How Long Can Iran Keep Fighting?

Writing for BBC News Persian on 14 August, the political analyst Saeed Jafari put the question directly and answered it under three headings. Militarily, parts of Iran’s missile industry have been hit but no independent data measures the damage; salvos have shrunk, yet drones and cruise missiles are quicker to build, killed commanders have been replaced and the command structure is intact. Mohammad Ghaedi of George Washington University told the BBC that Iran can probably keep attacking for a long time at lower intensity and still disrupt Hormuz. Economically, inflation and job losses are severe, but Ghaedi adds that authoritarian governments survive for years in extreme conditions and that economic pain changes Tehran’s military policy only if it comes with mass protest or a split inside the government. Politically, there is no independent, reliable polling on the war at all. Jafari’s conclusion is that no one of the three has stopped Iran on its own, but the longer the war runs, the greater the economic pressure at home, the deeper the damage to Iran’s regional relations, and the harder a deal that would pay for them.

• dronesquicker to build than missiles, which is why a smaller salvo is not a shorter war
• protest or splitthe two conditions Ghaedi says economic pain would need before it changed policy
• no pollingon whether Iranians want the war continued

The logic both sides are following had been set out months earlier. In March Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at SWP in Berlin, told the Carnegie Endowment that Iran’s strategy is built “not around a fixed timeline, but around relative endurance” — and that “attrition does cut both ways”: the question is not how long Iran can sustain it but “whether it can sustain it credibly”. In July Chatham House’s Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi called it “strategic attrition”, “gradually increasing the political, economic and military costs for its opponents over time”. By September the Congressional Research Service described “a war of attrition” that could continue “for as long as the United States and Iran each assess that they can bear the economic, military, and political costs of the fighting longer than the other”. Both halves of that bet have their advocates. The former US official James Jeffrey argues that “Tehran’s position is likely to weaken faster than Washington’s”; the analyst Esfandyar Batmanghelidj that Tehran is “pushing the pain of the sanctions away from the government and onto households and firms” — both as the Congressional Research Service reports them.

• relativeAzizi’s word for the endurance Iran is counting on: against the other side, not against a calendar
• both waysattrition as Azizi describes it: a tool that becomes a liability if it buys nothing
• longer than the otherthe Congressional Research Service’s test for how long a low-level war lasts

The figures disagree less than they appear to. An average over twelve months lags a point-to-point rate while prices are accelerating, which is why the statistics centre could publish 62.0% and 88.6% for the same month. The central bank’s basket runs 4.3 and 5.5 points lower on the same two measures, a gap the analysis firm IndexBox calls recurrent. The IMF’s 48.7% for the end of 2026 is an April projection of a path, and the September reading was 83.8%. Two numbers sit behind the national series. The BBC reports inflation above 101% in Hormozgan, the southern province on the strait. And the jobs estimate in circulation — over a million lost, about two million “directly or indirectly unemployed” — is a deputy labour minister’s, reported on 12 May through Tasnim and The New York Times; the Jerusalem Post notes that the government “has not released comprehensive national unemployment figures” since the escalation. Analysts cited by Reuters put the cost of the internet blackout at up to $80m a day.

• 4.3 / 5.5points between the two Iranian offices on the same month’s inflation
• 12 Maywhen the only job-loss estimate was reported; none has followed
• $80ma day: the estimated cost of the internet blackout, per analysts cited by Reuters

The numbers that exist come from the belligerents. The Israeli military put Iran’s missiles able to reach Israel at about 2,500 when the war began; an Israeli Air Force official estimated “just over 1,000” were left by 5 April. From those, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies — which argues in the same piece for renewed strikes — reads a loss of “roughly a third to half” of Iran’s ballistic arsenal and about half its launchers. CENTCOM’s Admiral Brad Cooper told the Senate that 85 to 90 per cent of Iran’s defence industrial base had been hit, depending on which account of his testimony is read. Against that, the tempo has not stopped. The Hudson Institute’s Can Kasapoğlu wrote on 4 September that Iran’s missile and drone forces “have suffered heavy attrition but have not disintegrated”, and that “Iran may regain drone mass within months” while missiles recover more slowly. Chatham House had already said Iran kept up “a tempo of operations inconsistent with claims that its arsenal has been nearly exhausted”, and that no reliable public estimate of what is left exists. Two larger claims — a stockpile 70% intact, and missile assembly restarted underground — rest on unnamed officials, and are graded at the end of this page.

• 2,500 → 1,000+Israeli estimates of Iran’s missiles able to reach Israel, war’s start to 5 April
• monthshow soon Hudson thinks Iran could regain drone mass; missiles take longer
• unknownwhat is left, in any estimate Chatham House will call reliable

CNN’s Mostafa Salem described two camps on 30 August. President Pezeshkian, Speaker Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi back a conclusive deal, pointing to a battered economy and the blockade; “It would be better to end it today, while we are in a position of strength and dignity,” Pezeshkian said. Hardliners “wager on the Islamic Republic’s endurance”; Sanam Vakil of Chatham House told CNN that “they think that they can wear Trump down”. The BBC reported that Ghalibaf had warned against a “war of attrition”, and that the hardline MP Amirhossein Sabeti said war would come even if the United States accepted every Iranian condition. On 20 September Ghalibaf named both camps as mistaken. One view “speaks of war but has no horizon or mechanism for bringing it to an empowered end” and “effectively pushes the country toward attrition and endless war”; the other “considers Iran weak” and “prescribes surrender”. Above them sits a Supreme Leader who, the Congressional Research Service notes, has not appeared in public since March. The regional cost runs the same way: the BBC notes that Tehran spent years repairing relations with the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia above all, and that the more exposed they feel the stronger their reason to deepen defence ties with the United States.

• same aimboth camps accept resistance; they differ on how long pressure pays
• two errorsGhalibaf’s name for endless war and for surrender, 20 September
• both waysHormuz is a lever and a vulnerability at once: a blockade also strands Iran’s own oil