The War in Iran Is Painful for Poland. It May Also Be in Poland’s Interest.

*This article was originally published in Polish

Diesel in Poland is approaching 8.25 złotys per litre — above the records set in the autumn of 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent energy markets into shock. Prime Minister Tusk has slashed VAT on fuel from 23 to 8 percent. PiS accuses the government of incompetence. On the streets of Warsaw, the mood captured by Polish media is blunt: “I’m afraid,” one woman told WP. “Wars are easy to start but hard to end.” Foreign Minister Sikorski has said he saw no “direct threat” to Europe from Iran before the strikes. Defense Minister Kosiniak-Kamysz warns the conflict could jeopardize arms deliveries to Ukraine. European polls show majorities opposing military intervention. The discomfort is real, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

And yet. Thirty-one days into Operation Epic Fury, a question must be asked that the prevailing mood makes difficult to pose: what if a coherent strategic logic exists behind the apparent chaos — and what if Poland’s long-term security interests converge with it more directly than the public debate acknowledges?

The first point is to recall the nature of the regime concerned. In January 2026, it fired upon its own population in an episode of mass repression that caused tens of thousands of deaths. For decades, it has imprisoned, tortured, and executed dissenters. It has targeted civilian infrastructure across nearly ten neighboring countries, including Cyprus, a member of the European Union. Its nuclear breakout time was measured not in months but in days. And it is the principal foreign supplier of the Shahed drone systems that Russia uses to kill Ukrainian civilians — the same drones that have struck Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv, and now American bases and Gulf energy facilities. In January 2026, Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing signed a trilateral strategic pact. Russia has pledged to rebuild Iran’s degraded air defenses. This is not a distant regional affair. It is a node in the authoritarian axis that Poland has organized its entire security posture against.

The strategy unfolds in three phases. The first is already advanced: the systematic degradation of offensive military capacity. Ballistic missile launches have declined by over 90 percent. Iran’s missile production — previously estimated at roughly 100 per month — appears to have fallen close to zero. Attack drone output is down over 95 percent. Senior leadership figures, including Supreme Leader Khamenei, have been eliminated. The nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan have sustained substantial damage.

The second phase targets the internal apparatus of repression: the IRGC, the Basij, and the command structures used to crush dissent. The campaign has been explicit in its logic. The IDF’s Persian-language account stated that forces would “hunt down Basij members at checkpoints, in tents, and wherever they are present.” That is not rhetoric — it is a targeting doctrine. From the opening salvo, Israeli strikes destroyed the Basij base on Azadi Street in central Tehran and the Special Police Command headquarters in the west of the city, a site directly implicated in the killing of protesters. In the weeks that followed, the campaign expanded across the country — Isfahan, Tabriz, Sanandaj, Zahedan, Kerman — hitting Intelligence Ministry offices, IRGC headquarters, police logistics centers, and Basij checkpoints. By mid-March, the top echelon of the repression apparatus had been systematically eliminated: Intelligence Minister Ismail Khatib, Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani — who led the paramilitary units responsible for suppressing protests for six years — his deputy Ghassem Ghoreyshi, and Ali Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, were all killed in precision strikes.

On the night of March 17 alone, approximately 300 Basij field commanders and operatives were killed in a single wave of overnight strikes on command and operational centers. The effect on the apparatus is visible: Basij and IRGC units have been filmed hiding under bridges and inside tunnels, and reports from Tehran indicate that some forces have relocated into schools and kindergartens to evade targeting. Salary payments to police special units have reportedly been disrupted — for the third time in recent months — and some personnel have declined to attend pro-government rallies in response. The signal the campaign sends is clear: continued loyalty to the regime is a personal liability.

The third phase will be slower: economic pressure, diplomatic isolation, and the possibility that Iranian civil society — pro-Western, sustained by a large diaspora — may recover political initiative. The designation of Mojtaba Khamenei as successor suggests a harder yet more fragile order.

The Iraq comparison is inevitable and must be addressed directly. This is not 2003. There are no foreign troops on the ground, no occupation planned, and Iran’s civil society bears no resemblance to Iraq’s post-Saddam vacuum. The more instructive precedent is 1991: a regime militarily weakened but left in place, able to reconstruct and resume destabilizing behavior. That is the scenario this strategy seeks to prevent. Those who describe fluctuating objectives often confuse political communication with operational sequencing. The objectives have not changed; they unfold in stages. Degrading offensive capacity is a prerequisite for securing the Strait of Hormuz, itself a prerequisite for sustained economic pressure.

The most striking evidence that this strategy is producing broader effects lies in Ukraine’s transformation from bystander to pivotal actor. Having spent years countering Russian-launched Shaheds, Ukrainian manufacturers have developed interceptor drones costing $2,000 each — against Patriot missiles at several million dollars per shot. President Zelensky has deployed over 200 specialists to the Gulf and signed defense agreements with Saudi Arabia and Qatar. He is negotiating drone-for-Patriot exchanges that could directly strengthen Ukraine’s own air defenses. The irony should not be lost on Warsaw: the European leader most publicly humiliated by President Trump is now providing capabilities that protect American personnel. For Poland, Ukraine’s largest European supporter, every degraded Shahed production line means one fewer source of weapons falling on cities that Poland has pledged to help defend.

None of this erases the cost that Polish citizens are paying at the pump today. Brent crude has risen nearly 60 percent since the war began. The Strait of Hormuz carries 12 to 14 percent of Europe’s LNG. Poland’s entire strategy of energy diversification — the Baltic Pipe, the Świnoujście LNG terminal, the deliberate turn away from Russian gas — is tested when a different chokepoint closes. This pain is real and must not be minimized. But the alternative deserves examination. The JCPOA addressed neither missiles, nor proxies, nor regional destabilization. Had it run its full course, the regime would likely have received approximately one trillion dollars in sanctions relief while approaching an industrial-scale nuclear program as restrictions expired. A nuclear-armed Iran, flush with resources, supplying advanced drones and missiles to Russia indefinitely, would have posed a far graver and more permanent threat to Poland’s security than a spike in diesel prices that, however painful, is temporary.

President Nawrocki has confirmed that Poland was informed in advance of the military operation through established channels. Warsaw is in the loop. But it has not yet fully drawn the consequences of its own position. Poland could accelerate maritime coordination with allies on Hormuz escort operations. It could press the EU to expel Iranian diplomatic personnel engaged in intelligence activity — underscored by the recent cyberattack on Poland’s national nuclear research center with suspected Iranian links. It could deepen defense-industrial cooperation with Ukraine on the counter-drone technology that both countries now urgently need. Last September, Poland scrambled F-35s and Black Hawks in response to cheap drone incursions into its airspace. The Iran war is a lesson in what those drones can do at industrial scale.

No strategy comes with certainty. The regime may adapt and endure. The principal risk is not military failure but military success without political consequence: a weakened regime that survives, rebuilds, and resumes arming Russia. But to suggest that no strategy exists is inaccurate. A strategy is visible. Its effects are measurable. And the axis it targets — Tehran, Moscow, and now Beijing — is the same axis that threatens Kyiv and, by extension, Warsaw. For Poland, this is not someone else’s war. It is a front in the contest that will define European security for a generation.

Mark Dubowitz is the chief executive of FDD, a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan policy institute, where Simone Rodan-Benzaquen is senior envoy for Europe.