Nuclear programme and armed groups: the Tehran regime is repeating its own history

The Islamic Republic of Iran wishes to remain the Islamic Republic of Iran and has never considered changing. All the elements upon which its projection of power and threat were based remain at the heart of its operations, and after two wars in a single year – first Operation Rising Lion, followed by the American and Israeli operations ‘Epic Fury’ and ‘Roaring Lion’ – it has not relinquished anything. The regime remains convinced that, to survive, it must remain as it is, without change and without backing down. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal carried an exclusive story so significant – on the very day news broke of negotiations for a ten-day ceasefire between the United States and Iran – that it seemed hardly coincidental.

The American newspaper, citing sources from Israeli and American intelligence, reported that Iran’s nuclear programme may well be on hold, but it is still alive. Last autumn, following the Twelve-Day War, Tehran is said to have moved thousands of uranium enrichment centrifuges into a tunnel inside Piccone Mountain (often referred to by its English name, Pickaxe Mountain), not far from the Natanz site, which has been struck on several occasions by the Israelis and Americans. The Iranians have been constructing the tunnel inside the mountain since 2020; when work began six years ago, they claimed it would be used to house workshops for building centrifuges, but the Israelis believe that the assembly of centrifuges is not the true purpose, and that the tunnel is also capable of supporting uranium enrichment operations. Over the past fifteen months, satellite imagery has shown a constant flow of lorries, and the Israeli and US militaries believed that frequent overflights would deter Iran from restarting its nuclear programme; however, the Iranians have continued their work, and no air strikes have ever been carried out to halt the construction site. The reason can only be surmised: neither the Israelis nor the Americans struck the mountain because they believed that conventional bombs would not be sufficient and that they would, once again, need the B-2 bombers used to penetrate Fordo in June 2025. US President Donald Trump has begun to mention the Piccone mountain with increasing frequency, announcing that it could be targeted: it symbolises how the regime, come what may, remains wedded to its ideas – such as the conviction that the Bomb is necessary for survival – and so, with what remains, albeit little compared to last year, it has resumed work on it.

The Islamic Republic also remains convinced that, in order to survive, it needs what it calls the ‘axis of resistance’ – the network of armed groups that the regime itself funds in the Middle East and which is tasked with destabilising the region. In Yemen, in recent weeks, Iran has stepped up its efforts to ensure that the Houthis succeed in closing another strait vital to international trade, Bab el-Mandeb, in the Red Sea. Tehran has stepped up arms deliveries to the group, escalating the conflict with Saudi Arabia, which supports the Yemeni government and opposes Iran’s attempts to use the Houthis as a weapon against neighbouring countries. However, the regime’s primary focus of resources and funding has always been Hezbollah in Lebanon. Yesterday, the Israeli army began withdrawing from pilot areas in southern Lebanon. The process is a complex game of trust: the IDF is withdrawing from villages from which it has already driven out Hezbollah, leaving the field to the Lebanese Armed Forces, who are expected to hold the territory and ensure that the militants do not re-establish themselves. This is the first time this process has been attempted, but there are many doubts: within the Lebanese Armed Forces, there are soldiers and officers who do not recognise Hezbollah as a threat and indeed cooperate with them; Israel has weakened the group, but cannot disarm it without Beirut’s support, unless it launches an invasion of the whole of Lebanese territory; whilst the IDF fights, Iran has continued to supply its militiamen, often via Syria. The regime is spending money from increasingly empty coffers on weapons and projects that do not concern the Iranian people.

The regime is convinced that, without changing its foreign policy strategy or altering its system of internal repression, it will remain in power because that is what it has always done, weathering all economic shocks, sanctions and protests. It now believes it can survive even with an intermittent war against the United States, using traffic through the Strait of Hormuz as a means of constant blackmail, capable of forcing the US administration to give in. The problem is that the US blockade of Iranian ports is having an impact on the Iranian economy and comes on top of the sanctions that remain in force. Tehran’s earnings from the Strait of Hormuz will be zero in a few years’ time, because the Gulf states do not want their economies to depend on Iranian threats at sea. Now, one faction within the regime is proposing a new ceasefire, whilst another continues to believe that the old approach remains the safest. Among those who see the endless, sporadic war against the United States as a risk, there are those who envisage the regime’s demise not as a collapse, but as a slow, steady erosion.