India, March 18 -- When the US and Israel struck Iran on February 28, starting what has now become a weeks- long conflict in West Asia, and killed Tehran's military and civilian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, they probably expected the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to fold quickly.

This is exactly what happened in Iraq in 2003 when the US coalition toppled the Saddam Hussein regime in just 11 days. The Donald Trump administration had expected a similar playbook in Iran, but they may have hugely miscalculated one thing.

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi recently said that Tehran had spent two decades studying US wars to build a system that could keep fighting even if the capital was bombed, out...