New Delhi, April 24 -- THE US-IRAN conflict has revealed something that many outside observers-and perhaps even some within-had underestimated: Iran's strategic doctrine of resilience is not just rhetorical. For years, terms such as the "resistance economy", "distributed deterrence" and "self-reliance under pressure" were often dismissed, both abroad and domestically, as political language rather than strategic reality. Yet in the face of sustained confrontation with a vastly superior military and economic power, these ideas have proved coherent in practice. The Iranian state did not fragment. The war did not paralyse the economy.

This does not constitute victory in the conventional sense, nor does it negate the very real costs borne by ...