The United States may have thought it could achieve in Iran in 2026 what it could achieve in Iraq in 2003. When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, it took just 26 days of active military operations to dismantle Saddam Hussein’s army. But someone in Iran studied the 2003 Iraq War closely and, like Saddam, was determined to prevent the collapse of the Iranian regime. That person was Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, former commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
On February 28, 2026, the US and Israeli forces Operation Epic Fury beginsIt is a full-scale decapitation campaign using fighter jets, drones and precision missiles to target Iran’s high command hierarchy. The airstrike killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, IRGC Commander Mohammad Pakpur, Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Seyyed Abdolrahim Mousavi.
According to a report from the Institute of War Studies, the purpose of this attack was to destroy Iran’s command and control system and prevent retaliatory action. But the collapse that the United States and Israel expected never occurred. Nearly two weeks have passed and a resilient Iran is firing at will, setting the entire Middle East on fire.
In Iran, this was possible because Mohammad Ali Jafari created the concept of “distributed mosaic defense”. Designed to allow Iran to continue fighting even if its leadership is wiped out, the doctrine decentralizes authority to semi-independent units that can operate according to preset plans.
Iran’s retaliation began immediately after the joint attack on February 28. Within hours, salvos of ballistic missiles and drones hit U.S. military facilities in Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait and Jordan, while attacks hit targets inside Israel and allied Gulf infrastructure. despite the president Massoud Fezeshkian’s apology for attacking a neutral country The shelling continued unabated, with promises to respect the sovereignty of Gulf states such as Oman and Bahrain, and attacks continued even as the war entered its 14th day on March 13.
This rapid and sustained response defied expectations of a collapse. Iranian Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi explained Iran’s defense strategy in an article posted on X on March 1. He wrote: “For 20 years we have studied the defeats of American forces in the east and west. We have consolidated the lessons accordingly: Bombing a capital does not affect the ability to wage war. A distributed mosaic of defenses can determine when and how the war will end.”
Araghchi also pointed out that Iran’s military is “independent and somewhat isolated” and operates under pre-established general guidelines.
The architect of Iran’s “decentralized mosaic defense” is Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari. He spent years reorganizing Iran’s military doctrine so it could continue fighting even after the country lost its top leadership. The Mosaic Doctrine may not lead Iran to victory, but it makes its defeat impossible.
Who is Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari?
According to a 2013 report by the RAND organization, General Jafari is an Iranian military officer who began his career in the IRGC, an intelligence unit operating in Iran’s Kurdistan region following the Islamic Revolution that toppled the Pahlavi dynasty.
Jafari served in the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1979 to 1989, and steadily rose through the ranks. After the war, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of IRGC Ground Forces in 1992 and Sarallah, an elite IRGC unit tasked with defending Tehran.
In 2005 he became director of the Guards Center for Strategic Studies. According to a report by the U.S. Institute of Peace, Jafari spent time as a director creating Iran’s Mosaic doctrine, taking lessons from the Iran-Iraq War and the invasion of Iraq by the U.S.-led coalition. Operation Iraqi Freedom In 2003.
He later became commander-in-chief of the IRGC in 2007 and spent his term implementing the Mosaic defense doctrine that now defines Iran’s resilience in the face of attacks from the United States and Israel.
WHAT LESSONS DID JAFARI LEARN TO CREATE THE MOSAIC DOCTRINE?
According to a 2010 report by the US Institute of Peace, Iran’s Mosaic defense doctrine is based on the country’s experience in the Iran-Iraq War (in which the author fought) and observations of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.
The Iran-Iraq War was, for all intents and purposes, a long war of attrition, with Iraq launching a ground invasion of Iran and using chemical attacks on Iranian troops and missile attacks on Iranian cities. In response, Tehran struck back with massive crowd attacks against Iraqi forces, especially against the ideologically popular Basij militia.
According to the Institute of Peace, this has allowed Iran to absorb casualties and create a stalemate that stronger Iraqi forces cannot break. This technique of preventing defeat by causing prolonged attrition against superior invading forces is a central pillar of Mosaic doctrine.
The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was also closely studied by Jafari. According to a report by the RAND organization, in 2003 the Iraqi military was paralyzed by a highly centralized command structure centered around Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
According to the report, this made it impossible for the Iraqi regular army and the Republican Guard to cooperate with each other, and division and corps-level officers were unable to make even basic maneuvers without Hussein’s approval.
As a result, the Iraqi army, unable to act on its own, was unable to properly respond to the US-led coalition invasion, wiping out all resistance on the way to Baghdad. The 2010 report notes that the rapid defeat of Saddam Hussein’s regime led Jaffray and other Iranian officials to realize the need to ensure that the IRGC and the Iranian Regular Army (Artesh) could operate independently without interference and would not collapse if they lost contact with higher commands.
What is the Mosaic doctrine founded by Mohammad Ali Jafari?
According to the RAND organization, Iran’s Mosaic Doctrine was first formalized in 2005 when Jafari, director of the IRGC’s Center for Strategic Studies, identified two major threats to the Ayatollah’s regime. That is, “foreign attempts to foment a ‘soft revolution’ through the support of Iranian NGOs and activists and a U.S. military strike that could topple the regime.”
Iran began implementing this doctrine in 2005 and accelerated after Jafari was appointed commander-in-chief of the IRGC in 2007. A 2010 U.S. Institute of Peace report said, “In 2005, the IRGC announced that it was incorporating a flexible, layered defense, called the Mosaic Defense, into its doctrine. The main author of this plan was General Mohammad Jafari, then-Director-General of Iran’s Strategic Center and later appointed Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC.”
According to a report by the Soufan Centre, the Mosaic Doctrine’s strategy took advantage of Iran’s geography, rugged mountains, vast interior, and dispersed population centers and emphasized layered, distributed defense to enable long-term resistance against superior invaders.
A key innovation was the reorganization of the IRGC into 31 semi-autonomous regional commands (one for each province, canceled in the capital Tehran). Each command operates as an independent entity with an independent headquarters, command and control nodes, missile and drone arsenals, integrated Basij militias, fast-attack naval flotillas, intelligence assets, stockpiles of munitions, and pre-delegated authority for contingency operations.
Jafari, who took command of the IRGC in 2007, oversaw its entire implementation, including integrating Basij forces into the IRGC and strengthening its asymmetric capabilities.
This decentralization, approved by the late Supreme Leader Khamenei, allows local commanders broad freedom of action to implement broad goals without real-time central oversight.
This reflects mission-type tactics such as the German Auftragstaktik Doctrine, which gives junior officers the freedom to act as they see fit as long as it achieves objectives predefined by superior officers, according to research by the U.S. Naval Institute.
Mosaic Doctrine Implemented in 2026 Iran-Israel-US War
The 2026 Ramadan War, which Tehran calls the conflict between the United States and Israel, saw the Mosaic defense doctrine activated as intended. Despite the deaths of Iran’s clergy and military leadership in the opening hours of the war on February 28, Iran’s 31 autonomous military commands retaliated within hours, attacking US and Israeli military assets as well as civilian infrastructure such as airports, oil refineries and terminals, and desalination plants. Various countries in the Gulf These include the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman.
Farzin Nadimi, a defense expert at the Washington Institute, explained to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on March 3: “Every province is a mosaic and commanders have the ability and power to make decisions. So even if command is taken away from Tehran, it can still function as a cohesive force.” This has enabled Tehran to continue its missile and drone campaigns and regional escalation despite the beheading of its leadership.
As Australian writer Shanaka Anslem Perera wrote in “The Mosaic Doctrine was not designed to win. It was designed to make defeat impossible. Jafari studied how centralized armies die. He created a doctrine that couldn’t.”
While the IRGC’s ideological zeal and Tehran’s stockpile of missile drones strengthened its resilience, it was Jaafari’s Mosaic Doctrine, born of Iran’s experience in the Iraq War and his observations of the 2003 defeat in Iraq, that enabled Iran’s deliberate Hydra-like perseverance. Forces costly and prolonged engagements on the enemy. Rather than a quick victory, this would ensure that Iran cannot be defeated.
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