In the early 2010s, I was sitting in a park in north Tehran with an Iranian intelligence officer who didn’t know I had infiltrated his operation.
He asked me a question: Do you know how to boil a frog? If you throw it into boiling water, it jumps out. But if you place it in lukewarm water and raise the temperature slowly, it won’t react until it’s too late.
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At the time, he was running a nationwide network for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Intelligence Organization. What he described wasn’t some throwaway metaphor — it was the method by which the Islamic Republic operates: move in measured steps, normalize each gain, and stay below the threshold that would force a decisive response.
This, in effect, has been Iran’s own version of an Art of the Deal — a decadeslong strategy defined not by singular breakthroughs, but by steady accumulation.
In the 1980s, the Islamic Republic was isolated, under-armed, and fighting for survival. Today, it fields long-range missiles, sustains a globally recognized nuclear program, and projects power across the Middle East through entrenched positions in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and — until recently — Syria. Where it once stood largely alone, it now benefits from alignment with major powers.
No single step demanded a unified pushback. Taken together, they have fundamentally altered the balance of power in the region and, increasingly, across the globe.
And still, there has been no sustained response. Part of the reason is a mismatch in time horizons. Washington tends to view Iran through the lens of election cycles and individual crises. Tehran plays a longer game by absorbing pressure, trading short-term setbacks for long-term positioning, and steadily raising the stakes without crossing a line that would compel coordinated action.
This approach is reinforced by ideology. The Islamic Republic sees itself not just as a state, but as the realization of a centuries-old ambition — one that took political form in 1979 and continues to evolve to this day. That ambition is not merely rhetorical; it is reflected in the regime’s founding documents and the mandate of the Guard, which frame the state as both a national government and a vehicle for a broader Islamist project. That worldview does not incentivize compromise. It rewards endurance.
The result is a challenge that operates across three dimensions at once. Great powers such as Russia and China exert strategic pressure and can reshape global systems, but they typically avoid direct military escalation. Non-state actors, including ISIS and al Qaeda, carry out deadly attacks but lack the capacity to influence the global order. Iran bridges that gap — combining strategic positioning, lethal proxy networks, and systemic disruption to regions and economies, all while advancing in ways that avoid triggering a unified response.
That is the “boiling frog” in practice.
Even now, the regime’s posture remains unchanged. Its leadership continues to frame compromise as capitulation. Recent statements from Iran’s leadership reinforce a consistent message: endure, outlast, and never concede under pressure. It is a position that has held through sanctions, negotiations, and shifting geopolitical conditions.
The continuity is not accidental. It is the strategy. Agreements may pause pressure, but they do not alter the underlying trajectory. Each cycle of negotiation has ultimately left the regime more entrenched, more capable, and more confident in its ability to outlast its adversaries.
It’s the very thing then-Sen. Marco Rubio warned about in a 2015 address to Congress, noting that a deal with the Islamic Republic would amount to a “guarantee for war” with an increasingly stronger adversary. More than a decade later, that warning carries a new weight.
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In the Shahnameh, one of Iran’s great national epics, the hero Sohrab is struck by a poisoned blade. The antidote exists, but it arrives too late.
The danger is not just the wound. It is the delay in treating it. Time has always been the Islamic Republic’s most reliable ally. The question is whether it will remain so.
Khosro Isfahani is the research director at the National Union for Democracy in Iran.