Iran’s Fortitude Is Its Decisive Edge

July 20, 2026 | The Wall Street Journal Iran’s Fortitude Is Its Decisive Edge The ayatollahs want to fight and have a greater tolerance than Trump for pain. July 20, 2026 | The Wall Street Journal Iran’s Fortitude Is Its Decisive Edge The ayatollahs want to fight and have a greater tolerance than Trump for pain. Excerpt Tehran has a wartime advantage over Washington because the ruling Iranian elite wants to fight and has been willing to endure far more pain than Donald Trump has. The revolutionary faithful have embraced these tests time and time again. In the 1980s, the Iran-Iraq war claimed hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives and nearly broke the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The recent Syrian civil war gave a new generation the opportunity to prove itself. Today’s conflict with the U.S. and Israel lets senior guard commanders, lowly IRGC foot soldiers and the rest of the theocracy’s security forces feel the fraternity of resistance against the regime’s enemies. Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.