Well, deterrence failed. The Houthis in Yemen did not heed the warnings to knock off their habit of taking pot shots at passing ships, so the US and Britain hit them with air and missile strikes. The Houthis did not stop—they have since fired on at least two more ships since the initial Anglo-American strikes, and the US has responded with two more military strikes on Houthi missile sites. The US has also re-designated the Houthis as a terrorist group. Major shipping lines still avoid routing ships through the Red Sea. Once again, the limited efficacy of military force in achieving political goals has been demonstrated. That has not, of course, stopped folks who should know better from advocating we take additional, unspecified steps to deter Iran. The US isn’t so much being pulled into another Middle East war as it is being pushed by people who haven’t yet absorbed the lessons of 20 years of failed military adventures in the region.
The Iranians haven’t exactly helped things along this past week. As reported in the PersuMedia Daily Summary, the Mersad Center for Strategic Studies—a hardline think tank in Qom—has published an article that frets that Iran’s deterrence against Israel is weakening, and that Iran’s consistent signaling that it does not want war has fueled Israeli “audacity.” No doubt impelled, at least in part, by such fears (or at least to assuage those who express such concerns), Tehran fired salvos of missiles into northern Iraq, Syria, and western Pakistan in response to recent terrorist attacks in Iran and to the string of Israeli assassinations of IRGC, Hizballah, and Hamas commanders in Syria and Lebanon. The Iranians claimed that the missiles fired at Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, hit a Mossad intelligence center, but Iraqi and Kurdish sources told Amwaj Media the targets were connected only to the Kurdish Democratic Party and perhaps to Kurdish security organs. Tehran portrayed the strikes in Syria as hitting places associated with ISIS, whose affiliate in Afghanistan claimed responsibility for this month’s bombing of Qasem Soleimani’s gravesite. The strike on Pakistan was aimed at the Sunni Baloch Jaysh al Adl terrorist group that last month attacked an Iranian police post in Rask. The Iranian attacks, combined with the US and Houthis trading strikes and counterstrikes in the Red Sea have raised fears that the Gaza war is spreading into a regional conflict.
The concerns are not exaggerated; the US and Iran have now both taken direct military action against perceived allies of the other, and tensions are rising along the Lebanese border between Hizballah and Israel. Iraq and Pakistan condemned the Iranian attacks and have recalled their ambassadors from Tehran. There’s no denying things are dicey. Plenty of publications right now are ringing alarm bells over a potential region-wide war in the Middle East. But, as Egon Spengler told Peter Venkman at the climax of the movie Ghostbusters, “There’s definitely a very slim chance we’ll survive.” We may not like the odds, but we’re going to focus on the remaining opportunities to avoid war.
First, let’s look at the Iranian missile strikes. They seem reckless and escalatory, but only one of them—the attack on Pakistan—can realistically be linked to one of Iran’s antagonists: the Jaysh al Adl. Although Israel has long had covert ties to Kurdish groups in Iraq, the lack of any strong Israeli reaction to the missile strike in Erbil suggests the Mossad center there is a figment of the IRGC’s imagination. At best the missile strike was a warning to Iraqi Kurds to not get too close to the Israelis. The missile strike in Syria similarly has only the most tenuous connections to ISIS; if the Iranians had really wanted to strike back at the terrorists who bombed Kerman, they would have struck Afghanistan, where ISIS-K is active—but Iran has enough problems with the Taliban as it is. The Wall Street Journal reported that unnamed Iranian officials said the attack on Erbil was a way for Tehran to “respond to domestic pressure” over the killing of IRGC officers in Syria without directly attacking the US or Israel, a view echoed by a “veteran observer” who told Amwaj Media that Iran felt it had to do something but didn’t want to escalate the crisis—so it struck Kurdistan. Iran continues to resupply the Houthis, but when it became clear that the US and Britain would strike back in Yemen, the Iranian frigate Alborz—sent to Yemeni waters in a show of support for the Houthis, got out of Dodge. Taken together, the signals suggest Iran is still trying to avoid escalation—but Tehran, not unlike Washington, also must manage a flock of hawks screeching for it to act more boldly.
A second faint ray of light comes from Lebanon—of all places—where a US envoy, supported by French diplomats, explored the possibility of a temporary cessation of hostilities between Hizballah and Israel. There are considerable obstacles to a deal, but officials with knowledge of the talks told the Financial Times that “both sides” have shown a serious interest in avoiding war, and that Hizballah was being flexible. Reinforcing the sense that Hizballah is not now interested in war with Israel is an analysis by Ali Alfoneh of reported Hizballah casualties; in examining accounts of those killed, Alfoneh tentatively concludes that Hizballah has not so far deployed its front line troops there, and instead has left the fighting to its less capable reservists. Here, then, is one arena where vigorous diplomacy may help to prevent the spread of war.
There may be as well an opportunity for US diplomacy with Iran—although the evidence for this admittedly sketchy. Iranian and Lebanese media reported this month that the US has sent messages regarding the crisis to Iran via the Saudis, and although the Iranian Foreign Ministry says it cannot confirm such reports, the Iranian Ambassador to Syria claimed the US sought a “major settlement” of the crisis. The US has tended to pass messages to Iran via Oman or Qatar; the use of the Saudis in this instance—if true—might indicate that Washington wants to enlist Riyadh’s aid in persuading Tehran to dial back the tension to allow negotiation of a settlement. Reformist media lately have urged engagement with the US, and last week, as reported in the PersuMedia Daily Summary, an Iranian academic argued in an article for greater cooperation among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the US to prevent Israel’s “aggressive actions” from growing into “widespread crises.”
The then-foreign minister of Israel Abba Eban was once quoted as saying “Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources.” Perhaps Iran and the US are getting close to that point, having both engaged in retaliatory strikes of dubious efficacy. According to the PersuMedia Daily Summary, at least one reformist analyst in Iran has suggested Tehran is approaching the moment when it will have to make hard decisions about whether or not to continue supporting its regional clients. That may be wishful thinking, but the price Iran would pay in a direct confrontation with the US would be far higher than the compromises it might have to make in agreeing to an armistice. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, obsessed as he is with avoiding the appearance of weakness, won’t simply back down to avoid war. Some of Iran’s interests would have to be met, at least in part, or Tehran will keep gambling that it can calibrate the level of conflict without provoking a wider war. We have seen what military strikes get us, which so far has been little more than the satisfaction of having “done something.” Perhaps now, having demonstrated our pique, we can try a redoubled diplomatic effort. Negotiating with Iran in such a crisis may be a longshot—but it’s one worth taking. There’s definitely a very slim chance we’ll survive.
