New Delhi, March 2 -- Iran's swift retaliation following joint United States and Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has shifted global attention from the initial attack to a pressing strategic question: how far can Tehran project military power, and what tools does it possess to sustain confrontation against two technologically superior adversaries?

As missiles and drones entered the opening phase of exchanges across the Middle East, regional governments, energy markets and defence planners began assessing whether the crisis would remain a contained cycle of reprisals or develop into a prolonged conflict shaped by Iran's asymmetric capabilities.

Iranian officials have framed the confrontation not as a limi...