TEHRAN -- The United States and Israel have shifted from direct military confrontation to a proxy war of economic pressure, regional alliances and subversion after failing to subdue Iran on the battlefield, the head of Iran’s Basij volunteer force said on Sunday, declaring that the new contest is one of “endurance” and that Washington is losing it.
Hojjatoleslam Hussein Taeb, president of the Basij Mostazafin Organization, told the eighth “Jihad of Explanation” conference in Tehran that U.S. and Israeli intelligence had predicted Iran would collapse within three days of decapitation strikes, or surrender within a six-week war when its munitions ran out. 
“Their estimate turned out to be completely wrong,” he said. “Our nation and armed forces did not waver and stood firm.”
Taeb said the enemy’s initial plan, documented in joint Israeli-American papers, assumed that assassinating the Leader and top commanders, striking the second layer of command and destroying defense infrastructure would cause governance to collapse and bring Iran to the negotiating table within three days. 
The fallback assumption, he said, was that Iran’s resilience would end in a six-week war as missile stocks depleted, the economy faltered and internal security pressures mounted, forcing surrender “empty-handed” in a second phase.
Instead, Taeb said, American and Israeli military endurance collapsed first. 
“As their war was planned for a six-week period, their ammunition reserves, their air defense resilience and their THAAD missiles were also running out,” he said. 
He described the early days of the war as requiring a massive, complex operation to penetrate five layers of air defense and land missiles in the occupied territories, but said that by the final days “the volume of our missile use showed that the missiles fired were hitting the targets directly.”
“Europeans and regional countries were used as intermediaries to enter a ceasefire,” Taeb said. 
“Their estimate was that with a ceasefire and life returning to normal, the Islamic Republic would submit in negotiations to preserve this situation and reach an understanding — but in that same understanding they felt they lacked the resilience to implement it.” 
He said a clause giving Iran management of shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was implemented in the second week but sabotaged in the third, when the enemy concluded that continued implementation would entrench Iran’s control of the strait.
 Attempts to open an alternative route for warships were “hit and forced to retreat,” and efforts to pass ships by air and helicopter also failed, he said, followed by renewed naval and ground clashes in which “they were again forced to retreat.”
“Today things have reached a point where the Americans and Israelis have changed their strategy and shifted from a full-scale direct war to proxy groups, regional and international pacts, economic pressures and insecurity,” Taeb said. 
“They have begun a new war against our nation in this way.”
He said that the Strait of Hormuz has become “a tool regulating the balance of power in the field of endurance,” warning that if Washington believes sanctions and blockade can weaken Iran, “keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed has today become a regulator of the world economy.” 
He said U.S. naval and air power in the region has been exhausted, noting that “they are not prepared today to disclose to psychologists the statistics of their soldiers’ referrals on ships and bases,” and that Washington spent $8 trillion in the 2001 war only to withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq by 2025 “with heavy material losses and erosion of manpower.”
Taeb cited domestic U.S. pressure, saying “70 percent of Americans announced in their own poll last night that war with Iran had no value or benefit for us,” and that diesel prices, transport costs and living expenses have risen. 
“Why don’t the Americans come and enter a direct war?” he asked. “One reason is their retreat, and the second is the unpredictability of our method of defense in the new phase — at what point, with what tool and at what time we respond.” 
He said U.S. intelligence agencies publicly acknowledge that Iran’s response in any next war is unpredictable and “only speculate.”
On the political calendar, Taeb said Israeli elections on October 27 and U.S. midterms on November 3 have created pressure for a symbolic victory. 
“Netanyahu needs 61 seats to survive in power,” he said, adding that the Israeli leader wants to drag Washington back into war with Iran or else disrupt the elections on security grounds. 
He said Trump or the ruling party “need a victory,” and that “the Iran file, directly and indirectly, affects the American elections today.”
Taeb said the enemy is seeking three objectives: “incitement to unrest and division inside the country,” weakening officials’ resolve to force compromise with America, and “creating doubt and passivity among the armed forces.” 
He said attempts to keep schools and universities closed and create insecurity in the streets failed when Iranians took part in the “Janfadayan” exercise and resumed normal life. 
He cited 313,000 livelihood packages distributed through mosques and neighborhoods as evidence of national solidarity.
“This competition is a competition of endurance, and this competition in endurance, by God’s grace, like the competition in military war, will end in favor of the Iranian nation and the resistance front,” Taeb said. 
He called for supporting the armed forces so that their readiness “leads to the production of deterrent power,” and said that if the enemy errs, “it should know the response will be unpredictable.” 
He described the hybrid war as a second battlefield where “the media and propaganda unit takes the place of the missile unit and artillery, and the pen and speech take the place of missiles and precise fire.”
He called for unity behind Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, saying “every Iranian is a Basiji,” and predicting that “the process of the decline of the West and America in the international arena and West Asia will accelerate.”