single decision-maker. Even under a strong Supreme Leader, Iran’s political system functions through negotiation and coordination among key institutions, including the IRGC, clerical networks, and political elites.
The most important question, therefore, is not simply whether divisions exist. They almost certainly do. The Iranian system has always contained internal rivalries and competing perspectives.
The more consequential issue is whether those differences begin to translate into meaningful divergences.
So far, the rapid alignment behind Mojtaba suggests that the system is prioritizing cohesion in the face of external pressure. But as the war continues and its costs accumulate, the balance between institutional unity and internal competition will become one of the key indicators of how resilient the regime actually is.
Regional Delegation
From the opening hours of the conflict, Iran appears to have activated what it sometimes called the Mosaic Defense (defa-e mozaiki), a doctrine developed inside the IRGC over the past two decades. Under this system, launch authority is not tightly centralized in Tehran. Instead, operational authority is distributed across 31 provincial IRGC commands, each with pre-delegated authority to execute strike packages against pre-designated targets without waiting for real-time approval from national leadership.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi publicly acknowledged this structure on March 1, just hours after the opening strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour.
“Our military units are now independent and somehow isolated, and they are acting based on instructions — general instructions — given to them in advance.”
This architecture dates back to reforms introduced by former IRGC commander Mohammad Ali Jafari in 2005, when the organization reorganized itself from a more conventional hierarchical force into 31 semi-autonomous provincial commands. Each unit functions as a self-contained operational cell with its own command structure, weapons stockpiles, and contingency plans. Succession planning extends several ranks downward, meaning that even the loss of senior leadership does not halt operations. This was shaped by Iranian observations of the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Iranian planners concluded that highly centralized militaries collapse quickly under sustained precision strikes and leadership decapitation, while decentralized networks—especially those embedded in local terrain and society—are far more resilient.
The early operational pattern of this war reflects that design. Iranian missile launches continued even after the deaths of senior political and military leaders, and the IRGC has described a series of successive strike “waves” over multiple days. This behavior is far more consistent with a distributed launch system executing pre-authorized plans than with a centrally controlled military attempting to rebuild command after decapitation.
There are also operational limits built into the model. A decentralized network is well-suited for executing pre-planned strike packages and sustaining attritional retaliation. It is much less effective at coordinating complex, large-scale offensive operations across multiple domains. Early launch data may reflect this constraint: even as Iranian strikes continued, the scale of missile salvos appears to have declined as the war progressed.
What interests me most going forward is what this delegation tells us about Iran’s actual operational performance and command dynamics in wartime.
First is the level of autonomy exercised by provincial IRGC commands. The Mosaic Defense assumes that units can operate semi-independently once a conflict begins. But it remains unclear how much discretion these commanders actually have in practice. Are they executing rigid pre-written strike packages, or do they have latitude to adjust targeting, timing, and weapon selection based on battlefield conditions?
Second is the issue of coordination across the distributed network. The doctrine is designed to ensure continuity of operations even if central leadership is degraded, but that resilience may come at the cost of operational synchronization. Large, coordinated missile salvos or multi-axis campaigns require a degree of planning and communication that decentralized systems can struggle to sustain under pressure.
Third is the question of command authority during wartime disruptions. The opening strikes eliminated senior leadership figures, yet Iranian retaliation continued almost immediately. That suggests that operational authority had already been delegated well before the conflict began. What is less clear is how much Tehran is currently shaping the campaign versus how much the system is simply executing pre-authorized plans.
Fourth is the performance of the system under attrition. A distributed structure may allow launches to continue even after individual units are degraded, but it also means that each provincial command relies on its own stockpiles and launch infrastructure. Once those resources begin to erode, it becomes harder to sustain a consistent tempo of operations.
Iran’s Performance in the Gulf
Another theater that deserves close attention is Iran’s performance in the Gulf. For decades, Iran’s strategy in this region rested on the assumption that it could threaten energy infrastructure, maritime trade, and U.S. bases across the Gulf monarchies in order to impose global economic costs on its adversaries.
So far in this war, Iran has attempted to activate that playbook but the results have been mixed.
Iranian attacks have targeted oil and energy infrastructure, shipping, and industrial sites across the Gulf, including tanker attacks near Oman, strikes on refineries and industrial facilities in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and attacks on port infrastructure in Bahrain and Kuwait. These attacks appear designed less to destroy large volumes of infrastructure and more to generate disruption and uncertainty across energy markets.
At the same time, the maritime domain has been significantly disrupted. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has sharply declined, and international commercial traffic has largely withdrawn from the waterway due to the risk environment created by Iranian threats and attacks. Iran has succeeded in demonstrating that it can still disrupt Gulf trade and energy flows. But it has also taken a political risk by striking Gulf states directly. In some cases, those states (particularly the UAE) received large volumes of missiles and drones, forcing them to reconsider their security posture toward Iran.
This raises an important question going forward. Iran’s traditional strategy relied on deterrence through economic vulnerability—the threat that escalation would endanger global energy supplies. But if Gulf states begin to align more closely with U.S. and Israeli operations as a result of these strikes, Iran may be weakening the very regional environment that previously helped sustain its model of deterrence.
Missiles, Drones, and the Question of Operational Performance
Iran’s missile force has been the central instrument of its retaliation, but the war is also beginning to reveal important questions about the resilience and operational performance of that force under sustained pressure.
For decades, Iran invested heavily in ballistic missiles as a substitute for conventional airpower. Sanctions, technological constraints, and the legacy of the Iran–Iraq War pushed Tehran toward a doctrine built around dispersal, survivability, and sustained retaliation rather than decisive battlefield dominance. The assumption was that even under intense air campaigns, Iran would retain enough launch capacity to continue firing missiles and impose costs on its adversaries.
This war is now testing that assumption in real time.
Several key questions remain unresolved. One is launcher attrition: how many missile launchers have actually been destroyed, and how much of Iran’s mobile launch infrastructure remains intact. Another is dispersal effectiveness. Iran spent decades developing underground facilities, mobile launchers, and distributed storage sites designed to complicate targeting. It remains unclear how effectively these systems were dispersed before the opening strikes.
A third question is doctrinal: how well Iran’s survivability model holds up under persistent surveillance and strike pressure from a technologically superior adversary.
What we are beginning to observe suggests a more complicated picture. Iranian missile launches have continued throughout the conflict, which indicates that the system has not collapsed under leadership decapitation or initial strikes. At the same time, there are indications that the size and frequency of missile salvos have declined over time. The reasons for this remain uncertain. It could reflect the destruction of launchers, the depletion of ready-to-fire missile inventories, logistical disruptions, or a deliberate attempt by Iran to pace its strikes in order to sustain retaliation over a longer conflict.
Drones add another layer to this discussion, and they have often been treated in recent years as a kind of technological equalizer. But the war may ultimately reinforce a more modest conclusion about their role.
Iranian drones have remained useful tools for harassment, reconnaissance, and saturation effects. They are cheaper, easier to deploy, and can force defenders to expend interceptors and maintain constant vigilance. In that sense, drones are valuable components of an attritional strategy.
However, the conflict also suggests that drones do not substitute for ballistic missiles in high-intensity state conflict. Against layered air defenses, drones tend to have relatively high interception rates and limited destructive payloads. Their primary value lies in complicating defense and sustaining pressure rather than delivering decisive battlefield effects.
Taken together, the missile and drone campaigns highlight a broader issue about Iranian military doctrine. Tehran built its strike architecture around the idea that persistence and endurance could compensate for conventional inferiority. The goal was not necessarily to overwhelm an adversary in a single blow but to ensure that Iran could keep firing, keep imposing costs, and keep the conflict politically and economically painful for its opponent.
So far, the war suggests that this logic partially holds. Iran has been able to sustain missile and drone launches despite leadership losses and sustained targeting. But the declining scale of salvos and the heavy reliance on drones also raise questions about the long-term sustainability and operational effectiveness of the system under prolonged attrition.
There are of course many other areas worth examining, and I am sure I will write more about them as the war evolves and, hopefully, as we get clearer answers. I also have a few pieces in the works: some looking at the historical evolution of Iran’s military doctrine, and others focusing on the nuclear dimension and Russia.
It has been a tiring period of analysis, and I really appreciate those who continue to read my work, as well as the many friends and colleagues doing remarkable work on Iran and serving as voices of clarity and wisdom during a very difficult moment.