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855: PRAHAAR 2026: INDIA’S NATIONAL COUNTER-TERRORISM STRATEGY


PRAHAAR, meaning “strike,” is India’s first comprehensive National Counter-Terrorism Policy and Strategy, released by the Ministry of Home Affairs on 23 February 2026. The eight-page document consolidates existing counter-terrorism practices into a formal, intelligence-led and proactive national framework. It declares “zero tolerance” for terrorism in all forms while explicitly avoiding any linkage of terrorism to a particular religion, ethnicity, nationality or civilisation. Its approach is based on both a whole-of-government and whole-of-society model.

The strategy is based on seven main pillars: the prevention of terrorist attacks; a quick and proportionate response; the pooling of domestic capabilities; respect for human rights and the rule of law; the reduction of conditions which lend themselves to terrorism; coordination and shaping of international efforts; and recovery and resilience via a whole-of-society approach. These pillars link together prevention, response, prosecution, de-radicalisation, international cooperation and post-attack recovery in one national framework. Together, they create a continuum from prevention and disruption through response and prosecution to recovery and long-term resilience.

 

The Seven Pillars of PRAHAAR

  1. Prevention of Terror Attacks

Prevention is the foundation of PRAHAAR. It emphasises an intelligence-guided approach, with the rapid collection and dissemination of intelligence so that threats can be neutralised before they materialise.

The Multi-Agency Center (MAC) and Joint Task Force on Intelligence (JTFI) under the Intelligence Bureau are identified as important platforms for sharing counter-terrorism intelligence between central agencies and State police. Prevention also covers online propaganda and recruitment, overground worker networks, terrorist financing, illegal arms networks, cryptocurrency and dark-web financing, border security and critical infrastructure.

The strategy recognises the changing technological character of terrorism, including drones, encryption and cyber-enabled operations. Power, railways, aviation, ports, defence, space and atomic-energy infrastructure are identified as areas requiring enhanced technological protection. Effective implementation will require close Centre-State intelligence coordination and continued technological modernisation.

 

  1. Swift and Proportionate Response

PRAHAAR establishes a multi-layered response mechanism. The local police act as the first responders and are assisted by the specialised State counter-terrorism units and the National Security Guard (NSG) in the case of major attacks. The Central Armed Police Forces can also offer support, and it is the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the State police who carry out the investigations and prosecutions.

The Central, State and district authorities coordinate according to the Standard Operating Procedures and intelligence-sharing arrangements set out by the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the principle of proportionality enables responses to be adjusted in accordance with the nature and extent of an attack, while allowing for rapid escalation if needed.

This framework seeks to strengthen national coordination without eliminating the federal character of India’s security architecture, particularly because policing remains a State subject.

 

  1. Aggregating Internal Capacities

The third pillar focuses on strengthening security and law-enforcement institutions through modern equipment, technology, and weaponry; improved training in areas such as tactics and urban combat; standardised counter-terrorism structures and procedures across States; and identification of resource gaps.

An important aim is to reduce differences in the capabilities of the various states and to enhance interoperability among the agencies. Continued funding, the upgrading of technology, and efficient coordination between agencies are still major challenges in terms of implementation.

 

  1. Human Rights and Rule of Law

Human rights and the rule of law are clearly included in the strategic framework of PRAHAAR. The anti-terrorism measures provided for in laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 and the new criminal codes are in line with the country’s commitment to the Protection of Human Rights Act, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The strategy places a strong emphasis on the use of legal actions, appeals, and supervision at all levels of the judiciary; it therefore seeks to combine effective counter-terrorism measures with respect for due process, although it remains difficult to maintain this balance when urgent security operations come into contact with broad anti-terror powers.

 

  1. Addressing Conditions Conducive to Terrorism

PRAHAAR advocates combating radicalisation and terrorist recruitment by means of proportionate police responses, by using legal intervention when necessary, by engaging with community and religious leaders, with NGOs and moderate preachers, by involving youth and by providing de-radicalisation programmes in prisons.

It also identifies socio-economic factors (including poverty, unemployment, education, housing, employment opportunities, scholarships and women’s empowerment) as areas requiring attention in vulnerable communities.

This gives the strategy a preventive dimension beyond intelligence and security operations, with effectiveness depending on sustained community engagement and efforts to address radicalisation without stigmatising communities.

 

  1. International Cooperation

Recognising the transnational aspect of terrorism, PRAHAAR advocates for the sharing of intelligence, the conclusion of Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties, the establishment of extradition arrangements, the creation of Joint Working Groups, the signing of MoUs and support for United Nations terrorist designations.

India also seeks cooperation through bilateral and multilateral forums to exchange best practices and build international consensus against state-sponsored terrorism, terrorist financing and safe havens.

The pillar reflects India’s broader effort to strengthen cooperation on financing, designations and technology-related threats.

 

  1. Recovery and Resilience

The emphasis on counter-terrorism goes beyond prevention and response to include recovery and resilience. It is expected that civil administrations, professionals, NGOs, communities and private-sector partners should all help with the recovery after an attack, by providing reassurance, carrying out reconstruction and preparing for future threats.

The strategy also calls for technological investment and public-private partnerships to address emerging risks, including the misuse of information and communications technology for terrorism.

 

Comparative Analysis

 

China’s Counter-Terrorism Framework

India’s approach is very different from China’s counter-terrorism framework. China does not possess a single public strategy document analogous to PRAHAAR. Rather, its system is based on the 2015 Counter-Terrorism Law, the various amendments to it, the Criminal Law, the National Security Law, the local regulations, and the 2024 white paper, China’s Legal Framework and Measures for Counterterrorism.

The central conceptual difference lies in how the threat is defined. PRAHAAR focuses on terrorism, including cross-border and technology-enabled threats, while China’s framework is organised around the “three evils”: terrorism, separatism, and extremism. Extremism is treated as an important ideological driver of terrorism, with particular attention to separatism and religious extremism in Xinjiang.

There are also differences between the two systems in terms of their institutional arrangements. PRAHAAR operates within a federal democratic system and makes it clear that the protection of human rights and access to judicial remedies are strategic principles. By contrast, China’s approach is more centralised and involves special security agencies as well as wide-ranging state-directed social management; while official Chinese documents emphasise law-based counter-terrorism and the protection of rights, international critics have pointed out issues relating to surveillance, coercive controls, and re-education measures, particularly in Xinjiang.

Their methods of prevention are also different: India focuses on intelligence fusion, the disruption of terrorist financing and logistics, countering online propaganda, securing the borders, and applying graded responses to cases of radicalisation. China, on the other hand, places more emphasis on de-extremification, ideological education, surveillance, and state-directed social management. In both cases, international cooperation, intelligence sharing, counter-financing and actions taken to prevent terrorist organisations from getting safe havens are included.

 

The 2026 U.S. Counter-Terrorism Strategy

PRAHAAR can likewise be compared with the 2026 U.S. Counterterrorism Strategy, which was issued by the Trump administration on 6 May 2026. Although both documents are formal statements of national policy, they differ in their threat priorities, operational focus, and methods of institutional approach.

PRAHAAR is a concise, principles-based approach that concentrates on intelligence-led prevention, proportionate responses, capacity building, human rights, de-radicalization and resilience. The U.S. strategy is a document of 16 pages based on the ideas of “America First” and “Peace through Strength” and lists narcoterrorists and transnational gangs, as well as legacy Islamist terrorist organisations with the capability of carrying out operations abroad, and violent left-wing extremists as its main categories of threat. It stresses the need to dismantle terrorist networks, disrupt their financing, and enhance burden-sharing among partners.

The different threat priorities reflect distinct national security environments. PRAHAAR is strongly influenced by India’s experience of cross-border terrorism and Pakistan-based terrorist organizations, while also addressing jihadist networks, radicalization and emerging technological threats. The U.S. strategy places greater emphasis on narcoterrorism, transnational gangs, legacy Islamist organizations and violent left-wing extremism.

There are also differences between the two approaches as to the balance they strike between preventive, societal, and operational measures. PRAHAAR includes community engagement, socio-economic interventions, de-radicalisation and whole-of-society resilience; the American strategy, on the other hand, places more emphasis on operational disruption, the destruction of terrorist networks, applying financial pressure and protecting the homeland. Abroad, India stresses multilateral cooperation, UN designations, extradition and intelligence partnerships, whereas the U.S. strategy focuses on partner capacity and burden-sharing.

 

Comparison Summary. China’s method places a greater emphasis on centralised preventive control and on dealing with extremism and separatism, whereas the 2026 U.S. strategy focuses on homeland protection, network disruption, narcoterrorism, and burden-sharing. Although all three approaches stress prevention, intelligence, and disruption, they differ in the way they define threats, organise authority, and in the balance they strike between security and rights as well as social management.

 

PRAHAAR: Strategic Significance and Limitations

PRAHAAR is an attempt to provide India’s counter-terrorism system with a coherent strategic framework; its importance consists in integrating intelligence-led prevention, rapid response, institutional capacity, rule-of-law safeguards, de-radicalisation, international cooperation and societal resilience.

The distinguishing feature of PRAHAAR is its effort to incorporate hard security, legal protections, preventive social measures, and societal resilience into one national framework. It combines intelligence-led prevention, rapid response, institutional modernisation, de-radicalisation, international cooperation, and recovery.

At the same time, its principal limitation is its brevity. At eight pages, it is primarily a principles and policy framework rather than a detailed implementation plan. It provides limited agency-specific deliverables, operational metrics, or measurable targets. Implementation will therefore depend on sustained funding, Centre-State cooperation, technological modernisation, and the development of measurable outcomes, particularly in areas such as de-radicalisation and societal resilience.

 

The true significance of PRAHAAR cannot be assessed simply on the basis of its stated principles, since it will depend upon the effectiveness with which those principles are put into practice through coordinated institutions, and the attainment of concrete results.

 

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Disclaimer:

Information and data included in the blog are for educational & non-commercial purposes only and have been carefully adapted, excerpted, or edited from reliable and accurate sources. All copyrighted material belongs to the respective owners and is provided only for wider dissemination.

 

 

References: –

Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. (2026, February 23). National counterterrorism policy & strategy: PRAHAAR. Ministry of Home Affairs – PRAHAAR PDF

  1. Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. (2026, August 12). PRAHAAR. Press Information Bureau. Press Information Bureau – PRAHAAR
  1. Government of India. (1967). The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. India Code. India Code – Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967
  1. Government of India. (1993). The Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. India Code. India Code – Protection of Human Rights Act
  1. Government of India. (2023). The Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023. India Code. India Code – Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita
  1. United Nations. (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. United Nations – Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  1. United Nations. (1966). International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. United Nations Treaty Collection. United Nations Treaty Collection – ICCPR
  1. State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. (2024, January 23). China’s legal framework and measures for counterterrorism. The State Council of the People’s Republic of China. China’s Legal Framework and Measures for Counterterrorism
  1. National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China. (2015). Counter-Terrorism Law of the People’s Republic of China (as amended 2018).
  1. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2022, August 31). OHCHR assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China.
  1. Madhani, A. (2026, May 6). Trump’s new counterterrorism strategy makes targeting Western Hemisphere cartels the top priority. The Washington Post. The Washington Post – 2026 U.S. counterterrorism strategy
  1. Tiwary, D. (2026, February 27). PRAHAAR: Why India’s new counterterrorism document is more intent than full-fledged strategy. The Indian Express. The Indian Express – PRAHAAR analysis
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798: IRAN’S MOSAIC DEFENCE AND DISTRIBUTED COMMAND ARCHITECTURE

 

Iran’s Mosaic Defence doctrine is one of the most deliberately constructed asymmetric military strategies of the 21st century, and the ongoing US-Israel military campaign against Iran — Operation Epic Fury, launched February 28, 2026 — has provided its first real-time stress test against a peer-level adversary. The doctrine’s performance in the opening weeks of that conflict has validated decades of Iranian military planning and confounded Western expectations of rapid regime collapse.

Iran’s defence doctrine was shaped by two formative historical experiences: the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq War and Israel’s intervention in Lebanon. Both anchored ballistic missiles and proxy networks are core instruments of Iranian strategy. But the formal doctrine crystallised from a more recent lesson. Iranian military planners studied US operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans, concluding above all from the 2003 collapse of Saddam Hussein’s centralised regime that highly centralised militaries collapse quickly once their leadership is struck. As Foreign Minister Araghchi put it: “We’ve had two decades to study defeats of the US military to our immediate east and west. Bombings in our capital have no impact on our ability to conduct war. Decentralised Mosaic Defence enables us to decide when — and how — war will end.”

 

Formalisation and Architecture

The doctrine was formalised in 2005 when the IRGC, under General Mohammad Jafari, announced the Mosaic Defence model: a decentralised command-and-control system restructured into 31 separate provincial commands. Each of Iran’s 31 provinces has its own IRGC headquarters, command structure, weapons stockpile, and intelligence capability — effectively a complete military system in miniature. “Every province is a mosaic, and the commanders have the ability and power to make decisions,” analyst Farzin Nadimi has noted. “So when they are cut off from their command in Tehran, they can still function as a cohesive military force.”

 

Under this model, the IRGC, regular army, missile units, naval assets, and the Basij militia form a distributed defence network. If one unit is destroyed, others continue operating independently. The architecture was designed against one specific adversary capability: the decapitation strike.

 

The Four Operational Pillars

Asymmetric Warfare and Cost Imposition. Rather than conventional force-on-force engagement, the doctrine imposes prohibitive costs through endurance — survive the initial shock, keep retaliating through multiple channels, and raise the costs of a prolonged campaign until continuation becomes politically untenable for the attacker.

Distributed Command with Pre-Delegated Authority. Iranian sources described how the Revolutionary Guards delegated authority far down the ranks and built “successor ladders” so units continue operating if commanders are killed. Each provincial command operates with overlapping chains of command and dispersed stockpiles — not just decentralisation but redundancy at every level. Provincial IRGC units can call upon Basij forces during crises. This enables a multi-level defence that is largely unfazed by decapitation strikes.

Missile Arsenal as Strategic Anchor. Iran’s ballistic missile capability is the backbone of the mosaic architecture. Distributed missile batteries across 31 provincial commands mean that neutralising Iran’s missile threat requires destroying 31 separate, geographically dispersed launch systems rather than a single centralised arsenal — an operation orders of magnitude more complex than a leadership strike.

The Axis of Resistance as Strategic Depth. National security is not limited to the protection of national territory; it rests on preventing confrontation from spilling over national borders. Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iraqi Shia militias, and Syrian proxy forces each represent distributed nodes of retaliatory capacity operating semi-independently of Tehran — a regional application of the same mosaic logic applied domestically. Acting upon nodes across the Middle East’s interconnected system of military bases, maritime chokepoints, and energy corridors can transform a localised confrontation into a crisis with global repercussions.

 

The 2026 Operational Test

The initial US-Israeli campaign followed the standard Western pattern. It aimed to create a systemic collapse by destroying command centres, communications nodes, and senior figures. The US campaign did not yield the desired results. On the contrary, it highlighted the fundamental characteristic of the Iranian system, i.e. its capacity to absorb strategic shock.

Rather than triggering disintegration, the loss of the decision-making center appears to have accelerated the activation of a resilience mechanism already embedded in Iranian doctrine. What has emerged is that the Iranian strategic model can be described as “war without a centre”.  The military capability is organised not around a single decision-making nucleus, but across an array of interconnected tactical centers.

The system seems to be working. The independent Iranian military units (somewhat isolated) are acting based on general instructions given to them in advance. They have responded to heavy bombardment by firing unprecedented barrages of ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones at Israel, US military and diplomatic facilities across the Middle East, and critical energy infrastructure in the Persian Gulf.

 

Doctrinal Vulnerabilities

Mosaic Defence, however, does carry significant structural vulnerabilities.

  • Coordination Problem. Decentralisation enables resilience; however, it simultaneously creates coordination challenges. It becomes difficult to coordinate with the autonomous provincial units.
  • Strategic Coherence. Without a clear political direction, the doctrine designed for endurance risks prolonging the conflict, without achieving any meaningful strategic outcomes. Military persistence must eventually convert into political outcomes.
  • Dependency on Political Cohesion. The doctrine depends on public support and internal unity. Provincial commanders operating with pre-delegated authority must be politically reliable as well as militarily capable — a requirement that becomes more demanding as the human and economic costs of sustained conflict accumulate.
  • Escalation Unpredictability. Units acting on general instructions given in advance, without real-time central guidance, are inherently prone to escalation. The doctrine that gives Iran resilience also makes selective de-escalation difficult. These units may not be reachable for recall or restraint.

 

Strategic Implications

For US and Israeli Doctrine. The most significant implication is that the standard Western decapitation playbook, which worked against Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, did not work against Iran. Defeating mosaic defence requires not precision strikes on central nodes but sustained, comprehensive degradation of 31 independent provincial systems simultaneously.

For India’s Strategic Assessment of War Duration. The activation of Iran’s mosaic defence has direct implications for India. It implies that Hormuz closure is not a temporary measure, but a potentially sustained strategic instrument. India must plan for a prolonged, rather than brief, disruption scenario.

For India’s Structural Reorganisation. In terms of military doctrine, Iran’s architecture offers relevant insights for India’s distributed warfighting requirements. The concept of 31 self-contained provincial commands maps directly onto questions about India’s theatre command architecture. The lesson that decentralised command enables resilience is relevant to India’s two-front scenario planning.

For the Theory of Modern Warfare. The emergence of “war without a center” as an operational reality, rather than just a theoretical concept. It poses a fundamental challenge to the Western doctrine of rapid dominance. The assumption that power is concentrated in a single center, and that striking that center causes strategic paralysis has been disproven in real time. The broader implication is that the era of quick, decisive, decapitation-based military victories against a sophisticated adversary, who has studied and prepared specifically for such an approach, may be fundamentally over.

 

Analytical Perspective

Iran’s Mosaic Defence represents a genuinely innovative solution to a fundamental strategic problem—the problem of facing a technologically superior adversary by a militarily inferior state. The challenge is to survive the first strike and sustain the fight long enough to make the cost of continuation prohibitive for the attacker. The solution lies in distributing everything, pre-delegating authority, building redundancy at every level, and making the system function as a web rather than a hierarchy.

This doctrine’s greatest success is not operational but psychological. In the case of the war in Iran, it has converted Iran’s structural military inferiority into a manageable constraint. It has ensured that the adversary’s greatest advantages (i.e., precision, speed, and decapitation capability) did not translate into a rapid victory on which the entire campaign logic depended. Iran has prepared itself for a long war. Whether that long war serves Iran’s strategic interests better than a rapid defeat would have done is a question the doctrine itself cannot answer.

 

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Disclaimer:

Information and data included in the blog are for educational & non-commercial purposes only and have been carefully adapted, excerpted, or edited from reliable and accurate sources. All copyrighted material belongs to respective owners and is provided only for wider dissemination.

 

 

References:

  1. Connell, M. (2010). Iran’s military doctrine. CNA Analysis and Solutions.
  1. Eisenstadt, M. (2011). The strategic culture of the Islamic Republic of Iran: Religion, expediency, and soft power in an era of disruptive change. Middle East Journal, 65(4), 551–570.
  1. Golkar, S. (2015). Captive society: The Basij militia and social control in Iran. Columbia University Press.
  1. Jafari, M. (2005). Mosaic defence doctrine: IRGC restructuring framework [Internal IRGC policy document, as cited in open-source analyses].
  1. Nadimi, F. (2020). Iran’s evolving approach to asymmetric naval warfare: Strategy and capabilities in the Gulf. Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
  1. Ostovar, A. (2016). Vanguard of the Imam: Religion, politics, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Oxford University Press.
  1. Takeyh, R. (2009). Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the world in the age of the Ayatollahs. Oxford University Press.
  1. Ward, S. (2009). Immortal: A military history of Iran and its armed forces. Georgetown University Press.
  1. Pape, R. A. (1996). Bombing to win: Air power and coercion in war. Cornell University Press.
  1. Reuters. (2024). Iran’s Revolutionary Guards delegate authority down the chain of command amid preparations for conflict. Reuters.

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791: IRAN WAR: MANY QUESTIONS, DIVERSE PERCEPTIONS (PART 1)

 

The answers are collated from open sources. Information warfare and propaganda are generally active, as in any other war. Bias in the answers cannot be ruled out.

 

ORIGINS & CAUSES

  1. What were the root causes of the Iran-Israel conflict, and how did the US get drawn in?

The conflict’s deepest roots go back to a single transformative moment: Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The new regime did not merely dislike Israel — it wrote hostility toward it into its founding ideology, framing Israel as the “Little Satan” and an instrument of American imperialism in the region. What followed over the next four decades was a methodical Iranian effort to turn that ideological enmity into strategic reality: a nuclear programme advancing toward weapons capability, a large and growing ballistic missile arsenal, and the “Axis of Resistance” — a network of proxy forces positioned to threaten Israel from multiple directions simultaneously. For Israel, this combination eventually crossed the threshold from threat to existential danger.

The United States did not enter this conflict in a single decisive moment. Still, it drew in gradually — first as Israel’s primary partner in air defence, then as the guarantor of global non-proliferation norms that Iran was visibly eroding, and finally as a direct combatant when the Trump administration judged that Iran’s military weakening after the 2025 campaign had opened a window for military action.

  1. How did the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack reshape the broader confrontation?

October 7 set off a chain of events whose full strategic consequences Tehran almost certainly did not anticipate. The immediate result was the Gaza war — but what mattered more in the longer run was what Israel did in the wars that followed. Through 2024, Israel systematically degraded Hamas. More consequentially, between September and November 2024, it decapitated Hezbollah’s entire senior leadership in Lebanon — a blow that reverberated far beyond Lebanon itself. With Hezbollah broken, the Assad regime in Syria lost a critical pillar of support and collapsed in December 2024. By early 2025, the proxy buffer Iran had spent three decades carefully constructing — the forward deterrence that was supposed to keep any direct conflict away from Iranian territory — had been stripped away, component by component. Iran found itself exposed, facing Israel and the United States without the defensive depth its strategy had always assumed. October 7 was, in retrospect, proved to be a strategic miscalculation of historic proportions for Tehran.

  1. How did Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” strategy contribute to the escalation?

The Axis of Resistance was Iran’s answer to a fundamental strategic problem: how does a state threaten a powerful adversary without inviting direct retaliation on its own territory? The answer was proxy warfare — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shia militias scattered across Iraq, each providing Iran with deniable reach and the ability to keep Israel under constant pressure from multiple fronts. After October 7, these forces launched coordinated barrages designed to overwhelm Israeli responses and demonstrate the axis’s power. Instead, they invited precisely the attrition campaign Israel had been preparing for — and one by one, the pillars of the network were destroyed. By the time direct Iran-Israel exchanges began in 2025, the axis had been reduced to survival mode: capable of rhetorical solidarity and occasional harassment strikes, but unable to mount the kind of coordinated strategic response that might have deterred Israeli action. Iran’s forward deterrence had been hollowed out. It was left to face its most powerful adversaries essentially alone.

PRIMARY GOALS & REGIME CHANGE

  1. What are the primary goals of the US and Israeli operation?

Operation Epic Fury (USA) / Roaring Lion (Israel), launched on 28 February 2026, was built around four core US military objectives: dismantling Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and the industrial infrastructure that produces it; annihilating Iran’s navy and closing off its ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz; permanently denying Iran a nuclear weapons capability; and degrading the IRGC command structure along with the proxy networks it funds and directs. Israel’s stated ambitions went further. Netanyahu framed the campaign not merely as the neutralisation of specific military capabilities but as the elimination of the “existential threat” posed by the Ayatollah regime — working down through Iran’s entire defence industrial chain, from the large IRGC-linked missile assembly plants to the smaller component suppliers that feed them. Trump, in his characteristic register, publicly framed the operation as delivering “freedom for the people of Iran” and ending the activities of the “number one state sponsor of terror.”

  1. Is “regime change” an official objective?

Not in so many words. Pentagon briefings have been careful to frame the campaign in terms of discrete military objectives — missiles, the navy, nuclear sites, proxy networks — rather than the fate of the Iranian government. But the gap between the stated military objectives and the unstated political ones is not hard to read. Trump and senior officials have spoken of toppling the clerical regime and called on Iranians to “seize their destiny.” The deliberate targeting and assassination of Supreme Leader Khamenei on the opening night of operations is not the kind of act a government undertakes when its goals are purely military. Analysts have consistently treated it as a calculated step toward regime collapse. Israel, by most serious assessments, holds regime change as a strategic objective — an expansion of the goals it set in the June 2025 Twelve-Day War. The real endgame, as analysts have described it, is what they call “strategic disarmament”: the permanent elimination of Iran’s ability to project power through missiles, nuclear latency, and proxy networks. Whether the regime itself survives that process in some diminished form or collapses entirely appears to be a secondary concern.

IRANIAN LEADERSHIP POST-KHAMENEI

  1. Who is leading Iran following the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei?

Ali Khamenei was killed on 28 February 2026 in the opening strikes of Operation Epic Fury — the first sitting Supreme Leader to be assassinated in the history of the Islamic Republic. The immediate aftermath saw an interim three-person leadership council assume power: President Masoud Pezeshkian, Guardian Council member Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, and Judiciary head Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i. The Assembly of Experts convened from 3 to 8 March and on 9 March unanimously elected Mojtaba Khamenei — the slain leader’s son — as his successor. He is 56 years old, deeply embedded in the IRGC, and regarded by those who know the Iranian system as a hardliner in his father’s mould, with no apparent inclination toward the kind of accommodation with the West that a less ideologically committed successor might have offered. The IRGC, meanwhile, holds de facto dominant power over security and decision-making in the vacuum the assassination created. Both Trump and Israel have already declared the appointment unacceptable. Israel has gone further — it has described Mojtaba Khamenei as a potential future target.

 

GLOBAL ENERGY MARKETS

  1. How will the war affect global energy markets?

The short answer is: badly, and possibly for a long time. Analysts have described the energy disruption as the worst shock to global markets since the 1970s oil crisis. The immediate trigger was Iran’s partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil supplies and a significant share of LNG shipments pass every day. Within days of the closure, Brent crude surged from around $70 to over $110 per barrel, crossing $100 on 8 March 2026 for the first time in four years. European natural gas prices nearly doubled. Asian LNG costs spiked sharply. Tanker rates across the board soared as shipping companies rerouted or halted transits. Israeli strikes on Iran’s South Pars gas field and IRGC threats against Gulf oil infrastructure added a further layer of anxiety to already strained markets. The vulnerability is not evenly distributed. Around 80% of Asia’s oil imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Countries like Vietnam, Pakistan, and Indonesia hold emergency oil reserves estimated at less than 20 days — a dangerously thin buffer if the closure is prolonged. The International Energy Agency responded by releasing 400 million barrels from strategic reserves worldwide, a significant intervention that nonetheless covers only approximately four days of normal global demand.

 

RUSSIA AND CHINA

8. What are Russia’s and China’s positions?

Both countries have condemned the strikes in strong diplomatic language while doing very little that would concretely change the situation on the ground — a posture that has revealed, more clearly than any diplomatic formulation, how conditional their partnerships with Iran actually are.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov called the strikes “a deliberate, premeditated, and unprovoked act of armed aggression.” Putin expressed personal condolences over Khamenei’s death and called for an immediate ceasefire and return to diplomacy. Behind this public stance, however, Moscow has offered Tehran no direct military assistance. The reason is straightforward: Russia’s military is fully committed to Ukraine, and it has no interest in a confrontation with the United States over Iran. Russia’s bilateral strategic partnership treaty with Iran pointedly lacks a mutual-defence clause — a detail that matters enormously now. What Russia has reportedly done, behind the scenes, is share sensitive intelligence with Iran, including the precise locations of US warships and aircraft in the region — an allegation Putin publicly denied when Trump confronted him with it. Russia is also, it should be noted, a beneficiary of the conflict: elevated oil prices driven by Strait of Hormuz disruption directly ease the financial pressure of Western sanctions on Moscow.

China’s public position has been one of unambiguous condemnation. Beijing called the killing of Khamenei “a grave violation of Iran’s sovereignty” that “tramples on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter” and demanded an immediate halt to military operations. In practice, China’s support for Iran has been limited to diplomatic messaging, the supply of missile spare parts, and reported discussions on anti-ship missile systems — nothing that approaches direct military involvement. China abstained from a UN Security Council resolution condemning Iranian attacks on Gulf states, a studied ambiguity that reflects its desire to maintain working relationships with Gulf energy exporters even while criticising the US-Israeli campaign. Beijing’s longer game appears to be positioning itself as the indispensable post-conflict mediator and regional stabiliser. This power was not a party to the destruction and can therefore broker what comes after.

 

IMPACT ON REGIONAL ALLIES

9. What has been the impact on regional allies and the balance of power?

 Iran’s decision to widen its retaliation beyond Israel has produced a strategic result it almost certainly did not intend. By striking across nine countries — hitting US military installations and civilian infrastructure in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the UAE — Iran exposed Gulf states to direct attack at a scale they had not previously experienced. The effect has been paradoxical: governments that had carefully maintained public neutrality or quiet distance from the conflict have been pushed, covertly but unmistakably, toward the US-Israeli security umbrella. Intelligence-sharing with Israel is deepening. Security cooperation is expanding. Israeli defence exports to Gulf countries are growing. All of this is happening beneath the surface of public statements that continue to call for restraint and de-escalation. Iran’s proxy network, meanwhile, has been largely absent from the 2026 fighting — weakened by prior Israeli degradation, struggling to reconstitute, and capable of offering little more than solidarity gestures. The cumulative effect has been a significant and durable shift in the regional balance of power: Iran militarily diminished, its forward deterrence dismantled, and its neighbours moving — quietly but unmistakably — in the opposite direction.

 

(More to follow)

 

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