Long before the first blast ripped through the night, the target was mapped out.

The Americans and Israelis knew that this building near the city of Isfahan was a key node of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force. Inside, men planned and coordinated Iran's ballistic missile and drone attacks.

The mid-March operation was layered and surgical. First came observation. RQ-170 Sentinels – a highly classified, low-observable 'stealth' unmanned aerial system – had tracked a surge in activity at the facility. Vehicles roared in and out; crews scrambled from hangars; communications spiked. An Iranian attack was imminent.

Then came the invisible assault: EA-18G Growler jets choked Iranian radar with jamming, while AGM-88 HARM missiles hunted down any communications systems still emitting signals, destroying some and forcing others to go dark. With the site effectively blinded, F-35I Adir stealth fighters slipped into position, backed by heavier firepower: B-2 Spirit bombers carrying the massive GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

When the kinetic strike came, it was swift, decisive and awesome.

The GBU-57 does not explode on impact; instead, it punches deep into its target before detonating. That night, buildings pancaked inward, their roofs buckling as reinforced steel layers imploded, crushing underground command centres. By dawn, all that remained was a charred ruin, its most senior personnel little more than a smear of blood amid shattered concrete.

In the days that followed, Iran's missile activity in the region slowed. Follow-up surveillance confirmed a 'functional kill' – a critical gap in Iran's ability to plan and execute missile operations.

In so many ways, the Iran War is 21st-century conflict epitomised.

Never has warfare been so forensically and professionally conducted; never so surgical. Swathes of the enemy leadership taken out in minutes; cyber-war neutering Iranian facilities in seconds. Never has a regime of terror been so utterly, and precisely, shattered from the air.

On the ground, Israel's infiltration of Iran's security forces is equally extraordinary. I am told by sources it is so pervasive that when confusing or seemingly counterproductive orders are issued, the default assumption is that they've come from commanders who are Mossad agents. The systematic degradation of Iran's security apparatus is unprecedented.

And yet the Iranian regime believe they have won. The Supreme National Security Council of Iran called the war an 'undeniable, historic and crushing defeat' for the enemy. It's what you'd expect them to say. But many in the West are taking them at their word.

We must ask why.

Well, first, the Americans and Israelis have not helped themselves. Tactical success has been paired with volatile messaging, strategic confusion, and a lack of wider planning. Worse, President Donald Trump declared from the outset that the goal was regime change. In doing so, he handed Iranians a gift: every day they survived, they could claim they were winning; and the narrative shifted in their favour.

Wars are not judged by how much damage you inflict on your enemy, but by whether you achieve your aims. By that measure, this war is, for now, a strategic failure for the United States and Israel.

But there is a broader, less understood reason. Iran is now a global master of propaganda. Fully aware it can't compete with Israel and the US militarily, it is doing what it always does: fighting asymmetrically – this time informationally, to influence global perceptions and exploit divisions in the populations of its enemies.

Even Iran's military operations are designed with propaganda objectives. As Dr Ben Yaakov and Alexander Pack of Reichman University in Tel Aviv point out in an excellent paper titled From Missiles To Minds: Iran's Influence-Driven War Strategy, Iran's missile, rocket and drone campaign has been largely directed against civilian neighbourhoods, transport networks and critical infrastructure. Targets with little direct military value.

The repeated use of cluster munitions in particular – warheads that scatter dozens or even hundreds of bomblets across wide areas – underlines the objective: keep civilians under threat, disrupt daily life, and grind down morale through fear and uncertainty.

The real objective here lies beyond the battlefield. By turning everyday life into a strain, Iran is gambling that public pressure will rise – at home and internationally – forcing Israel's political leaders to back down. This tactic extends to its Gulf neighbours, which Iran has been pounding almost daily.

Alongside the strikes are so-called 'synthetic attacks'. In March, Iranian state broadcaster Press TV shared an AI-generated video of a building in Bahrain aflame after Iranian airstrikes. It was a crude fake. But the Iranians know this doesn't matter. Their primary targets are civilians who often lack the tools or expertise to identify manipulated content. Instead, they panic, bringing yet more pressure to bear on their own governments.

The partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz is another example of Iran's willingness to weaponise every advantage it has: here to wage economic warfare on not just its enemies but the wider world.

At the same time, the regime has long been a world leader in suppressing its own people. Alongside physical street repression, it regularly cuts the internet – as it has now – leaving Iranians with only a diet of state-approved information for sustenance. It means we in the West cannot hear from Iranians disgusted with not just their regime's brutality, but its incompetence and manifest military failings.

With its population gagged, all the world sees are boasting Iranian leaders, emboldened by those in the West who, unlike their Iranian counterparts, are free to publicly criticise their own governments.

As Iran remains dark, its leaders watch Western discourse unfurl. They note our political divisions, the criticism of Israel and the US, the relentless hysteria of social media debate. And they exploit it.

Videos appear labelling the war a distraction from the Epstein files; Iranian embassy accounts post images of Trump wedged into the Strait of Hormuz with the caption 'I Can't Breathe', in reference to the supposed last words of George Floyd, killed by US police in 2020.

Iran has spent years studying our most divisive issues, fears and paranoias – and is using them against us. It has invented an entire genre of AI-generated 'Lego propaganda' videos to deliver its anti-Western messaging through an iconic Western brand.

Figures of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fleeing from Iranian rockets and meeting their deaths in the sea are now regularly shared across Western media platforms.

Last week, a new one was released showing a Lego Netanyahu leading Trump on a chain leash to a pumping soundtrack. 'Your government is run by paedophiles, they ordered you to die for Israel,' intones the AI-generated rapper, who also raps that Trump has visited Epstein Island 40 times and speaks of his 'tiny hands, tiny thing, tiny everything'.

Iran's real genius is not in the production of this culturally aware AI content but in the fact it gets its enemy populations to spread it.

Unable to match Israel and the US in a straight fight, Iran has shifted to a different kind of war, where victory resides not on the battlefield but in the mind of its adversaries. This is an influence campaign, where shaping perception matters most.

By targeting civilian resilience, stoking fear and amplifying pressure, Tehran is waging a multi-layered effort to sway public opinion and, ultimately, force political decisions in its favour.

We must not forget, however, that the Iranian regime has clearly been degraded like never before. Its leadership was decapitated and is utterly penetrated. Security sources tell me of pervasive paranoia and infighting; killings of IRGC soldiers for desertion and refusal to obey orders.

Then there is the infrastructure damage and the financial turmoil (banks were hit, disrupting the regime's ability to pay its people); as well as Iran's deteriorating relations with its Gulf neighbours (some of whom it relied on for sanctions-busting routes).

The real test – and any prospect of regime change – lies ahead. Can the regime still project authority? Will the population be emboldened and rise up – or be further intimidated?

The combination of financial and institutional degradation the Iranians have suffered may bring about the regime's ultimate collapse. We must hope it does but it's too early to tell.

In the meantime, let's not lose sight of the fact this is one of the most vicious and sadistic regimes of the 21st century. Its end cannot come soon enough.