The Islamic Republic Does Not Know How to Cash In Its Victories.

In May 1982, Iranian forces liberate Khorramshahr, a strategic port city in the Khuzestan province occupied by Iraqi troops since September 1980. This reconquest constitutes a decisive military turning point: it marks the effective end of Iraqi occupation of Iranian territory and places Tehran in an unassailable defensive position of strength.

The Iraqi reaction is immediate. Saddam Hussein proposes an immediate ceasefire with full withdrawal to internationally recognized borders. In the weeks that follow, the UN Security Council adopts Resolution 514 (July 12, 1982) calling for a ceasefire. OIC and Non-Aligned Movement mediators arrive in Tehran in succession. Gulf states declare themselves ready to finance war reparations for both parties.

The conditions for an honorable — and strategically advantageous — exit are in place. Within the Iranian system itself, significant voices advocate for an agreement: President Ali Khamenei and Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Moussavi are among those who believe the moment has come to conclude.

Khomeini decides otherwise. He rejects all ceasefire proposals and formulates the slogan that will seal the conflict's fate: "The road to Jerusalem passes through Karbala." This slogan encapsulates the war's transformation: it ceases to be a defensive war for Iranian sovereignty and becomes an ideological crusade for the overthrow of the Baathist regime and the export of Islamic revolution.

In July 1982, Iran launches Operation Ramadan — the first major military incursion into Iraqi territory. This begins an offensive phase lasting six years, marked by human wave assaults, the use of children as mine-clearers, and a series of costly offensives — most notably Operation Karbala-5 in 1987 — none of which ever produced the decisive breakthrough hoped for.

In August 1988, Iran finally accepts Security Council Resolution 598 and the UN ceasefire. Khomeini himself describes this decision as drinking "a cup of poison" — a metaphor that says everything: he did not choose to conclude, he was forced to. Military collapse, economic exhaustion, and internal pressure tore him from his position, six years after an honorable exit had been offered.

The toll is staggering: between 500,000 and one million dead and wounded in total, an economy bled dry, a generation sacrificed. And in the end, the same borders as in 1980. The victory of 1982 had become a deferred political defeat — not for lack of opportunity, but for lack of the capacity to seize it.

To understand the Islamic Republic's chronic inability to cash in its victories, one must grasp the fundamental tension that has run through the system since its founding. This is not a regime that operates according to classical strategic rationality — that is, according to a logic of maximizing the measurable interests of the state. It is a regime permanently traversed by two contradictory logics.

On one side, a pragmatic logic embodied by the technocratic, administrative and diplomatic segments of the system, seeking to preserve the state, maintain a functional economy, and avoid collapse. On the other, an ideological logic carried by the security and revolutionary core of the system — the Revolutionary Guards foremost — for whom confrontation with imperialist powers is not a means but an end, a defining element of the regime's identity.

Cette culture stratégique est profondément structurée par le paradigme du martyre — héritage à la fois chiite et khomeiniste — dans lequel la souffrance et la résistance sont valorisées en elles-mêmes, indépendamment du résultat politique qu'elles produisent. Dans ce cadre, « ne pas céder » vaut plus qu'un gain politique mesurable. La posture de résistance a une valeur intrinsèque qui prime sur l'efficacité stratégique.

The result is a constitutive paradox: the rhetoric of permanent resistance systematically neutralizes the value of successes achieved. An exploitable victory becomes merely a step in a trajectory of continuous confrontation. What could be an exit point invariably becomes a tipping point toward further escalation. The regime cannot cash in its victories because, doctrinally, victory is never meant to be final.

Le February 28, 2026, après les frappes américano-israéliennes et l'assassinat d'Ali Khamenei, l'Iran ferme le détroit d'Ormuz. Ce geste constitue une démonstration de force d'une ampleur sans précédent dans l'histoire de la crise iranienne. En bloquant le principal corridor énergétique de la planète — par lequel transitent environ 20 à 25 % du pétrole mondial et 20 % du GNL mondial — Téhéran impose instantanément un coût systémique global disproportionné à ses adversaires.

In geostrategic terms, this is a deterrence weapon of near-nuclear effect: not in its destructive power, but in its systemic impact. By closing the strait, Iran does not need to win militarily — it only needs to maintain uncertainty to paralyze global markets, destabilize logistics chains, and force major powers to recalibrate their priorities.

In classical power politics, this leverage would immediately be monetized politically: negotiating a ceasefire from a position of strength, calibrated nuclear concessions, a controlled exit from the crisis. This is the move any state operating under classical strategic rationality would have made.

This move does not happen — or at least, not coherently. The sequence of weeks following the April 8 ceasefire illustrates with damning precision the regime's structural incapacity to capitalize on its leverage.

This back-and-forth does not reflect sophisticated negotiating tactics. It reveals a deep decisional incoherence: Iran holds considerable leverage, but lacks the internal coherence needed to decide when and how to release it. Each opening followed by a closure reproduces, on a weekly scale, the same pattern as 1982: the inability to conclude at the optimal moment.

The superposition of Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the American naval blockade of Iranian ports creates an economic scissor effect of unprecedented brutality. On one side, Iran can no longer export its oil, which constitutes virtually all of its foreign currency revenues. On the other, it can no longer import essential goods — medicines, industrial parts, strategic food supplies — that the regime does not produce domestically.

The Iranian rial, already weakened by previous sanction cycles, has collapsed since the conflict began. Inflation has reached record levels. Banking circuits, already constrained by sanctions, are now completely paralyzed for international transactions.

The closure of the strait has created a paradoxical situation for Iran itself. Kharg Island, the main crude export terminal in the Persian Gulf, is seeing its storage capacity progressively saturate. Tankers can neither load nor depart. If the situation persists, the regime could be forced to halt crude production itself — a decision with technically catastrophic consequences: some production fields, once shut down, suffer irreversible damage to pumping infrastructure.

In other words, the strait weapon — designed as a pressure lever — is progressively turning against its user. Tehran has taken the world hostage, but the first victims of this self-inflicted blockade are the Revolutionary Guards, the primary beneficiaries of oil rents, and the Iranian population, whose living standards deteriorate as each day of the status quo further hollows out the economy.