US-Israel’s ‘Fast Dash’ Vs Iran’s ‘Last Stand’, Vali Nasr Decodes The Long Game

US–Israel can dash fast, but they are not long-distance runners, whereas Iran is in it for the long haul—it is their last stand. This assessment regarding the US–Israel war on Iran was made by Vali Nasr, a scholar of Iran and professor at Johns Hopkins University, during an interview with Bloomberg earlier this month.

While politicians are playing the game of dominance, oil control, and territorial expansion, a voice like Nasr’s is important to understand the context of this war. Why the war may not be as ‘fun’ as US President Donald Trump once believed, and why it is a game of ‘suffering endurance’ more than missiles and bombs. Here are a few key takeaways from his interview with Mishal Husain.

Iran’s Last Stand And Trump’s Failed Gamble

Did US president Donald Trump expect that killing an Ayatollah would make Iran surrender everything to the US and Israel? If he did, he was mistaken—that is the crux of Nasr’s arguments.

Nasr repeatedly frames the conflict as a decisive moment for Iran. He says clearly, “this is the final battle, Iran’s last stand.”

Iran is a country which has already suffered a lot and is prepared to lose more, to suffer more. “This war is not about who has the bigger bombs, but who has the higher threshold of pain,” says the professor.

The priority for Iran here is to make the United States reconsider its approach. Iran wants to impose a cost high enough that Washington “loses its appetite for war with Iran” and abandons the idea of repeated military action. To not only lift sanctions from Israel but also to free Lebanon, as Israel is planning to expand there.

Nasr adds that Iranian leadership understands the stakes—either they go down or the United States and Israel will abandon the idea that they could go into Iran and have a war every six months or at will.

Why Mojtaba Khamenei Matters

Nasr links the rise of the new Ayatollah, son of Ali Khamenei, Mojtaba Khamenei, to both generational change and wartime conditions.

He notes that much of the earlier leadership has been removed, and “a whole new generation of younger Revolutionary Guard commanders have come to the fore.” These are not figures shaped by earlier conventional wars, but by conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

Within this context, Mojtaba’s role is significant. Nasr says he is “very closely associated with them” and had long been involved in shaping the Revolutionary Guards, including “who got promoted, who rose in the ranks.”

He also highlights two reasons for his selection. First, readiness. Mojtaba is “the most ready candidate to step in the job day one” and “doesn’t need two, three years to learn the job.”

Second, symbolic legitimacy: “And the manner in which his father, his wife, his son, his sister were killed, particularly in the religious aura of Iran, even in the nationalist aura of Iran, gives him a particular charisma.”

Iran’s Fight For Survival

One of Nasr’s central points is how the war has reshaped Iran internally.

He acknowledges that before the war there was “a huge amount of anger and dislike of the regime” and significant protests. But that has shifted since US–Israel started attacking Iran.

As he puts it, the question is no longer just political but existential: “are you for war or are you against war?” and “are you for protecting Iran or are you willing to risk the destruction of Iran?”

Nasr notes that even anti-regime Iranians are showing up… saying “at this particular moment is not the time… but to actually support the country.”

“Iranians are fighting for their survival. I mean, if the city of Tehran is under acid rain because of the bombing of oil depots, people might die, people are dying, their lives are being destroyed. And so there’s a whole new, if you would, political line opening up in Iran.”

Future of  US-Israel war on Iran

Nasr cautions against expectations of a quick resolution. He says the conflict is likely to last “longer than President Trump is hoping for” as he believes “there is a switch that he can just turn off.”

He repeatedly describes the nature of the war as prolonged: “this is an endurance run.” He explains Iran’s position in simple terms—it knows it will be hit hard but is prepared for it. “You’re going to get battered, but you just got to stay up on your feet and keep going.”

At the same time, he notes that Iran is not currently inclined to step back. It has “put their teeth into the United States” and “is not ready to let go,” even as it absorbs losses.

“I think the future of the Islamic Republic will depend on whether they come out of this war damaged but with their head held high, that they withstood these two massive militaries and came out intact and forced certain compromises on them, or whether they actually collapse or get battered and then have to accept the ceasefire.”

As he says this, the interviewer asks him if Iran would, in this case, ‘employ terrorism’ to achieve its goals. So far, no journalist seems to have asked this question to an expert about Israel or the US—which has in fact broken several international laws during this war.

Lessons from the 12-day War

Nasr points to earlier fighting as an important reference point for Iran’s current strategy.

He says Iranian leaders believe that during the 12-day war in June 2025, Israel reached its limits. In their view, it was “getting exhausted” and “running out of interceptors.”

He adds that they interpret the outcome as Israel seeking a ceasefire through the United States, not the other way around.

This experience reinforced a key lesson: Iran does not need to match its adversaries in firepower. Instead, it needs to sustain the fight. As Nasr puts it, confronting stronger militaries requires endurance—“you just got to stay up on your feet and keep going.”

Lessons from the Iraq war

To understand Iran’s psyche this time, one needs to go further back than the June war—decades back, in fact.

The Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s is central to how Iran approaches conflict.

Nasr describes it as a defining experience in which Iran fought largely in isolation. During that time, he says, “nobody would sell it tanks, artillery, air force,” while others supported Iraq.

The outcome of that period was not just military but structural. Iran learned to operate independently and build its own capabilities.

Nasr connects this directly to the present, describing Iran as “a do-it-yourself country,” one that produces its own missiles and drones as a result of decades of isolation and necessity.

Fatwa Of Ayatollah

On nuclear policy, the former Ayatollah, Ali Khamenei, was very clear—nuclear weapons are anti-Islamic. He was so dedicated to this value that he issued a fatwa; and many experts see this as proof that Iran could not have been harbouring nuclear weapons.

However, he is dead, assassinated by US–Israel. And Iran doesn’t follow fatwas by dead Ayatollahs. Nasr says, “that fatwa is now no longer valid… it’s no longer standing.”

This creates uncertainty about future policy. Nasr says the decision now rests with the new leadership, but current conditions are pushing in a particular direction.

He adds, however, that this war and previous accusations by the West have taught Iran one thing: they should have never entered monitoring by the IAEA and should have opted for a more India-and-Pakistan-style route of developing its nuclear power.

Nasr says Iran has learned its lesson: “They should have never discussed the programme. They should have gone for a bomb rather than a programme. And so everything the West did actually made them convinced that trying to negotiate with the world for a civilian nuclear programme had been a mistake.”

How Trump Is Encouraging Other Countries To Fight Back

One far-reaching impact of this war, for Nasr, is the world being encouraged to make weapons of mass destruction for self-defence.

He says many states are now concluding that if they pursue nuclear capability, they should do it “quickly and secretly” rather than through prolonged negotiations. Furthermore, with the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president and the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader—and not to mention the damage caused by this war—more countries will realise they need protection unless they want to end up like Venezuela or Iran.

He also notes that different countries are drawing their own conclusions from Iran’s experience. He recounts, “I recently read an eminent Pakistani scholar said that how grateful he is for the first time in his life that his country actually made the choice to build nuclear weapons. And that's a very huge statement. So there's a lot of other countries that are afraid of this kind of American foreign policy, of changing leadership on countries, bullying countries.”