Iran’s shadow diplomacy: The art of winning without showing

As the conflict escalates between Israel and Iran to an unprecedented degree, with Iran and Israeli missiles clashing in June 2025, representing the most tangible military conflict ever witnessed between these two nations, it will be argued that the actual might that Iran poses doesn’t lie within what we can witness, but instead within what they have worked hard to hide. As everyone focuses on watching ballistic missiles traveling across Middle Eastern skies, it will be realised that Iran’s most potent weapon remains invisible. Iran has baffled its enemies for several decades. It has been at once isolated and indispensable, weak yet resilient. According to the Middle East Council on Global Affairs’s Hamidreza Azizi, “this seeming contradiction embodies a foreign […]