A future conflict between America and Iran might resemble the June 2025 war, in which Tehran was careful to telegraph its punches—but it could also escalate far more quickly.

With the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group to the Middle East and President Donald Trump’s renewed threats of military action, the prospect of another US–Iran confrontation is once again looming. Rhetoric on both sides has sharpened. Writing on social media, Trump framed the deployment of the “massive armada” as leverage to force Tehran back to negotiations, declaring that “hopefully Iran will quickly ‘come to the table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal—NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS—one that is good for all parties.”

Iranian officials, for their part, have responded in kind. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned on X (formerly Twitter) that while Iran was ready for a “fair and equitable” deal and free of coercion, the country’s armed forces were prepared to “immediately and powerfully respond” to any aggression. Taken together, these statements suggest that diplomatic signaling is being rapidly crowded out by chest-thumping deterrent posturing, narrowing the space for de-escalation.

Speculation about possible military scenarios is now widespread. Commentators have floated everything from limited, “Venezuela-style” US strikes inside Iran to attacks on the remnants of Iran’s nuclear program, and the Iranian security forces’ command and control facilities. Some hawkish voices have gone even further, suggesting that Washington could impose a naval blockade on Iran—likely illegal under international law—or even present its leadership with an ultimatum to leave the country altogether. In Tehran, these ideas are not dismissed as idle talk. Iranian political elites increasingly view the US military buildup near the Persian Gulf as a warning shot, if not a prelude, to a second phase of June 2025 confrontation with Israel and the United States. Mohammad Raeisi, a parliamentary representative from the clerical city of Qom, has warned that Iran must prepare for worst-case scenarios, including the targeting or even occupation of Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil-export terminal.

How Would Iran Fight Back Against America?

These developments revive a central question that has long shaped US–Iran relations: how can a materially weaker state, isolated from international arms markets for more than four decades, confront the world’s most powerful military?

Two points are critical to understanding Tehran’s thinking. First, Iranian leaders do not see the current standoff as an isolated crisis, but as a continuation of the “12‑Day War” of June 2025, in which the United States ultimately joined Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. Second, the government of the Islamic Republic does not believe it can win a conventional war against the United States. Its strategy, therefore, is not outright victory but cost imposition—what might be described as seeking an “honorable defeat” by making the price of an ongoing war unacceptably high for the United States, and therefore persuading Washington to reach a quick settlement.

Iranian officials are acutely aware of the country’s conventional weaknesses, especially its lack of a modern air force. In any conflict, Tehran would likely rely instead on its ballistic missiles and large arsenal of drones to strike US military installations across the region, much as it did during the June 2025 conflict. When US forces joined Israel in attacking Iranian nuclear sites, Tehran responded by launching missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which hosts thousands of US personnel. No Americans were killed—likely because Iran gave prior notice to Qatari authorities, a move widely interpreted as an effort to limit escalation while still signaling resolve.

Iranian officials have been explicit about this logic. In December 2025, Araghchi warned that “If war erupts between us and the United States and the Americans attack our nuclear facilities, they must definitely expect that we will attack their military bases. It makes no difference where those bases are located.” The rationale is straightforward: Iran lacks the capability to strike the US mainland in any meaningful way, and even a hypothetical conventional strike would be militarily ineffective. By contrast, America’s regional bases are vulnerable, symbolically potent, and central to US power projection.

Iran’s Military Reforms Following the 12-Day War

Iran appears to have drawn valuable lessons from the US strikes in the June 2025 war. In the intervening months, it has decentralized its armed forces command-and-control systems, dispersing political and military decision-making in order to make it harder for an enemy to disable large swaths of the Iranian military through one surgical strike. As Iran analyst Hamidreza Azizi has observed, these measures are designed “to ensure survivability under attack and preserve the ability to respond even if central nodes are degraded.”

Another likely escalation pathway runs through Israel. From Tehran’s perspective, the United States and Israel are joint aggressors pursuing the same strategic goal. Ali Shamkhani, former defense minister and secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned on January 28 that “a limited strike is an illusion,” adding that any US military action “from any origin and at any level” would be treated as the start of a full-scale war. He explicitly suggested that Iran could target Israel and “all those” supporting the aggressor. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in turn, has warned Tehran of an “unimaginable response” should Iran strike Israeli territory.

Beyond direct military exchanges, Iran retains options in the maritime domain as well. Targeting commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz would be less about battlefield success than about disruption and political signaling. Tehran has used this playbook before. During Trump’s first term, as Washington pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign, Iran responded with a series of attacks on oil tankers—most notably in June 2019, coinciding with Japanese then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s mediation visit to Tehran. Iran has also used non-state allies in the region, namely Houthis, to attack Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities.

Understanding Iran’s Asymmetric Naval Strategy

Indeed, rather than attempting a sustained closure—which would be difficult to maintain and economically self-defeating—Iran could pursue episodic, deniable, and reversible actions that raise insurance costs, slow traffic, and inject uncertainty into energy markets. This would include the selective use of naval mines, harassment by fast-attack craft operating close to Iranian shores, and the threat—implicit or explicit—of shore-based anti-ship missiles and drones capable of targeting vessels transiting confined sea lanes. The objective would not be naval dominance but uncertainty: raising insurance costs, slowing maritime traffic, and injecting volatility into global energy markets. Shipping disruption, in this sense, would function less as conventional warfare than as coercive signaling through asymmetric leverage.

The most dangerous scenario would involve direct attacks on US warships in the Persian Gulf—the clearest symbols of American military power. Iranian planners know this is an exceptionally risky option, and operationally difficult. The country’s conventional navy, still centered on aging frigates and corvettes dating back to the Shah’s era, is no match for the US Navy’s firepower. The last time the two sides clashed openly, in 1988, Iran lost roughly half its naval fleet in a single day. Tehran is not eager to repeat this experience.

Any maritime confrontation between the United States and Iran would therefore rely on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy’s doctrine of swarm tactics: large numbers of fast, missile-armed boats operating from dispersed coastal bases to harass, encircle, and probe American vessels. In a high-intensity conflict, such swarms could be combined with naval mines and shore-based missile fire to create a dense and confusing threat environment aimed at saturating US defenses. Iranian planners have also openly contemplated kamikaze attacks, including explosive-laden boats or unmanned systems, designed less to sink major US vessels than to signal resolve, inflict damage, and demonstrate a willingness to absorb losses in order to impose political costs.

Still, Tehran is well aware that directly engaging American warships would expose its naval forces to overwhelming retaliatory firepower, with potentially catastrophic losses in a matter of hours. For this reason, attacks on military vessels would likely be highly selective, opportunistic, and tightly calibrated—intended to challenge American deterrence and prestige rather than to inflict casualties or prevail tactically, underscoring Tehran’s broader strategic logic of risk acceptance and asymmetric escalation in the shadow of US military superiority.

If Tehran Believes America Wants Regime Change, All Bets Are Off

In the current volatile environment, miscalculation is very likely. The Trump administration’s gunboat diplomacy to secure a nuclear deal is widely interpreted in Tehran not as leverage, but as part of its preparation for a regime change operation. Crucially, if Iranian leaders conclude that this is Washington’s ultimate objective, they are far more likely to approach any confrontation as a fight for survival rather than a limited exchange akin to the 12-Day War. Under such conditions, Tehran would be inclined to employ its capabilities early, before they are degraded by sustained airstrikes. Indeed Araghchi warned on January 20 that, “Unlike the restraint Iran showed in June 2025, our armed forces will have no qualms about firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack.”

Ultimately, the real danger for both sides lies in the belief that Iran’s behavior can be predicted or tightly controlled. Iranian decision-making is adaptive, and shaped as much by its own threat perception on a day-to-day basis as by formal planning. In a crisis, signals are easily misread and escalation can acquire its own momentum. This makes moments of acute tension especially dangerous. As Helmuth von Moltke the Elder famously observed, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. For policymakers, the implication is stark: strategies meant to coerce or manage Iran risk unleashing a conflict they are ill-prepared to contain.

About the Author: Sina Azodi

Sina Azodi is an assistant professor of Middle East Politics and the director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. His research focuses on Iran’s national security strategy, nuclear policy, US–Iran relations, and Middle East geopolitics. Dr Azodi is the author of Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran and the Nuclear Question (I.B. Tauris), which examines Iran’s nuclear trajectory across regimes and decades. He is a frequent media commentator and has published in academic and policy outlets. He holds a PhD in International Relations and regularly teaches courses on Iran, nuclear weapons, and Middle East politics.

Image: Shutterstock / FotoField.

The post How a US–Iran Clash Could Spiral Out of Control appeared first on The National Interest.