Tehran- In light of the escalation of Western pressure on Iran regarding its nuclear program, despite the targeting of its facilities during last June’s war, and the intense Israeli military preparations, data indicate that Tehran is racing against time to raise its readiness in preparation for a comprehensive confrontation that it sees as closer than many imagine.
Since the day after the ceasefire in the 12-day war between it and Israel, Iranian political and military leaders have continued to consider the truce a “fighter’s rest,” stressing the intensification of preparations for an existential confrontation that is almost inevitable in the near future.
In this context, Revolutionary Guard spokesman Brigadier General Ali Naeini said, “We assume that war may break out at any moment,” stressing during a symposium at the University of Tehran last Thursday that the focus is on strengthening defense capabilities and achieving self-sufficiency in the military fields.
Race against time
While the Israeli and American attacks five months ago revealed security and military gaps on the Iranian front, Tehran established a “National Defense Council” at the beginning of last August, to lead any potential military confrontation and confront any external aggression.
For his part, Abdul Reza Davari, a conservative political activist and advisor to former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, believes that despite the passage of about 5 months since the ceasefire, a large segment of public opinion is still waiting for the spark that might ignite the confrontation, and that the second round of it has become inevitable in the calculations of the country’s decision-maker.
Based on the saying, “The blow that does not break your back makes you stronger,” Dauri told Al Jazeera Net that the Israeli aggression, which came with broad American and Western support, did not achieve its goals in eliminating the Iranian nuclear program or changing the regime, which puts “the Israeli enemy in constant anxiety after destabilizing the myth of the invincible Israeli army to think about restoring it.”
He added that the war increased the Iranians’ confidence in their military industries and actually enabled them to uncover their security and military gaps and work to fill them. The “enemy” may be forced into a new round of war before Tehran reaches a high level of deterrence power.
According to Davari, Iran is rushing to strengthen its offensive and deterrent power through its own capabilities and importing other weapons from friendly countries. It is also preparing for a fateful battle on a larger scale than the last war witnessed, based on the logic that says, “If it does not strike forcefully, it may receive fatal blows.”
The next war between Iran and Israel is only a matter of time
Officials and experts increasingly believe that the war that broke out last June caused less damage to the Iranian nuclear program than previously thought, considering that the outbreak of a new armed conflict is only a matter of time, according to the New York Times. pic.twitter.com/JzSatEeWGb
– Iranian events in Arabic (@_iraninarabic) November 11, 2025
Coordination of plans
For his part, the former leader of the Revolutionary Guard, retired Brigadier General Hussein Kanaani Moghadam, reveals that his country is racing against time to rebuild its military capabilities and raise its readiness in preparation for the next round of “hybrid” war on 3 levels: military, economic, and cyber.
In an interview with Al Jazeera Net, Kanaani explained that Tehran has already finished developing offensive and defensive plans and coordination between various military institutions to confront the worst possible scenarios, including the participation of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the aggression and “not the occupying entity that it has become able to sink with ballistic missiles within a few hours.”
He points out that coordination in the joint operations room of the resistance axis is continuing, and adds that Iran does not want the resistance factions to be harmed in defense of it and that its opposition to its involvement in the recent war came to preserve its capabilities in defense of its country and the Palestinian cause, adding that these factions insist on participating in the next round of the war.
Kanaani continued that his country is mobilizing its capabilities to enhance its missile capabilities and restore its former anti-aircraft guns – which were damaged after being disabled in electronic operations – and support them with new systems obtained from friendly countries, stressing that Iranian pilots have completed the necessary training on Russian “Sukhoi 35” fighters.
While he added that a number of Russian fighters had arrived in Iran before the June War, he attributed their non-use at that time to the incomplete training and logistical procedures necessary at that time, adding that the arrival of dozens of Chinese J-10C fighters to Iranian air bases was no longer a secret.
In his opinion, the second round of the war may expand to include new sea, land and air fronts, the closure of straits, the distraction of Western countries that support Israel on fronts close to its lands, and the attack on its military bases far from it. He stressed that he does not rule out the involvement of major powers alongside Iran to eliminate Western hegemony if the opportunity arises and this becomes possible.
Kanaani concluded that his country has many military documents that it has not yet revealed. Including laser and plasma weapons, hypersonic missiles, and destructive and intercontinental ballistics, stressing that they will focus on “robbing the enemy of the ability to respond and think about attacking it again.”
Lessons and surprises
For his part, an informed Iranian source close to the military and security establishment – who preferred to remain anonymous – explained that Tehran had previously “acquired a huge amount of secret information about the capabilities of the Israeli enemy and its strategic locations, which prompted it to accelerate an attack on it to prevent it from using that treasure of information.”
He told Al Jazeera Net that the assassination of a number of first-line leaders in the previous Israeli attack confused the Iranian forces for a few hours and caused them to lose some of their plans. However, Tehran was able to target very secret centers deep inside Israel through the security information it obtained, stressing that “Iranian security and espionage operations inside Israel are proceeding apace.”
He believed that his country is working to draw lessons from the previous round of war, including assassinations, cyber warfare, the negotiating trap, and American deception, stressing that estimates indicate the desire of an “American Zionist” to resume the war after activating the trigger mechanism against Tehran, which was prepared in advance.
According to the same source, in the previous war, Iran used only 30% of its military capabilities, thinking that the aggression would last at least two months, so it decided to gradually use its military cards, but the speed of the mediations prevented the use of many of them, including drones, adding that it will begin the intensity of its operations from where the first round ended, and “it will pour huge masses of fire on the enemy during the first few hours and days of the next round.”
🟥 Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards, Major General Hossein Salami:
We will not be the ones to start a war, but we are ready for any war.” We have learned the formulas to overcome this enemy. We will not retreat a single step from the enemy. pic.twitter.com/CybveFwX0X
– Iran in Arabic (@iraninarabic_ir) April 5, 2025
He explained that Iran has drawn up many plans and identified alternative leaders at several levels in preparation for any emergency, such as assassinations, and that it has not forgotten to set up a media attaché for psychological warfare and “play on public opinion’s desire to watch wonderful scenes such as the flight of a Sejjil missile in the sky and the destruction it inflicts on the enemy no matter how hard they try to obscure it.”
According to him, it is also making tremendous efforts, with the help of its friends, to make the scenes of shooting down F-35 fighters familiar and break the prestige of American military industries. He attributes the reason for his country’s failure to publish the wreckage of the stealth fighters that it shot down during the last war to the necessity of doing reverse engineering and disassembling their systems to find out how they work. He stressed that he does not rule out Iran broadcasting videos of its captured pilots sending messages to their fellow pilots.
He concluded that the next battle will be radically different from the previous one, and that Tehran is preparing for it within a limited time frame because preparing for an almost inevitable war is the best guarantee for peace. It has accomplished during the past few months what should have taken years, in addition to strengthening its military cooperation with Russia and China, and filling the technical and security gaps that appeared during the last war.