Senior Non-Resident Fellow @CIPolicy | Non-Resident Fellow @DAWNmenaorg | Sharing research, analysis & commentary on Iran, the Middle East & U.S. foreign policy
Washington, DC
Joined October 2011
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My new report for the @QuincyInst is out today 👇
The central argument is simple: Washington is making a serious mistake if it assumes it is still dealing with the Iran of the prewar period.
The wars of 2025 and 2026 have accelerated a profound shift in Iranian strategic thinking.
For years, influential elements of Iran’s leadership favored calibrated restraint: absorb pressure, preserve diplomatic offramps, avoid an uncontrolled escalation spiral, and gradually accumulate leverage.
The lesson many Iranian security elites now believe they learned is almost exactly the opposite: restraint without a credible willingness to impose painful costs was interpreted as weakness and ultimately invited war.
That is giving rise to what I call “persistent counter-escalation.”
The idea is not to match overwhelming US firepower. It is to deny Washington control of the escalation ladder by ensuring that pressure on Iran generates escalating costs elsewhere: against US bases, regional infrastructure, maritime commerce, energy flows, and through Iran’s regional partners.
Iranian strategists increasingly speak openly in these terms. One described a “pain index”: if the adversary imposes one unit of pain, Iran should impose two or three. Parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf recently put it even more bluntly: “the era of proportionate responses is over.”
The Strait of Hormuz is central to this emerging doctrine. So are Iran’s missiles and drones, its regional alliance network, economic coercion, and increasingly, a debate over whether these capabilities are sufficient without a nuclear deterrent.
This is ultimately about more than how Iran fights. Tehran is trying to convert wartime leverage into a different regional order, one in which Iran cannot be attacked or economically isolated while US bases, neighboring states, energy infrastructure, and maritime commerce remain insulated from the consequences.
There is a dangerous paradox here. This strategy may strengthen Iran’s ability to impose costs, but it also creates far more pathways for every confrontation to become a regional conflagration.
That leaves Washington with a question military superiority alone cannot answer: Does imposing still greater damage on Iran restore deterrence, or reinforce Tehran’s conclusion that only greater capacity to impose costs on everyone else can keep it secure?
Breaking that cycle is essential if Washington wants to escape this strategic quagmire rather than deepen it through more rounds of escalation
Read the full report here:
quincyinst.org/research/from…
Sina Toossi retweeted
Americans rank corruption as their top concern. Here’s a guide for how Congress should investigate.
New @OrderFromAshes from @cjcmichel
Sina Toossi retweeted
Once a household name, Israeli actress Einat Weizman now calls herself anti-Zionist, has been dropped by her agent for using the word 'genocide' & fired by drama schools over her activism. She says there's no place left for her art in Israel. @haaretzcom
haaretz.com/life/2026-11-10/…
Sina Toossi retweeted
The third way is enormously expensive to maintain, there's no guarantee it changes Iranian behavior and it only lasts so long as Iran refrains from escalating
It's more palatable for Trump than a bad deal or all-out war, but eventually it leads back to one of the other two ways
Trump swung between war and diplomacy — then chose a third way. My story on @axios
axios.com/2026/11/10/trump-i…
Sina Toossi retweeted
In an interview that aired today, the Iranian security official Mohsen Rezaei threatened to strike U.S. bases in Europe if American aircraft take off from them to bomb Iran. I wrote about this danger last week, citing @SinaToossi and other experts.
theamericanconservative.com/…
Sina Toossi retweeted
So refreshing to have a Congressmember simply refuse to accept the DC blob mind that Iran is just an enemy to be defeated and instead question how we got to this point.
Maybe listen to the army doctor who's been at the frontlines of US wars on how we move past the Bush doctrine.
Rep. Adam Hamawy tells a seemingly incredulous CNN anchor that, when it comes to Iran, the United States is “making adversaries when we should be making friends.”
@HamawyForNJ | @CNN
Sina Toossi retweeted
How satellite imagery restrictions "are limiting a vital tool for accountability and public safety" and threaten "a future in which governments have the power to control what the public can see and, ultimately, what it can know." By @oballinger with @nytopinion
nytimes.com/2026/11/11/opini…
Sina Toossi retweeted
We punish companies that pollute rivers, kill people with faulty products, etc. Shouldn’t we do the same with think tanks that drive us into ruinous wars?
Or at the very least stop listening to their demonstrably disastrous policy ideas?
MAJOR ANALYSIS: After spending hundreds of hours fighting against The Foundation for Defense of Democracies in the public sphere across The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Reuters, Politico, The Hill, and more, the clear evidence of their control over the United States' economic warfare strategy against Iran became undeniable.
But as I dove deeper and deeper into tracking this pattern throughout this war on the economic warfare front, I also examined their control across ALL aspects of the Iran War strategy that has significantly contributed to the disaster we find ourselves in today.
From CEO Mark Dubowitz, to Senior Advisor Richard Goldberg, and Senior Fellow Miad Maleki, the evidence of FDD's undue influence and control in the Iran War has been laid out for you here today in a deep-dive video complete with extensive sourcing, screenshots, and comments.
Please, take the time to watch this video. I'm confident you will reach the same conclusion that I have:
An Israeli Lobbying group is running America's Iran War strategy... and failing miserably.
Sina Toossi retweeted
It must be amazing to be as lazy and mediocre as Bret and be in the paper of record every other week having written some version of "it's anti-Semitism" or "bomb Iran" over and over and over again.
Funny: In June 2025, Axios quoted a "US official" citing intelligence that Iran had "significantly increased" missile production to 50/month.
Now, 2 wars & 20,000+ US/Israeli airstrikes later, "western intelligence" says it's...50/month.
Something tells me they have no idea.
A western intelligence estimate says Iran can build about 50 ballistic missiles per month — roughly half its prewar capacity — providing a formidable means of retaliation if hostilities resume, despite months of airstrikes bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
👇Don't miss this: Israeli intelligence highly doubts more war can topple Iran's government or destroy its nuclear & missile programs.
Yet they still want more war to bomb *gas & electricity infrastructure*.
Impunity for Israel has bred relentless and escalating barbarity.
👇 The sheer cynicism and destructiveness of Israel's military leadership. (Full English translation of the Israeli TV report below.)
Israel's Channel 16 reports that military intelligence assesses another war is highly unlikely to topple Iran's government or end its nuclear program, while damage to its missile capabilities would be temporary.
Yet senior Israeli commanders are reportedly pushing for another war, this time explicitly targeting Iran's national infrastructure, including gas and energy facilities.
They acknowledge the futility of their stated objectives, yet want to escalate the destruction inflicted on Iran and its people.
And after all this, they still have the gall to claim they care about the Iranian people. The sheer contempt for Iranians’ lives and intelligence is staggering!
*Full transcript:
"A document from the Military Intelligence Research Division of the military, recently prepared as part of preparations for a potential war with Iran, shows that the probability of the collapse of the Iranian government in the short term and medium term is extremely low. Additionally, the probability of removing enriched uranium from Iran and stopping the nuclear program is assessed as low, and damage to missile capabilities and ballistic missiles will also be short-term, similar to previous wars."
"Despite this assessment, Eyal Zamir, the Chief of General Staff, Tischler, the Air Force Commander, and two other senior commanders are pushing to start a renewed war. They believe another round of war could achieve the desired objectives, especially if this time Iran's national infrastructure, including gas and energy facilities, is targeted; an action that, according to their belief, they were prevented from carrying out in the previous war. The military also remains in a very high state of readiness despite the end of the war."
Sina Toossi retweeted
This weekend, a massive winter storm battered Gaza. Our teams report that thousands of tents were damaged or destroyed.
Strong winds tore away makeshift shelters, while families waded through centimetres-deep floodwaters as rain soaked their few remaining belongings. People were left cold and wet, with nowhere else to go.
This is the fourth winter that displaced Palestinians have been forced to endure these conditions.
Nearly 13 months after the ceasefire agreement, 2.1 million Palestinians are confined to just 30% of Gaza. Nearly one million people are living in areas at medium to high risk of flooding.
Yesterday’s storm exposed the consequences of years of restrictions and shortages. There is not enough heavy machinery in Gaza to prepare sites and mitigate flooding. Even the machinery that is available cannot operate properly because of shortages of engine oil.
Those organisations who support with shelter are mobilising to deliver tents and essential household items to families who have lost what little they had. But there are not enough tents and supplies to meet the scale of the need, let alone replace those damaged by the storm.
And tents and tarpaulins are not the answer to Gaza’s winter. They cannot withstand heavy rain and strong winds, and many are already worn out after months of use far beyond their intended lifespan.
In August, the NRC-led Palestine Shelter Cluster reported that 1.98 million people – 94% of Gaza’s population – needed shelter assistance. Since then, only a fraction of the required supplies have entered, while severe funding gaps are forcing humanitarian agencies to do more with less.
We must move beyond repeatedly replacing inadequate tents and scale up transitional shelters that offer families more durable protection.
We urgently need heavy machinery, equipment and supplies to enter Gaza to support flood mitigation, clear rubble and prepare safer sites.
Palestinians have the right to receive the assistance they need. States must press Israeli authorities to uphold their obligations and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid and essential materials.
Palestinians must not face another winter without adequate shelter. They cannot wait.
Sina Toossi retweeted
First of all the analysis is shit. 2nd of all subjecting something as crucial as opposition to genocide to your bullshit horserace analysis is morally repugnant.
Yikes — ex Obama state dept official @JoelMartinRubin got booed at #CrookedCon for claiming @AbdulElSayed & @TroyJackson207 underperformed because they used the word “genocide”, and nobody really cared about Gaza 🤔
Sina Toossi retweeted
I broke down while filming these scenes. I couldn't bear the scale of the suffering unfolding before my eyes. I tried my best to amplify these families' voices, but what I witnessed was beyond words.
Children soaked, tents completely flooded, and families left exposed to the cold and rain. The world is not just witnessing this tragedy; it is complicit through its silence.
Watch the report for yourselves.
Dragnet's first dispatch from the besieged Gaza Strip: Dragnet contributor @Tamer_Alnoaizy spent hours walking through tents in Gaza's flooded displacement camps, where Palestinians whose homes and neighborhoods were destroyed by Israeli bombs are now sleeping in freezing water.
Children in Gaza, having survived genocide, are now struggling to survive in flooded tents. The world watches. The U.S. armed and enabled the atrocities that brought them here. Those responsible face no accountability.
news.un.org/en/story/2026/11…
Sina Toossi retweeted
Iran watchers do well to study the MEK because they are a premier example of a how a political movement can go from some popular legitimacy to total dissociation that avoids reckoning with reality or popular opinion indefinitely. This is going to be the destination of neo-Pahlavism, the leadership and true believers will keep claiming the mantle of opposition even as disillusionment and infighting erode the base.
Sina Toossi retweeted
March 2026: "Iran is running out of missiles!" – the Telegraph
November 2026: Iran has been test firing dozens of missiles for the past 3 weeks.
