From Kommersant, June 18, 2025, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7801167. Complete text:
The very first days of the Iran-Israel war have vividly exposed a deep crisis in Iran’s defense policy and military development. The reasons for this crisis are obvious and instructive. At its core lies the subordination of foreign and defense policy not to practical considerations, but to mythical, ideologically driven goals – goals that Iran does not have enough (and will never have enough) economic, military, or technological resources to meet.
Rather than pursuing genuine influence (which it never truly had), Iran has largely engaged in simulating it. This simulation suited both the ruling elite – who could present it to the Iranian “hinterland” as evidence of great-power status – and the many operators of this policy within Iran, especially the IRGC.
The IRGC, functioning as a kind of modern-day oprichnina [the secret police force of Ivan the Terrible – Trans.], has predictably morphed into a semi-mafia entity focused on expanding its political and economic power and securing as much state funding as possible.
As a result, the IRGC has effectively “privatized” Iran’s foreign and defense policy – and, to a large extent, the Iranian state itself – bending it to the narrow, self-serving corporate interests of its leadership.
In the end, Iran has become a textbook case of how trying to act like a great power without the necessary resources leads only to the imitation of greatness: Potemkin villages in foreign affairs, military development and more. For a while, such a system allows for bluffing, fearmongering, and influence-trading (both domestically and internationally), but it crumbles when someone seriously tests its strength. That is exactly what we are witnessing now.
Hoping to compete with the US-Israel coalition in the Middle East, Iran has poured vast resources into allies and satellites – mainly Shiite states and movements, particularly the so-called “axis of resistance.” At times, this strategy seemed to work and even posed a serious challenge. But once Israel seriously targeted key axis components like Hezbollah and Hamas, it quickly and effectively neutralized them. Iran’s intervention in Syria also ended in disaster. Ultimately, Iran’s massive investment in various proxies went up in smoke, and all of its supposed “influence” was swiftly dismantled by the powers that be in a real-world conflict.
In military terms, Iran has engaged in a charade of building supposedly high-tech armed forces, despite lacking the technological and industrial base to support such ambitions.
As a result, once genuinely modern Western and Israeli technologies entered the battlefield, Iran’s Armed Forces failed. Yes, they managed to strike Israel with a few missiles, but even [late Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein was able to do that back in 1991. Stockpiling a diverse but relatively crude arsenal of inaccurate ballistic missiles became Iran’s main achievement – but this arsenal is no match for the power of a modern air force.
It has become clear that many of Iran’s weapons systems, which may have looked advanced, were actually built with primitive, low-quality components – because Iran has had no access to modern technology.
Take the much-hyped Iranian drone program, for instance. Iran tried to compensate for its lag in aviation, missile systems and precision weaponry by developing drones. Consider the Shahed 136, rebranded as the Geran‑2 in Russia in 2022. It had extremely poor flight performance (slow and low-flying) and was so noisy it could be heard across entire neighborhoods, making it easy to shoot down – even with 7.62-millimeter antiaircraft machine guns. Its warhead was weak, and its GPS guidance system was simple and vulnerable to even basic jamming. To turn it into something even modestly effective, Russia had to overhaul nearly everything and install a 16-channel guidance system. And even then, it was not exactly cheap, reportedly costing around 25 million rubles per unit. This same story applies to other Iranian drones: After brief use in combat with Ukraine, most vanished from the battlefield. Iran’s large Mohajer‑6 drone, for instance, was recovered intact by Ukrainian forces from the Black Sea near Odessa. Unsurprisingly, Iran’s recent attempt to launch a major drone assault on Israel amounted to little more than a dud.
From the very start of the current military conflict, Iran has revealed itself to be an archaic “paper tiger.” This does not mean Iran is doomed to total defeat in a conflict with Israel or even the US – history is full of examples where backward and archaic societies have shown surprising resilience in such situations. However, from the standpoint of its long-term national interests, Iran desperately needs a fundamental realignment of its foreign and defense policy. That means aligning its strategies with real national interests, actual capabilities and available resources. This may well require Iran to finally give up its “suitcase without a handle” – its nuclear program.
If this transformation does not happen, Iran is doomed to repeat catastrophes and continue its decline. Whether the current anachronistic regime is capable of making such a change is the central question not just of the current war, but of Iranian policy as a whole.