An Iranian official said that “we have prepared a vast arsenal of weapons, missiles, and drones for this promised day.” When Iran came under Israeli-US attack on February 28, we assumed that arsenal would be directed at the enemy that struck it. That, after all, is what this “promised day” was meant for. Instead, 86 percent of that arsenal was aimed at the Gulf states, and for a full month the debate has revolved around this misdirected aim. Why was it not directed at Israel? Was the “promised day” in fact meant to be the day of attacking the Gulf, not Israel?
It is clear that the element of surprise rattled the Iranian regime. Iran never expected the United States to take part in a war against it. It was caught off guard, just as it never expected Israel to resume attacks after the 12-day war, nor did it anticipate that the United States would enter the fight in earnest, deploying its full array of overwhelming and lethal capabilities. Nor did Iran grasp that Trump’s America does not operate by the familiar playbook it had grown used to over the years.
The last time the United States and Iran confronted each other directly was during the failed attempt to rescue hostages at the US embassy in Tehran. After that, Iran cut deals with successive US administrations. At most, it faced tighter sanctions from some, only for the next administration to release its funds. This is how Iran managed the relationship- by keeping confrontation off the table and avoiding any direct clash.
The US entry into the war with a clear determination to dismantle Iran’s arsenal caught Tehran off guard and forced it to act. It effectively brought forward the “promised day.” There is no plausible explanation for concentrating attacks on the Gulf states unless that vast arsenal had been prepared for expansion- particularly toward the Gulf. Iran had already encircled the region through proxies it had also prepared for this very day.
Logically, Iran would have been expected to respond to Israel and the United States, which were pounding its arsenal daily. Otherwise, it risked losing that arsenal before realizing its expansionist ambitions. The result is that Iran has lost most of its arsenal, while the Gulf states remain as they were before February 28. This suggests that the “promised day” may be delayed, and may never come.
Iran had effectively neutralized Russia and China for when that day arrived, and ensured that no major Arab state would enter a confrontation with it. That is why it did not hesitate or delay; immediately after the first US strike, it moved toward its preselected primary targets, seeking to use its arsenal for its intended purpose before the United States and Israel destroyed what remained.
From day one, the Iranian regime targeted the Gulf states’ infrastructure; airports, ports, refineries, desalination plants, communications networks, databases, electricity, and more.
The overwhelming majority of its missile and drone strikes were directed at this infrastructure, while it activated sleeper cells inside Gulf countries. That makes clear that this, in fact, was the “promised day.”
The greatest surprise, one Iran never accounted for and that all its intelligence services failed to anticipate, has been the Gulf states’ ability, through their own people, to endure militarily while continuing to run their daily life normally. That is another story, one that will be told to future generations.
