MADRID – The US–Israeli strikes on Iranian territory on 28 February cannot be read as isolated tactical actions. They represent a structural intervention in the regional balance of power and, from Tehran’s perspective, an existential signal.

Targets reportedly included nodes of the IRGC, nuclear-related infrastructure, and locations near President Masoud Pezeshkian and Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. 

That these strikes occurred alongside indirect nuclear negotiations confirms a long-standing pattern: Washington treats diplomacy as a management tool rather than a framework for engagement. Ambiguity, hesitation, or negotiation is read as weakness, not prudence. Iranian planners, shaped by decades of sanctions, covert operations, episodic strikes, and the memory of the Iran–Iraq war, understand that aggression must be met swiftly, visibly, and in ways that project regional consequences.

Discursive construction and strategic response

Donald Trump’s justification frames the operation as an act “to stop an Iranian threat.” This is not mere rhetoric; it is a discursive strategy that prefigures and legitimizes military action. The term “threat” functions as an empty but operative signifier—imminent, vaguely defined, and resistant to verification. It allows deep strikes into sovereign territory to be narrated as necessary and final, while reserving justification for future escalations. Nuclear latency, missile reach, and regional influence are invoked without concrete specification. In this narrative, defence is detached from geography: any Iranian target becomes part of a U.S.-defined security perimeter.

Beneath the surface lies a grammar of inverted agency. The United States positions itself as compelled—“having no choice”—to act, while selecting targets, timing, and alignment with ongoing negotiations is recast as reaction rather than initiative. Violence is projected onto Iran and reimported as moral justification. The aggressor assumes the role of victim, the object of attack becomes the origin of aggression. Temporal structure reinforces this inversion: threat is always impending, never fully realised, justifying today’s strikes while preserving moral space for tomorrow. Previous claims of having “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme coexist seamlessly with alarms of reconstitution, unchallenged by logic.

Iran perceives these actions as part of a continuous chain rather than discrete incidents. Vulnerability, cultivated over decades of sanctions, covert operations, assassinations, and regional conflicts, has become structural. Iranian doctrine prioritises rapid, proportionate, and regionally projected responses. Targets such as the Fifth Fleet, Al Udeid, and Israeli positions are not chosen arbitrarily; they are nodes in an architecture transforming Iranian vulnerability into strategic leverage. Energy infrastructure, including maritime chokepoints, allows Iran to translate military action into economic and strategic pressure, reinforcing resilience and ensuring that consequences radiate across the region. Far from improvisation, this is structured, reflexive strategy.

Trump’s framing grants discursive immunity to offensive action. Once labelled “self-defence,” strikes evade scrutiny over proportionality, legality, or timing. Critique of target selection or negotiation strategy is recast as naivety or moral failure. Pre-emption dissolves borders; anticipation sanctions bombardment. In this frame, Iran appears not as a sovereign actor responding to pressure but as a threat-object confirming the narrative against which the United States must act. Repetition of the injunction to “stop the threat” disowns U.S. agency, projecting violence onto Iran while claiming moral rectitude. Debate is contained within a frame prioritizing U.S. security, isolating Iran’s strategic reasoning, and rendering sanctions, covert action, and historical encirclement invisible.

Survival, deterrence, and regional recalibration

Iran’s posture is structured by survival rather than ambition. The U.S. logic of limited escalation presumes episodes that can be absorbed. Iran treats breaches as ruptures requiring distributed, proportional, and immediate response. Responses are layered, calibrated, and designed to impose strategic costs beyond the immediate confrontation. Bases, fleets, energy infrastructure, and regional partners form a contiguous web, ensuring consequences radiate asymmetrically. Tehran seeks deterrence through cumulative strategic pressure rather than symmetry of firepower.

This divergence highlights incompatible strategic frameworks. Washington seeks unilateral manoeuvrability, preserving a narrative in which deep strikes are manageable, limited, and defensible. Iran operates under the assumption that any violation of its sovereignty constitutes an existential breach demanding comprehensive, regionally distributed response. Survival structures behaviour; unilateral restraint is detached from operational reality. Managed exposure, previously the entry price for negotiation, is no longer acceptable.

Trump’s discourse demonstrates that war begins linguistically. Words do not describe violence—they authorize and sanctify it. “Stop the threat” constructs perception: aggressor as guardian, sovereignty as obstacle. Projection operates at depth, with violence mirrored as threat and disowned as action. Tehran challenges this theatre through precise, distributed counter-strikes, testing symbolic frameworks against material reality. The responsibility rests with those framing offensive war in the guise of defensive necessity. Elastic threat, recycled claims of destroyed capabilities, and the orchestration of diplomacy alongside force erode credibility before munitions are even deployed.

The 28 February strikes reveal a fundamental misalignment between the discursive construction of war and the structural realities of the region. While Washington and Tel Aviv seek to manage perception and limit responsibility through language, Tehran’s doctrine prioritises survival, proportionality, and regional deterrence. In this context, any deep strike into Iranian territory is not a tactical probe but a strategic rupture. Language clears the ground for missiles, but it cannot contain the consequences of crossing a state that has long internalized vulnerability as a permanent condition. The future of the region will be determined not only by force but by the capacity of actors to see beyond the rhetoric and account for the long arc of Iranian strategy and resilience.