Iran has signalled that its current war with the United States could be prolonged for years, after a senior adviser to the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps raised the possibility of sustaining the confrontation until the end of US President Donald Trump’s term in office.
The objective, according to the Iranian official, would be to strengthen deterrence and raise the cost of any future attack on Tehran.
CNN reported that an adviser to the commander of the Revolutionary Guard had suggested the current war with the United States could continue until the end of Trump’s presidency.
Mohammad Reza Naqdi, adviser to the IRGC commander, told the US network PBS in an interview published on Tuesday that Iran was seeking to achieve what he described as “deterrence”, so that its adversaries would not dare attack it again and the country could live in security.
Naqdi said one option for achieving that objective would be to prolong the war until the next US presidential term, while also inflicting enough damage on the adversary to ensure that any party considering an attack on Iran in the future understood that it would have to pay a “heavy price”.
CNN noted that Naqdi currently serves as a senior adviser to the IRGC commander after previously serving as deputy coordinator of the Guards between 2019 and 2025, a prominent leadership position in which he held organisation-wide coordination responsibilities.
Although his current post carries fewer direct command responsibilities, it keeps him connected to the upper levels of the IRGC leadership.
Iran Says Victory Is on Its Side
Asked whether Iran currently controlled the course of the war, Naqdi replied that “victory is ours”, reflecting Tehran’s assessment of its continuing confrontation with the United States.
He also attacked Washington’s military approach, saying the United States was fighting what he described as a “war without a strategy”, with its declared objectives changing every two or three days.
Naqdi cited objectives that had included storming Kharg Island and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, arguing that the shifting goals demonstrated the absence of a coherent strategy for the war.
According to CNN, he said the prolonged confrontation had also given Iran an opportunity to gain military experience that it previously lacked.
Naqdi said Iran had never before fought a real war that allowed it to acquire direct experience in confronting the United States.
He added that the previous five months had allowed Iran to learn from the confrontation and that, in his assessment, the country now understood how to fight the US military.
Assessing American capabilities, Naqdi said Iran had found the US military to be “weaker than we imagined”, reflecting an Iranian assessment of American military performance during the war.
Strait of Hormuz and Shipping Under Threat
Naqdi also addressed navigation through the Strait of Hormuz and the targeting of vessels passing through the area.
He said ships travelling through the strait could, from Iran’s perspective, become targets if they were transporting supplies to a party Tehran considers an enemy, as tensions surrounding the strategic waterway continue.
The IRGC adviser also discussed Iran’s missile arsenal, saying the country was producing more missiles than it was using each day, indicating that Iranian weapons production was continuing during the war.
At the same time, he warned that losing Iran’s missile capabilities would not necessarily make the country less dangerous to the United States.
Instead, he argued that such a development could make Iran more dangerous.
Naqdi said the United States has thousands of economic interests around the world and argued that these interests could be easily subjected to destruction if Iran were to lose its missiles.
