Iran from 2025 to 2026: A security-first state mindset

The year 2025 should be evaluated as a year in which the rules of the game changed in Iranian politics; a year so significant that security politics virtually swallowed everything else, and military-regional variables cast a decisive shadow over the entirety of the economy, domestic policy, and diplomacy. The consequences of this year are not short-term; they are of a nature that will permeate the years following 2026. 2025 must be viewed as one of the defining years in which the course of Iranian politics was recalibrated, similar to pivotal moments in the last forty years. As a result of the intensification of direct and indirect conflict with Israel, the de facto blockage of diplomatic channels with the West, and worsening economic-social pressures, Iranian politics has entered a new phase that can be defined as a transition from a policy of “tension management” to one of “security-based stability.” 2025 has been a long year for the Iranian people and the state, and it appears this situation will continue into the coming Gregorian year.

Undoubtedly, this year will be etched in memory for the “Twelve-Day War.” This war began on June 13, 2025, with Israel’s surprise attacks targeting Iran’s military and nuclear facilities, high-ranking military commanders, and nuclear scientists; it concluded on the twelfth day following American intervention, diplomatic contacts conducted by regional countries, and Iran’s final missile strikes.

Although months have passed since the war, the questions of which side emerged victorious from the field and how this war will impact the region’s security architecture remain among the fundamental topics of discussion and debate.

This war began at a time when Iran was conducting negotiations with America. In fact, on the weekend the war started, high-ranking Iranian diplomats were scheduled to meet again in Oman with Trump’s special representative, Witkoff. Due to the ongoing negotiations, the political atmosphere in Iran was shaped by the belief that Israel would not take military action while talks were in progress, and that a military conflict might only come to the fore following a potential failure of negotiations. For this reason, the security deployment in Iran was at a non-war level. Israel exploited this situation to inflict heavy blows on Iran, and these attacks—particularly in the initial hours—led officials in Tel Aviv to adopt a maximalist approach regarding the future of the war. In the early days of the conflict, Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people directly, attempting to mobilize the masses against the Iranian state; attacks on border police stations in the country’s western regions created favorable ground for the infiltration of terrorist elements from the Iraqi Kurdistan region and the execution of sabotage activities.

However, the course of the war changed a few days later as the impact of Iran’s missile strikes increased, new dimensions of Iran’s missile capacity were revealed, and weaknesses and deficiencies in Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system were exposed. Considering the low level of social resilience within Israeli society, Iran succeeded in exerting serious military and political pressure on Tel Aviv.

For Tehran, this war clearly demonstrated several fundamental truths: the necessity of further strengthening the missile capacity that has been robustly maintained for the last twenty years; the existence of security vulnerabilities that cannot be ignored, which allowed Mossad elements to operate inside Iran; the obligation to increase the level of coordination between military and civil institutions; the need to change security protocols for individuals in influential and critical positions within the country’s politics; and, most importantly, the necessity of questioning the trust placed in international organizations and the realization that the commitments of America and Europe cannot be relied upon.

The experience that America’s political commitments cannot be absolutely trusted, combined with mistrust toward international organizations, can perhaps be evaluated as the most important and impactful lesson of this war. Before 2025, a segment of the political and administrative elite still maintained the assumption that a gradual normalization in foreign relations might be possible through a change in government or a shift in diplomatic tactics. The developments experienced in 2025 have effectively rendered this assumption invalid. The direct conflict between Iran and Israel, NATO’s full-scope cooperation with Israel, America’s deceptive activities toward Iran and its support for military operations against it, along with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s cooperation with Israel, have clearly revealed that the contradictions between the two sides are structural, not tactical. The crisis is not of a nature that can be contained through “soft management”; Iranian foreign policy has entered a level where the cost of not reacting is higher than the cost of reacting.

In this framework, Iran’s foreign policy paradigm has witnessed—and will continue to witness—distinct changes, both in the second half of the year and in the coming year and near future. In this new paradigm, security is treated as a decisive variable above all political calculations. This approach has shown, and will continue to show, its effect not only on foreign policy and military strategies but also on budgeting processes, domestic policy, and even Iran’s cultural and media policies. As a result of these transformations, it is noteworthy that the state presented the most contractionary budget of the last few decades to the Iranian Parliament.

Alongside the Twelve-Day War, the activation of the “snapback mechanism” (October 2025) and the implementation of the harshest sanction conditions against the country—despite Iran clearly demonstrating its readiness for all negotiations and willingness to take some significant political steps back—has been the most important development driving the dominant political mindset in Tehran toward a paradigm shift in diplomacy. With the triggering of the snapback mechanism, all United Nations Security Council sanctions resolutions became a current agenda item once again, despite ten years of cooperation by Iran to reduce its nuclear capacity; this situation created heavy economic and political pressure on the Masoud Pezeshkian government. This government, which came to power following the suspicious death of the previous president, found itself in an extremely difficult process from its very first days with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

As a result of these conditions, a discourse advocating a transition from “problem-solving diplomacy” to “deterrent diplomacy” is observed to be gaining strength within the power structure. The key concept in this discourse is active deterrence; according to this view, the cost of not displaying power is higher than the cost of displaying power in a controlled manner. In this context, it is argued that Iran must fortify its regional presence and transform military means directly into political instruments. Considering the security blows Iran suffered during the Twelve-Day War, this paradigm shift will manifest itself more distinctly in the fields of security and intelligence, directing Iran to strengthen its intelligence networks against Israel and American forces in the region.

Simultaneous with this paradigm shift, it is observed that Iran has adopted a minimum level of diplomacy in its relations with the West. Contrary to previous negotiation processes, likely future talks will be conducted not as the beginning of a comprehensive solution, but as issue-focused, temporary contacts lacking a long-term strategic horizon. In other words, in its negotiations with the European trio [E3] or America, Iran is leaning toward managing the crisis rather than trying to resolve it. Parallel to this limited interaction with the West, a deepening of relations with the East is also visible, and this trend will continue in Iranian diplomacy. Relations with Russia and China are rising from a level of “cooperation” to a level of limited strategic alignment. This rise is occurring despite the resistance of the pro-Western bureaucratic structure within Iran; with the military wing gaining strength in domestic politics, these collaborations are acquiring a more serious nature, taking on a military and security-centered character.

While this situation may have removed Iran’s foreign policy from strategic ambiguity in the short term, it has brought about a picture of economic and social freezing and uncertainty in domestic politics. The possibility of a war that could yield new and heavier economic and political consequences has dragged the Iranian economy into a state of passivity; as a natural result, a decline in economic growth, an increase in inflation, and supply-demand imbalances have emerged.

It can already be said that 2026 will be an extremely difficult year for the Iranian government. It must prepare to manage security crises arising from a potential confrontation with Israel on the one hand, while on the other, it is obliged to resolve infrastructural and managerial problems emerging from the cumulative effect of heavy sanctions that have continued for over twenty years. Indeed, a few days ago, Masoud Pezeshkian openly stated to the public that the country’s fundamental problems (such as inflation, unemployment, and sanctions) are insoluble and that he has no idea how to overcome them; these statements led to serious criticism from broad circles, including his former supporters.