US-Iran tension: Why Tehran may choose confrontation over ‘surrender’

The continued build-up of US military in the Gulf region now points less to signalling and more to preparation.

The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group near Iranian waters is already a significant move.

Another aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, was last seen near the Strait of Gibraltar and has been heading east to support potential operations. Other assets have also been moved to the region, reinforcing the impression that Washington is assembling layered military options.

Such deployments can serve as leverage in diplomacy. But taken together, they may also suggest that indirect talks between Tehran and Washington have reached a deadlock – one that could be followed by military action if neither side shifts positions.

This raises a fundamental question: why do Iranian leaders, at least publicly, remain defiant in the face of the world’s most powerful military and its strongest regional ally in the Middle East?

The answer lies in Washington’s stated conditions for talks.

US condition seen as capitulation

From Tehran’s perspective, these demands amount not to negotiation but to capitulation.

They include ending uranium enrichment, reducing the range of ballistic missiles so they no longer threaten Israel, halting support for armed groups across the region, and, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated, changing the Islamic Republic’s treatment of its own citizens.

For the Iranian leadership, these are not secondary policies. They form the core of what it sees as its security architecture.

In the absence of powerful international allies, Tehran has spent decades building what it calls the “Axis of Resistance”.

It is a network of allied armed groups designed to keep confrontation away from Iran’s borders and shift pressure closer to Israel.

Tehran’s ballistic missile programme has served as a substitute for an ageing air force and limited access to advanced military technology.

The nuclear programme, while officially described as peaceful, is widely seen as carrying deterrent value.

Even without weaponisation, mastery of the enrichment cycle creates what strategists call “threshold capability”. It involves infrastructure that would require only a political decision to move toward military use. That latent capacity itself functions as leverage.

Stripping away these elements would, in Tehran’s view, dismantle the foundations of its deterrence.

From the perspective of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, accepting such terms could appear more dangerous than risking a limited war with the United States under President Donald Trump. A military confrontation, however costly, may be seen as survivable. Total strategic rollback may not.

Yet the risks embedded in this calculation are profound, and not only for Iran.

Any US campaign could target senior leadership in its opening phase. If Khamenei is killed, it would not only end a more-than three-decade rule but could destabilise succession at a moment of vulnerability.

Strikes on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other security institutions could also weaken the apparatus that recently reasserted control after one of the deadliest and violent crackdowns in the Islamic Republic’s history.

Protesters who filled the streets in recent weeks – and withdrew only under overwhelming force – remain deeply disaffected. A sudden blow to the state’s coercive machinery could shift the domestic balance in unpredictable ways.

Tehran may assume that Washington’s objectives would be limited to degrading nuclear and missile capabilities. But wars rarely unfold according to initial assumptions. Miscalculation over targets, duration or political fallout could quickly expand the conflict.

Economic pressures add another layer of risk. Iran’s economy, already strained by sanctions, inflation and declining purchasing power, would struggle to absorb further shocks. Disruption to oil exports or damage to infrastructure would compound public anger that has been suppressed rather than resolved.

In this context, defiance serves multiple purposes. It signals resolve externally and projects strength internally. But it also narrows space for compromise.

Risks for Washington

Washington’s risks are no less real.

On paper, the US military has the capacity to fulfil the commander-in-chief’s objectives if tensions escalate. But wars are not fought on paper. They are shaped by miscalculation, escalation and unintended consequences.

The recent 12-day war with Israel exposed vulnerabilities in Iran’s command structure and military infrastructure. It also offered lessons in adaptation, how to absorb strikes, recalibrate and respond under pressure.

A broader confrontation could produce outcomes neither side intends. A weakened central authority in Tehran would not automatically translate into stability or alignment with Western interests. Power vacuums can generate new, fragmented or radicalised centres of influence, complicating the regional balance in ways that are undesirable for Washington and its allies.

Ayatollah Khamenei now faces few favourable options. Accepting Washington’s conditions risks hollowing out the regime’s deterrent strategy. Rejecting them increases the likelihood of confrontation at a time of internal fragility.

Between what he may see as the “worst” option; strategic surrender, and the “best of the worst”, a limited but containable war, Tehran appears, at least publicly, to be leaning toward the latter.