The Day Iran’s Hidden Power Emerged: Lessons the West Tried Not to Learn

Following the Israeli regime’s operation inside Iran and the direct U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, countless analysts have taken up their pens to examine this blatant violation of Iran’s territorial integrity. The issue has quickly become one of the most hotly debated topics among international security experts. In this report, we review the regime’s assault on Iran and highlight the hard lessons the Western states and Tel Aviv were forced to learn after this unlawful adventure.

Underestimating Iran’s Military Power

After the Israeli operation in Iran, Tel Aviv hoped to neutralize Iran’s military capabilities once and for all. Following the heavy blows it suffered during Iran’s “Promise of Truth I and II” operations, the regime’s military establishment wrongly assumed that Iran’s main threat rested solely in its missile force. During the regime’s operation, intoxicated by the illusion of dominating Iran’s airspace, Israeli planners completely disregarded the possibility of deep-strike missile and drone attacks launched from inside Iran’s territory toward the occupied lands. This single miscalculation shattered Netanyahu’s entire plan and wiped out the fantasy of “neutralizing” Iran’s military strength.

The United States, also convinced of Tehran’s vulnerability, joined the aggression by striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. Days later it received a crushing response at its most critical military base in West Asia. Since then, Tel Aviv’s assessment of Iran’s hard power has undergone massive revisions. It is worth noting that Iran used only its missile and drone capabilities in this round of conflict. The rest of Iran’s military pillars were not even activated, leaving ample room for Iran to leverage them in any future confrontation.

The Identity Power of the Iranian People

The killing of civilians during the regime’s assault reignited the deeply rooted identity of resistance within Iranian society. In this “second imposed war,” the Iranian people once again demonstrated that the cultural and historical identity shaped through decades of hardship holds a unique and formidable power. Western governments failed to understand this civilizational force.

With the U.S.–Israeli attack, the political legitimacy of Iran’s governance was not weakened but strengthened. Western plans aimed at eroding Iran’s soft power or provoking internal unrest collapsed instantly. With a clear understanding of their national identity, Iranians neutralized long-standing Western-backed separatist designs in seconds. This alone shows how profoundly Western strategists continue to misread the identity-based strength of the Iranian nation.

The Leadership Factor

For years, the U.S. and its allies flooded the atmosphere with media disinformation targeting the leadership of Iran, creating a fog that many Iranians had to navigate daily. During the early days of the second imposed war, however, the nation witnessed how the Leader of the Islamic Republic, through calm judgment and strategic guidance, prevented Iran from descending into chaos. This capacity had been entirely absent from Western and Israeli analyses.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s command role in the initial days of the crisis overturned Western strategic planning. After decades of exposure to hostile media narratives, the Iranian people directly experienced the significance of the country’s leadership through reality, not propaganda.

Conclusion

The second imposed war launched by the Israeli regime and the United States laid bare a truth Tel Aviv had resisted for years: Iran possesses latent strategic powers that surface only when necessary. These realities had been neglected by Israeli security analysts who operate from the safety of glass-walled think tanks. Now, however, the Netanyahu government and Washington have seen these truths firsthand. The full lessons of this war have yet to unfold; future revelations will define the broader dimensions of this confrontation.

Translated by Ashraf Hemmati from the original Persian article written by Amirali Yeganeh