Key Points
- Iran has embraced an offensive regional strategy to adapt for modern conflict and pursue external objectives more effectively. This shift means more aggressively empowering the so-called Axis of Resistance and expanding Iranian regional influence.
- Regime officials are responding to their evolving threat perceptions and acting on their growing confidence in their defensive capabilities. They now view their conflict against the US as hybrid in nature, rather than conventional.
- Iran is building an increasingly capable and cohesive coalition of state security services and foreign militias to execute its rulers’ offensive concepts. This coalition fuses conventional and unconventional means to threaten enemies.
- The US must develop its Iran policy past just nuclear negotiations. The US needs a comprehensive strategy that contains the growing threat from the Axis of Resistance while maintaining deterrence and preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.