The Journal. - What's Next For Iran?

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

After a joint U.S. and Israeli military campaign against Iran killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran has launched its own strikes in return. Now, the Middle East is on a path to a broader regional war. WSJ’s Sune Engel Rasmussen explains the Iranian regime's existential fight and how its retaliation is drawing in countries around the region. Jessica Mendoza hosts. Further Listening: - The Bank Collapse Behind Iran's Protests - Trump's 'Donroe Doctrine' on Foreign Policy  Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's almost three days into the U.S. and Israel's massive military action against Iran, with 2,000 targets hit since the strikes began. So far, more than 550 Iranians have been killed, according to the humanitarian organization, the Red Crescent. And Iran has hit back with force. Here's our colleague, Suna Rasmussen. Almost immediately after the attacks started over the weekend, we saw Iran responding by attacking Arab countries in the Gulf.

In fact, they've attacked every single country in the Gulf. And many others in Israel took cover as air raid sirens rang out after Tehran vowed revenge for the killing of its supreme leader. Explosions have so far been reported across several U.S. air bases in the region, including in Bahrain, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. Several deaths have been reported after those Iranian strikes, including in Israel and the United Arab Emirates. And I think that's to show both the U.S., Israel, the world, and to show the neighbors in the Middle East that if Iran is attacked, they want to show the countries in the region that they can't attack Iran without ramifications. If there's long-term, full-blown war in Iran, that's obviously very dangerous for the Iranian people.

And if things escalate and Iranians rise up and then there is an increased risk for the Islamic Republic. of being toppled. Right now, the Iranian regime is fighting for its survival. The U.S. and Israel just killed the Supreme Leader and dozens of his military commanders, and the regime is genuinely at risk of falling. So for them, this isn't an existential fight for his life. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Monday, March 2nd. Coming up on the show, War in the Middle East with Iran at the center. This episode is brought to you by Fidelity. You check how well something performs before you buy it. Why should investing be any different? Fidelity gets that performance matters most.

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Why did the U.S. and Israel choose this specific moment to strike? What was the catalyst that triggered this weekend's operation? The U.S. wanted Iran to seize all enrichment of uranium. Iran says as a sovereign nation, it has the right to develop nuclear power for civilian purposes. But the nuclear program has always been a subject of controversy internationally, which is why they've been negotiating over it. The official reason Trump gave for attacking Iran was that he had lost patience with the ongoing negotiations

and he didn't believe that Iran was moving or moving fast enough to give the concessions that the U.S. wanted. According to Wall Street Journal reporting, Saturday in particular presented U.S. and Israeli intelligence with a rare opportunity. Iranian military and political leaders were holding a meeting, one that included Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The U.S. and Israel struck in front. full daylight, with Israeli jets dropping a host of munitions on Homanie's compound. Hominee was killed in that strike, along with several top government and military advisors. According to Iranian state media, the strikes also damaged residential buildings, medical facilities, and also hit an elementary school in southern Iran, with a death toll of at least 148. With Homanie's death, Iran has found itself in a moment of transition. Ali Ramane was in power for 37 years in Iran. He was the longest sitting Middle Eastern ruler by quite a distance.

And he leaves behind an Iran that is much stronger than when he took over. Like when he took over in 1989, Iran was emerging from a devastating eight-year war with Iraq and a revolution that preceded it. So it was close to bankruptcy and it was recovering from a lot of violence. Through the 90s, he and his government managed to spur economic. growth, and over the decades he turned Iran into a military power in the Middle East that his enemies really had to contend with. But Hamé also leaves a regime that's under unprecedented pressure from its population.

This vision of an Islamic society and Islamic Republic that Hamé and his peers had after the 1979 revolution, that is a vision that has increasingly alienated Iranians. both because they think is out of touch with modern times, but also because of, frankly, the violence that the Islamic Republic has imposed on his own population and people who didn't support that vision in order to keep them in check. So he leaves behind an Islamic Republic under pressure. That pressure was on display in December

when a financial crisis led to huge protests throughout the country. Hamané's security forces responded with a brutal crackdown, killing thousands of Iranian citizens. At the time, President Trump threatened to take action against the government. And I've canceled all meetings with the Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters stops. And all I say to them is help is on its way. You saw that I put... After this weekend's strikes began, Trump posted videos telling the Iranian people

that this moment is there once-in-a-generation chance to take down the regime. When we are finished, take over your government. it will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations. Suna, is there a sense that Iranians are gearing up for a popular uprising against the regime? No, not yet. I don't think we should expect that as long as bombs keep raining from the skies over Tehran. We shouldn't expect Iranians to take matters into their own hands

and immediately topple the Islamic system that has been in place for, for Nehru. nearly 50 years. To have a successful revolution, you need several things, but two things that you historically have needed is, on the one side, you need a regime that's fracturing and weakening with defections, things like that. We haven't seen that in Iran, even during the worst protests or the worst crackdown on protesters here in January. And then on the other side, you need an opposition that is organized behind a common goal,

which they have in this case, but also with a leader. And in the case of Iran, they might also need weapons. And we haven't seen any signs of those two things coming to bear yet in Iran. I'm not aware of any historical president where a regime has been toppled by airstrikes alone. So if regime change isn't likely, what does Iran's government look like right now? Like who's in charge?

So when we talk about the Iranian regime or the system, the Islamic system. It's important to understand that that's both the supreme leader, it's a government, it's a parliament, it's a military, and in the military you have the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC. So there's a lot of different power centers in what we call the regime. Like, the entire Islamic system remains still. The Iranian leadership has always known that if too much power and authority

was concentrated in one person or even a dozen people, that would make it vulnerable to, decapitation. And that's what we see now. Already, the Iranian government has begun the succession process to find a new leader to replace Homenei. In these American-Israeli strikes, dozens of important and high-ranking military commanders have been killed, political officials as well. And decision-making in Iran doesn't really seem to have slowed down. Like, I'm not suggesting here that the killing of Hamonay is not going

to change Iran. It definitely will. But as we can see in the way that Iran immediately retaliated to these attacks and continues to do so, there are a lot of people who know what to do in a situation like this and are involved in decision-making. What Iran's response could mean for the rest of the Middle East is up next. In its efforts to retaliate, Iran has targeted hotels, ports, and airports in the Gulf Arab states. It struck oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia. And in the UAE, it killed three people and injured dozens. So Iran's response so far has been to go after countries in the Middle East that it perceives to be allied or helping the U.S.

Suna, what is Iran's strategy here? I think from an Iranian perspective, they also want to make it as costly and politically untenable for President Trump as possible to continue this war. And President Trump has... has insisted always that he is not going to drag the U.S. into another forever war in the Middle East or anywhere else. So the question is how many American casualties will he accept or will the American people accept before he's forced to pull back? Iran has also hit U.S. military facilities in Kuwait and the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Six American service members have been killed as of Monday afternoon.

In addition, Iran has closed off the Strait of Hormuz, which is a key transit line for global fuel. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it would set fire to any ship coming through, and shutting the straight down could have a significant impact on the world economy. What impact has Iran's strategy had so far? So the Iranian attacks are not only imposing a cost on the reputation and the economies of the Gulf states. that are also creating confusion and panic and fear

in countries that are not used to being directly involved in war. In Kuwait, today, we saw Kuwaiti anti-air defenses mistakenly shoot down the three American fighter jets. Like no American soldiers were killed, but this is the kind of incidents that we could definitely see more of in a war like this. And I think the Iranians will hope that the governments of the Gulf states will also have limited patience with this kind of damage.

We don't know. In the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, have said that the Iranian attacks are only hardening their resolves to fight back. So far, that's rhetoric. And I think the Iranians will hope that they will pull their support for this war sooner rather than later. So it sounds like it's not clear yet whether this sort of pressure tactic is necessarily working at the moment. No, I think we're still waiting to see how things shake out, but we're only, what? less than 72 hours into this fighting, and a lot can happen in the next couple of days. How likely is a regional war? What does that mean, a regional war? Right now we have Israel attacking Iran and Iran fighting back and drawing in close to 10 Arab Gulf states. The question is, of course, if countries in the Gulf decide to get properly involved in this war to retaliate against Iran, that would definitely be an escalation that we haven't seen before.

because the Gulf countries have traditionally stood outside armed conflict in the region. We could also see violence flare up in Iraq. Lebanon could flare up. We also have a very fragile new government in Syria. So if violence flares up there, then then all of a sudden we have a whole sort of belt of violence stretching from Tehran to the Mediterranean. So there's definitely space for things to escalate. In remarks at the White House today, Trump said that the U.S. operation in Iran is projected to last four to five weeks, adding, quote, we have capability to go far longer than that.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the U.S. was adding forces in the Middle East to support U.S. operations in Iran. Can you talk about the ultimate objective of this campaign? I mean, is it ending Iran's nuclear program? Is it regime change? Is it something else? what is the U.S. waiting for? It'd be a little bit difficult to pass exactly what President Trump's goals here are because he's sending mixed messages. He said that he wants to ensure that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, and he also wants to take out Iran's missile arsenal. But then sometimes he also says that he wants the Iranians to rise up and take over their own government,

and he's even indicated that he's willing to resume negotiations with the Iranians. government. So it's a little unclear for me what the objectives here are, and that of course also there's also why some people are worried that the U.S. is going to get dragged into another Middle East in Quagmire. Iran's chief of security said Tehran won't resume nuclear talks, writing on social media, quote, we will not negotiate with the United States. Trump also said today the U.S. has four goals in Iran, to destroy Iran's missile capabilities, to take out its navy, to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to stop Iran from supporting terrorist groups outside its borders.

How long can Iran actually withstand this kind of bombing campaign? I mean, that's a good question. Iran's anti-air defenses were damaged last year and the year before in Israeli attacks and in American attacks. But Iran still has a significant missile arsenal. It still has large armed forces. It's got a lot of drones, and you can fight. for a long time with drones,

so they can send these drones in swarms over the Gulf states and continue to exact the price from them if they want to. And I think they can do that for a long time. Iran is, this is, in a sense, asymmetrical warfare, and this is something that Iran

and its militia allies are very experienced in. What does this moment represent in Iran's history? How much of a turning point as this for the country. This weekend has been the most significant turning point in Iranian history since the end of the brutal war with Iraq in the late 80s and maybe since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

This is the first time we've seen the U.S. attack the Islamic Republic militarily like this. And this is the greatest danger to the Islamic Republic since the U.S. the war where Iraq ended, and possibly since, it was founded. And once the dust settles, if the regime survives, it'll have a huge task on his hands, both in terms of rebuilding the country, reasserting authority, but also figuring out what does governance look like in the Islamic Republic without Ayatollah Ali-Khamenei, who had been in power for 37 years, and is only the second Supreme Leader that the country has had.

For the Iranian people, which has grown increasingly disillusioned with the Islamic Republic over the decades, this is the most tangible moment that they have seen during the existence of the Islamic Republic where they have some hope of fundamental change. So this is a huge moment for Iran. That's all for today, Monday, March 2nd. The journal is a co-production of Spotify. and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show,

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