Iranian Resilience

Back in 2023 I had the honour of meeting with former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi while he was in New York for the General Assembly debate. He provided me and the others in attendance with a very frank and detailed assessment of the situation in Iran following the tragic death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022. He described the massive internal unrest that followed as the greatest threat to the Islamic government of Iran since the revolution. He stated that foreign intelligence services had taken advantage of societal fractures and were seeking to break Iran apart. He stated that Iran had been able to defeat these outside forces, and was a stronger nation because of it.
    Raisi died in a helicopter crash in May 2024. He was replaced by the current President, Masoud Pezeshkian. In September 2025 I was again invited to a meeting with President Pezeshkian in New York. He stated that Raisi’s death had led to a division in the Iranian government about policy on how to deal with the West. He said that foreign intelligence services, led by Israel and the US, sought to exploit these divisions, and that the decapitation attack carried out by Israel with the assistance of the United States in June 2025 was designed to collapse the Iranian government and create an opportunity for anti-government forces to take control. Pezeshkian noted that these efforts failed, and that Iran emerged from the 12 Day War with Israel and the United States more united than ever.
    The effort to topple the Iranian government was a major Israeli/United States objective. Both Israel and the United States have pulled out all the stops to create the current unrest in Iran. But the Iranian victory against the foreign-led opposition in 2023, combined with the unification of political purpose which emerged after the June 2025 war, has made Iran extremely resilient against outside efforts to overthrow the Islamic government.
    The Iranian government is on the verge of fundamentally defeating the foreign supported opposition in Iran today. This has Israel in a panic, because they have burned the totality of their resources in Iran in support of the current unrest. The United States as well is concerned that an Iranian government victory today will make it impossible to change the regime in Tehran. There is a real danger that the United States and Israel may launch attacks on Iran in the near future designed to weaken and discredit the Iranian government while providing military cover for the opposition forces carrying out acts of violence in Iran today.
    It is highly unlikely that these attacks will succeed in their own right. They will, however, trigger an Iranian response that will disrupt oil production in the Middle East for a significant period of time.
    This appears to be the goal of the Trump administration, and explains in large part the timing of the United States attack on Venezuela, which sought to secure Venezuelan oil in anticipation of a new energy crisis triggered by a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran. The world is looking at a deliberate attack on global energy security as a means of bringing down Iran, weakening Russia, and destabilizing BRICS. •

Source: scottritter.substack.com/p/iranian-resilience of 12. February 2026

* Scott Ritter is a former intelligence officer in the US Marine Corps. During his more than 20-year career, he worked in the former Soviet Union on the implementation of arms control agreements, on the staff of US General Norman Schwarzkopf during the 1991 Gulf War, and later as chief weapons inspector for the UN in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. Ritter was a fierce critic of the American decision to go to war against Iraq again in 2003. He is the author of 12 books. His latest book is “Highway to Hell: The Armageddon Chronicles 2015–2024” (Clarity Press).