Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic regime he has led for more than 35 years now face their biggest test since the eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s.

Since Thursday night, Iran has been bombarded by intense Israeli airstrikes that show no signs of abating anytime soon. In connection with the Israeli air campaign, the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, has been operating on Iranian soil and targeting senior Iranian nuclear scientists and military officers in an attempt to shatter the Iranian military’s chain of command. Iran’s armed forces chief, the intelligence chief of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the supreme leader’s senior foreign policy adviser have all been killed. Khamenei himself was in Israel’s crosshairs, although President Donald Trump dissuaded the Israelis from assassinating him, fearing an even deeper escalation.

Over the last several days, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stepped up the air campaign by striking sites such as the South Pars natural gas field and refineries on the outskirts of Tehran. Netanyahu seems to be ever more enamored with going beyond Israel’s original objective, telling Fox News last weekend that regime change in Tehran could very well be the ultimate result.

In terms of conventional military power, the Iranians are by far the weaker party. Iran’s air force is diminished due to decades of U.S. sanctions and export controls. The Iranian navy is essentially a collection of small boats that have difficulty projecting power beyond the Iranian coastline. And the country’s ground forces haven’t fought a war in more than three decades.

What Tehran does have, however, is the largest ballistic missile stockpile in the Middle East. To date, Iran has kept its retaliation limited to launching periodic volleys of missiles toward Israel’s major population areas in the hope that a few of them will breach the country’s sophisticated air defense system. Indeed, the first five days of conflict have taken on a familiar rhythm, with Israel striking military, energy and nuclear-related targets in Iran and Tehran responding with ballistic missile attacks on Tel Aviv, Haifa and towns in central Israel.

Yet if those attacks are designed to push Israel into suspending its military campaign or at least reevaluating the need for diplomacy, then they’ve failed. Based on his rhetoric as well as the intensity of the Israeli operation, Netanyahu is in no mood for a face-saving exit and appears to genuinely believe that the Islamic Republic is on its last legs. Rather than pushing the Israelis into a negotiation, every Iranian ballistic missile sent toward Israel provides Netanyahu with more ammunition to continue the war and press his central argument: Iran is led by fanatical mullahs bent on Israel’s destruction.

Khamenei isn’t a stupid man; he knows all of this already. While the octogenarian may sound like a zealot when he gives speeches at the pulpit, in practice he’s actually a wily figure who is more pragmatic than he lets on. He keeps all options close to his chest and isn’t immune to backing down if it means preserving his regime or buying time to plan next steps.

In 1988, for instance, then-President Khamenei supported signing a ceasefire with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein after eight years of war and nearly a million casualties. (In 2010, he referred to that decision as “one of the most rational events in Iran’s history.”) After the 9/11 attacks, he authorized Iranian officials to coordinate with the United States against the Taliban in Afghanistan. From 2012 to 2013, Khamenei agreed to dispatch his senior advisers to meet with Washington to explore whether a nuclear agreement was possible, culminating in the 2015 nuclear deal. (Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018.) And in April, Khamenei did so again, despite strong reservations the talks would lead anywhere.

Yet the supreme leader is now in a position in which his options are quite limited. His runway is short, any decision he takes will have consequences and he’s at the mercy of Netanyahu, who views the current military campaign as a way to severely degrade Israel’s biggest strategic adversary.

One option would be to throw out feelers to regional mediators and perhaps the United States directly that Iran wants to deescalate and will stop firing missiles toward Israel if the Israelis end bombing operations. This would be the most logical step for the Iranians to take, and it’s one Trump, who wants the fighting to wind down, would likely support. But it runs into the problem of Netanyahu, who has the wind at his back and is demonstrating no urgency to sign a ceasefire. Begging for peace also exposes Khamenei as a weak leader in the eyes of regime hard-liners, who are already preparing succession scenarios for the day when the longtime leader passes from the scene.

Fighting it out is an option as well. Khamenei may bet that Israel doesn’t have the capacity, stamina or will to maintain a war of attrition with Iran over the long term and that the longer the missile exchanges go on, the more political pressure Netanyahu will feel to come to the table.

Even so, this is a very risky bet for the Iranians to make and underestimates Netanyahu’s ability to withstand public opinion. After all, Netanyahu remains committed to the 20-month-old war in Gaza despite the Israeli public increasingly prioritizing the return of all the hostages over the defeat of Hamas. If the ultra-right ministers in Netanyahu’s cabinet want to continue bombing Iran, it’s likely the Israeli premier will do so, if only to save his political skin.

Iran’s supreme leader has confronted crises before. But this is his biggest to date.

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Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

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