The ‘Fourth Successor’: Iran’s plan for a long war with the US and Israel | US-Israel war on Iran

When Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran had spent two decades studying US wars to build a system that could keep fighting even if the capital was bombed, he was describing more than resilience; he was outlining the logic of Iran’s defence doctrine.

At the centre of that doctrine is what Iranian military thinkers call “decentralised mosaic defence” – a concept built on one core assumption: that in any war with the United States or Israel, Iran may lose senior commanders, key facilities, communications networks and even centralised control, but must still be able to keep fighting.