
Washington Post
Jan 12, 2025
Iran, already on the defensive, braces for second Trump term
Military exercises intended to show Iran’s strength might instead have revealed its weakness.
By Susannah George and Mustafa Salim
Iranian leaders, under economic pressure at home and feeling the weight of increasing instability in the region, are attempting to project strength at the beginning of a year that threatens fresh challenges.
Iran last week launched its most extensive military exercises in decades, flying thousands of drones, parading rocket launchers and ballistic missiles, and thwarting a simulated assault on a nuclear facility that involved “a multitude of air threats,” according to state television coverage.
The exercises were carried out in response to “new security threats,” said Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini, a spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Iran has not stopped producing missiles for one day, and its defense systems are fully alive and, in many cases, upgraded.”
But the public remarks cannot quite obscure the significant currents of anxiety in Iranian society. President-elect Donald Trump has promised a tougher stance on Iran, including tightened sanctions, while an increasingly emboldened Israel reportedly is considering a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Iran has been on the defensive for months, facing direct attacks from Israel and weathering losses in Lebanon and Syria. New U.S. sanctions are expected to target Iranian oil sales to China, analysts say, further squeezing the struggling economy.
During the military exercises, commanders highlighted Iran’s new air defenses more than two months after an Israeli attack damaged or destroyed key elements of the country’s highly sophisticated systems, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery.
Naeini dismissed the reports of damage as efforts by “enemies” to portray Iran as “weak.”
“After the Zionist regime attack on Iran in October, they said that Iran has no air defenses,” he said.
But the military defenses on display this week are of lower quality than those reportedly hit in October, and most of the offensive systems paraded were weapons that Iran has already used, largely ineffectively, in attacks on Israel in April and October.
“Iran has kind of shown all of its cards,” said Afshon Ostovar, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in California. “The conflict over the last year exposed Iran’s best hands and showed that Iran just doesn’t really have as much as people feared that it might. And that has weakened Iran considerably.”
While the country’s leaders are attempting to sell the narrative that “fortress Iran is back,” Ostovar said, they have instead highlighted the limits of its arsenal.
“Iran’s power and strength was at its peak when all of the threats that it posed were theoretical,” he said.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, speaks during a ceremony in Tehran on Wednesday. (Iranian Supreme Leader Office/Handout/OFFICE OF THE IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Another consequence of 15 months of grinding regional conflict has been the further deterioration of the economy. Iran’s currency lost 65 percent of its value last year; an energy crisis shuttered businesses, schools and government buildings; and unemployment remains high.
Workers in Tehran’s main bazaar last week staged a rare strike to protest high inflation. Video of striking merchants showed a crowd of men arguing that “the constantly rising price of dollars” was making business “impossible.”
The military exercises this week appeared to reflect the regime’s concerns about the possibility of growing domestic instability. Tehran on Friday hosted maneuvers performed by the Basij, a paramilitary force tasked with maintaining domestic security that has been used to crack down on protests.
“It is a declaration of the Basij’s comprehensive readiness to confront any threat,” said Brig. Gen. Hasan Hassanzadeh, a Revolutionary Guard commander. “The people’s and nation’s devotees are still present on the scene and will sacrifice their lives for this nation.”
Iran’s regional allies are also bracing for the return of Trump. Iraq, having watched the Israeli rout of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, has curbed the operations of Iranian-allied militias inside its own territory.
Groups backed by Iran played a key role in halting advances by the Islamic State militant group in Iraq in 2014 and have since been formally integrated into the country’s security forces.
Iraqi officials now fear that Israel and the United States may ramp up attacks on Tehran’s allies in Iraq, as they have on the Houthis in Yemen.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani visited Tehran this week to discuss restricting the operations of Iranian-backed forces in Iraq, according to a senior Iraqi official. The official, who was briefed on the talks, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Sudani’s government has tried to balance the often-competing interests of its two key allies, Iran and the United States, said Ihsan al-Shammari, a political analyst at Baghdad University.
After Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Iraq sided with Iran. But as the war dragged on, Shammari said, Baghdad began to pivot.
“With Iran falling in Lebanon and Syria, things changed,” he said. It’s unclear how exactly Iraq plans to restrict Iranian influence on its territory, but Shammari predicted a weakened Tehran is likely to accept a diminished role.
A senior Iraqi official with ties to Iranian-backed militants said that the groups were exercising restraint for now but that it by no means signals an end to Iran’s influence in Iraq.
Once Hezbollah and Israel agreed to a ceasefire, he said, the Iran-backed groups determined that launching attacks against Israel and U.S. forces in the region “will have no advantage to them and would have greater consequences than benefits.”
“Palestine will remain our cause,” he said. But if U.S. forces stationed in Iraq don’t soon withdraw, he said, “anything is possible.”
“We already made it clear we are pausing, not withdrawing.”
Susannah George is The Washington Post's Gulf bureau chief, based in Dubai, where she leads coverage of the oil-rich monarchies of the Persian Gulf and their neighbor, Iran. She previously spent four years as The Post's Afghanistan-Pakistan bureau chief. follow on X@sgreports
Mustafa Salim is a reporter in The Washington Post's Baghdad bureau. He joined the paper in 2014, covering the rise of the Islamic State and Iraq's military campaign to defeat it. follow on Xmustafa_salimb