The Lull in Hostilities Between Iran and the U.S. Is Just Escalation in Disguise
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The current lull after the initial exchange of fire is not surprising. Both sides appreciate the need to slow or reverse the rapid cycle of escalation unleashed by Soleimani’s killing. Iranian leaders have had a front-row seat for the demonstration of U.S. conventional military superiority in Iraq and elsewhere across the region, and they are sufficiently prudent to steer clear of making themselves the next target. That prudence was clear in Wednesday’s ballistic missile attack on Iraqi military bases at Ain al-Assad and Erbil. The rapidity, scope, and apparent precision of the Iranian response highlights the muscular principles of the Islamic Republic’s security doctrine, which holds that the regime’s survival depends on its strength and its readiness to go on the offensive. The imagery of Iranian firepower surely satisfied a domestic audience primed for vengeance after massive, nation-wide funeral processions.
However, Tehran’s prior warning to Iraqi counterparts seemed designed to minimize or avoid American casualties, as Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh
asserted on Thursday. In this sense, the early Iranian response was consistent with the theocratic state’s calibrated, incremental escalation against U.S. interests and partners in Iraq and around the Persian Gulf over the past six months, when Washington ratcheted up economic pressure on Iran to unprecedented levels. In a series of mostly small-scale, precise attacks that culminated in September with a more consequential strike on Saudi oil infrastructure, Tehran sought to raise the costs to Washington and the world without placing itself in the cross-hairs of American firepower. The recent skirmishing gave Iran’s savvy strategists an accurate read on Trump’s aversion to further entanglements, and their calculation that a limited strike, with no fatalities, would avoid U.S. reprisals proved correct.
However, the recent track record only underscores why the U.S.-Iran confrontation is likely to escalate once again. Iran’s objective in its steady escalation since May—to compel an end to the Trump administration’s grueling economic sanctions that wreaked havoc on its economy—remains as pressing as ever, especially after massive protests rocked major cities around the country in November. And now, the regime’s determination to end the American siege is magnified by an ideological and strategic zeal to settle scores for Soleimani’s death, to preserve or even expand the footprint that he achieved for Iran across the broader Middle East, and ideally emerge from this crisis with some big strategic gain, such as durably eroding U.S. presence and influence in the broader Middle East. Tehran is also ramping back up its nuclear program, announcing shortly after the Soleimani strike new breaches of the 2015 nuclear deal that was first abrogated by Trump in 2018.
For that reason, it’s a virtual certainty that Wednesday’s missile barrage was not the end of the Iranian reprisals. Tehran’s next steps will likely continue the hallmarks of its playbook developed over the course of its 40-year campaign to entrench its own influence at the expense of its adversaries—purposeful rather than wanton projection of power, conscious of the balance of costs and benefits, opportunistic in exploiting openings or weakness, inventive in the application and wide-ranging in scope. This is a regime that has orchestrated terror attacks from Buenos Aires to Bulgaria; it wields considerable cyber capabilities as well as a network of semi-autonomous proxies. At least some of these groups, especially in Iraq, will be eager to avenge their own grievances against Washington, irrespective of any Iranian restraint. Faced with an American visegrip on their economy and advantageous unconventional capabilities, nothing will be off the table as Tehran assesses its next moves against the United States.
For its part, the Trump administration is not immune to the temptation of escalation, as was demonstrated vividly over the past 10 days. In principle, the president doesn’t want to initiate another costly, protracted American military intervention in the Middle East. He correctly read the war weariness of Americans long before it became an accepted political fact, and he has only disdain for investing in the development of a more peaceful or prosperous international system.
However, his Iran policy has been consistently aggressive since the earliest days of the administration, across the rotating cast of his senior national security advisors. This reflects a calculus with broad support among the Republican national security establishment that confrontation rather than engagement represents the most effective way to deter the threats posed by Iran. In a mirror image of the worldview in Tehran, the White House is driven by the conviction that American reluctance to use force to deter or punish Tehran and its proxies has only invited Iranian expansion and empowered its regional posture. From this perspective, Washington can only prevail if we are prepared to risk blowback and take the fight to them in the arena of our own advantage—conventional warfare.
This, not
an intemperate Powerpoint slide or
an obsession with the 1979 embassy seizure, is what drove the decision to take the momentous step of taking out Tehran’s most capable regional military commander. And so far, the Trump administration sees the logic of its get-tough approach validated. The fallout has been bearable, the domestic economy remains unscathed, and the administration’s base is energized by the perception of a big foreign policy victory against a notorious villain, timed at an opportune moment as his reelection campaign gets underway. Especially in the absence of any serious framework for durable de-escalation or negotiations, the administration’s perception that its risky Soleimani strike paid off will tempt them to meet future Iranian provocations with further confrontation. And with the nuclear agreement on the verge of collapse, the White House will be inclined to embrace an even more assertive posture as Iranian stockpiles of enriched uranium accumulate and reduce Tehran’s breakout time to nuclear weapons capability.
The crisis has abated for the moment, but there should be no illusions. Washington and Tehran are now locked into a long, unpredictable conflict with Iran where the propensity for miscalculation is high. Finding a persuasive diplomatic exit ramp that can circumvent the risk of future conflict needs to be the highest priority.
Missiles have stopped flying for now, but each side will continue to push the other to the brink of another violent response.
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