Amaresh Misra: Eleven Days In, Iran Is Setting the Terms of the War

Eleven Days Into an Unraveling War

Eleven days after Israel and the United States launched what analyst Amaresh Misra called an "illegal attack" on Iran, the war has settled into a grinding, asymmetric contest that, in his account, is going badly for Washington and Tel Aviv. Speaking to Nous Podcast host Bushra Khanam Fahad, Misra argued the conflict had in little more than a week exposed weaknesses in American power that had gone largely unacknowledged.

The strike that opened the war, he said, killed Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with much of the country's senior clerical and military leadership. That claim frames everything else Misra says in the interview, though it is his own characterization of events rather than an independently verified fact at the time of recording. Washington, he argued, had gambled that decapitating Iran's leadership would trigger a civil war and allow the installation of a friendly government in Tehran. Instead, he said, Iran's retaliation against American bases across the Middle East left the US and Israel struggling to calibrate a response.

Israel's Hidden Toll

Much of the interview centered on what Misra described as a systematic Israeli effort to obscure its own losses. He said foreign journalists have been barred from filming inside Israel and that a communications blackout has kept images of the damage from spreading, in contrast to Iran, which he said has imposed no comparable censorship on coverage of strikes on its own territory.

By his account, Israeli officials acknowledge roughly 1,000 civilian and military dead, but he cited unnamed Western independent analysts estimating actual Israeli military deaths at five to ten thousand — concealed, he claimed, through a longstanding practice of quietly deploying poorer, informally recruited soldiers, some drawn from Africa, whose deaths carry no official accountability. He also referenced then-unconfirmed reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's brother had been killed in a strike on the family's residence, and noted that senior ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich had not appeared publicly in over a week. He described scenes of panic at Ben Gurion Airport, with crowds demanding evacuation flights and reports of private operators charging steep sums for seats out of the country.

An Oil and Arms Shock Radiates Outward

Misra argued the war's most under-examined consequence is a global weapons and energy shock. European governments that had agreed, under pressure from President Trump, to buy American weapons for transfer to Ukraine are now watching that supply chain seize up as Washington prioritizes replenishing depleted Patriot missile stocks in the Middle East, he said — to the point that the US has fallen back on the older PAC-2 interceptor after exhausting its PAC-3 stockpile. Poland, he added, has turned to South Korea for weapons instead.

On energy, Misra said Gulf producers have cut output even as Iran restricts tanker movement through the Strait of Hormuz to vessels from China and Russia, pushing Brent crude from roughly $70 to around $110 a barrel within ten days. He noted India holds some 40 to 45 days of reserves and has secured access to discounted Russian oil, but that European buyers without such access face a deepening crisis, compounded by Vladimir Putin's suggestion that Russia could end gas supplies to Europe well ahead of a 2027 contract expiry.

A New, Younger Leadership in Tehran

The interview's most striking claims concerned Iran's leadership. Misra said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with his wife and other family members, was killed in the strike on his residence, and that Khamenei's second son, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — a 56-year-old former front-line commander in the Iran-Iraq war — has since been named Supreme Leader. He framed this as part of a broader generational turnover, with significant losses reported inside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij security forces as well as the political leadership, replaced, in his telling, by a younger cohort.

Could Iran's Nuclear Fatwa Fall?

Misra argued the succession carries specific strategic weight: unlike his father, he said, Mojtaba Khamenei is not personally bound by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's original fatwa declaring nuclear weapons contrary to Islamic principle, since Islamic jurisprudence permits exceptions where a state's existence is under existential threat. Misra suggested that either acquiring a nuclear weapon or simply declaring an intent to do so could change the war's trajectory, potentially forcing Trump and Netanyahu to pull back.

The Case For — and Against — Boots on the Ground

Asked about the prospect of a US ground invasion, Misra said he could not rule it out but argued Washington is instead debating narrower special-operations options, such as attempting to seize Iran's enriched uranium stockpile directly — an operation, he said, with no real historical precedent — or seizing Kharg Island, the heavily defended hub of Iran's oil exports, rather than attempting to occupy the country. He was skeptical either option was viable, pointing to Iran's Foreign Ministry repeatedly stating the country is prepared for a ground assault, and citing the failed 1980 US hostage-rescue mission in Iran as a precedent for the risks of American intervention there.

Russia and China's Quiet Role

Misra said Russia has supplied Iran with what he called crucial human intelligence, helping Iranian forces track American soldiers who had relocated from bases under fire to hotels and residential compounds — including, he claimed, a strike on a residential tower in Dubai's Marina district that killed no civilians despite hitting a floor where US soldiers were staying. He attributed the strike's precision to Russian-style intelligence work, and credited Chinese electronic-warfare support with enabling a strike on Sdot Micha, a heavily fortified Israeli facility he described as housing nuclear-capable Jericho III missiles. In his reading, the US and Israel now recognize they are contending not only with Iran but, indirectly, with Russia and China.

Hezbollah and the Houthis Widen the Front

On Lebanon, Misra said Hezbollah — diminished by the earlier elimination of its senior leadership — has nonetheless resumed strikes south of the Litani River since March 2, inflicting what he estimated at two dozen or more Israeli military casualties and stalling a helicopter-borne Israeli ground incursion that had expected the area to be clear. He described Iran treating Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas as allies rather than proxies, and said Yemen's Houthis have signaled they are holding fire at Iran's request while retaining the missile capacity to strike Israel directly should a ground operation proceed. Hamas, he said, remains quiet under the current Gaza truce, though he considered that calm fragile.

The Al-Aqsa Warning

Asked about persistent warnings — including from commentator Tucker Carlson — that Israel could stage a false-flag attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque to escalate the war further, Misra said he would not put such an operation past Israel, pointing to what he called a pattern of unclaimed regional strikes later attributed to it. But he argued that popular opinion across the Arab and Muslim world already favors Iran, making a false-flag operation more likely to provoke wider anger than to advance Israeli aims.

Iran, in Misra's Reading, Is Setting the Terms

Misra closed by arguing that Tehran has ruled out negotiations, calculating that earlier talks produced no benefit, and that Iran — not the US or Israel — is now dictating the terms on which the war might end. Whether that reading holds up is a separate question. What the interview captures is Misra's own assessment, delivered eleven days into a war whose most dramatic claims — the reported death of Iran's Supreme Leader chief among them — remained, at the time of this conversation, unconfirmed outside Iranian and allied media.