People attend a funeral procession for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on Feb. 28 in Israeli and US airstrikes, in Tehran, Iran, July 6, 2026. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/ Handout via REUTERS

For the American president, it’s time to understand that purposeful war with Iran requires more than belligerent rhetoric and hyperbolic threats. No matter how vigorously Donald Trump may warn that “We’re going to hit them very hard tonight,” Iran will remain determinedly fixed on nuclear military objectives. For the leadership in Tehran, whatever its composition, no other course would be rational or “cost-effective.”

Though generally ignored, Tehran wittingly acts according to subjective interpretations of death and time. Unless authoritative US decision-makers attempt to decipher these overlooked considerations, any American plan for “winning” the war with Iran will fail. Inter alia, Washington‘s decisions will have variously tangible effects on Israel.

In essence, Donald Trump’s seat-of-the-pants war ignores critical aspects of Iran’s strategic calculus. Again and again, the president’s fluctuating deadlines and incoherent positions “miss the point.” For the most part, even Iran’s Revolutionary Guard military decision-makers accept religious ideals concerning death, time and immortality. Significantly, even “successful” US military strikes could stiffen Iranian resolve, a fully predictable outcome of Islamic belief in “sacred time.”

In Washington and also Jerusalem, much still needs to be clarified. At best, because Iranian leaders distinguish between “sacred time” and “profane time,” they regard Trump’s time-centered threats of “obliteration” as irrelevant. At worst, these leaders will take Trump’s ungraduated threats as an incentive to undertake “martyrdom operations” or continuously accelerate war hostilities.

Owing largely to core religious underpinnings, Iranian strategic decision-makers will never accept American threats they find to weaken and undermine them. In spite of such evident resolve, President Trump continues his current policy. This means that while Iran is acting rationally in its current war, the United States is not.

Presumptively, Iran can enhance the incomparable promise of immortality only by staying faithful to “sacred time.” Correlatively, Iran can be expected to display greater patience than the United States or Israel.

 For Iranian decision-makers, the affirmation “I believe” demands rejection of military strategic calculations based on “profane time.” Never to be ignored is that Iran-backed jihadi terrorism represents a current form of religious sacrifice. Doctrinally, for Tehran, any proper response to the United States or Israel should be linked to immortality, or “power over death.” By definition, there can be no greater kind of power.

Considered in isolation, immortality remains an unworthy and unseemly human goal, both because it is unscientific and because it can foster war, terrorism, and genocide. Ultimately, the dignified human task should not be to remove individual human hopes of soaring “above mortality,” but to “de-link” this search from intolerably destructive human behaviors.

It’s time for an intellectual synthesis. The underpinnings of war against Iran are deeply rooted in overlooked considerations of death, time and immortality. It is only with a more determined understanding of these considerations, therefore, that America and Israel could meaningfully protect themselves from ever-escalating military crises.

“Is it an end that draws near,” inquires Karl Jaspers in Man in the Modern Age (1951) “or a beginning.” The insightful answer, one which could sometimes lie beyond any measuring hands of clocks, is by no means apparent to any political leaderships. Yet, for the world as a whole, not just the United States and Israel, nothing could be more important.

To survive as a species, not just as separate states, humankind will need to rise above the endlessly defiling hazards of geopolitics. Inevitably, though unconsciously, residents of planet earth will continue to regard “power over death” as the most enviable form of power. At some point, if not suitably obstructed, the flesh-and-blood consequences of this ubiquitous anti-reason could spawn the planet’s final encounter with total war.

In Iran, hopes for personal immortality are contingent on palpable expectations of “sacred time.” Regarding the current war, neither superiority in high-technology weapon systems nor American presidential threats of “obliteration” could produce “victory” for the United States or Israel. Something much more mind-centered and thought-based will be needed to guide policy-making in Washington and Jerusalem. Whatever the particulars, this “something more” should accurately reflect Iranian leadership understandings of God, Death and Time.

Prof. Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and scholarly articles dealing with international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Israel, Prof. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon). His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018). Professor Beres was born in Zurich at the end of World War II.