A Desperate Iran: What Comes Next? By Richard Miller (London)

When regimes are cornered, they do not behave like rational actors in a textbook — they behave like wounded states with asymmetric tools. And right now, all the signals suggest that Iran is moving into precisely that phase.

The recent war has not gone Iran's way. Its leadership structure has been shaken, its infrastructure degraded, and its internal stability strained. The near-total internet blackout inside the country, coupled with heavy casualties and economic pressure, suggests a regime under real stress rather than confident control.

In that context, the question is not whether Iran will respond — it already has — but how a weaker power escalates against stronger adversaries without inviting annihilation.

The Logic of Asymmetric Retaliation

Iran cannot match the United States or Israel in conventional force projection. That much is clear. But it does not need to. Its strategy has long been asymmetric: cyber operations, proxy warfare, infrastructure sabotage, and psychological pressure.

Recent reporting shows that this playbook is already in motion. Iranian-linked cyber actors have been probing U.S. systems, placing backdoors in corporate networks, and preparing disruptive attacks on infrastructure.
At the same time, information warfare has intensified — AI-generated propaganda, disinformation, and influence campaigns designed to fracture Western public opinion.

This is not random. It is coordinated escalation below the threshold of full-scale war.

Cyber War as the First Battlefield

If Iran is desperate, cyber warfare is its most immediate lever.

Experts already warn of:

attacks on utilities and industrial systems

ransomware and "wiper" malware

hack-and-leak operations targeting political or corporate entities

And this is not theoretical. Iranian-linked groups have already conducted disruptive attacks during the current conflict, including one of the largest cyber offensives against U.S. targets in wartime conditions.

A desperate Iran is unlikely to aim for elegance. It will aim for disruption — banking outages, power instability, transport chaos. Not decisive blows, but cumulative pressure.

The EMP Question: Plausible, but Not Primary

A high-altitude nuclear detonation could generate an EMP capable of crippling electrical infrastructure.

Iran has missile and nuclear ambitions.

But current intelligence assessments suggest Iran does not yet possess operational intercontinental nuclear strike capability, and any such move would guarantee overwhelming retaliation.

In other words, an EMP attack is not a "next move" — it is an endgame move. And regimes fighting for survival rarely choose immediate suicide unless collapse is imminent.

More plausible is a "soft EMP" equivalent: cyberattacks targeting grids, satellites, or communications systems to simulate similar disruption without crossing the nuclear threshold.

Infrastructure Warfare: The Real Escalation Risk

Where Iran's threats become more credible — and more dangerous — is in regional infrastructure warfare.

Tehran has already signalled willingness to strike:

energy facilities

desalination plants

shipping routes, including the Strait of Hormuz

This matters because it globalises the conflict. You do not need to strike the U.S. mainland if you can:

choke oil supply

spike energy prices

destabilise allied economies

That is leverage without direct confrontation.

Proxy and Distributed Conflict

A desperate Iran also does not act alone. Its network includes:

Hezbollah

regional militias

aligned cyber-hacktivist groups

These actors provide plausible deniability while expanding the battlefield.

Already, dozens of pro-Iran cyber groups have launched low-level attacks — defacements, DDoS campaigns, and psychological operations.

Individually minor. Collectively destabilising.

The Most Likely Path Forward

Put all this together, and a pattern emerges. A desperate Iran is unlikely to gamble everything on a single catastrophic strike. Instead, it will pursue a layered escalation:

1.Sustained cyber disruption of Western infrastructure

2.Information warfare to divide and demoralise

3.Regional sabotage of energy and shipping systems

4.Proxy attacks to widen the conflict without direct attribution

Not a knockout blow, but a campaign of erosion.

Final Thoughts

The real danger is not that Iran does something spectacular. It is that it does something persistent.

EMP makes headlines. Cyber attrition changes reality.

And historically, it is the slow grind — the power outages, the economic shocks, the creeping instability — that wears down stronger powers far more effectively than any single dramatic strike.

A desperate Iran does not need to win.
It only needs to make the cost of opposing it unacceptably high.

https://michaeltsnyder.substack.com/p/iran-claims-that-it-will-soon-use