OPINION:
For almost a month, the United States and Iran have been engaged in a round of saber rattling serious enough to make some believe that a war is imminent. That war is probably inevitable, but it isn’t imminent.
Since the 1979 revolution that installed the ayatollahs’ regime, Iran has calibrated its actions so that they would not result in an American military response against the regime. But its recent actions indicate that Iran is willing to take greater risks than it has in the past 40 years.
This round of tensions began with what was reportedly “unusually specific” intelligence indicating that Iranian forces planned to attack U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.
In response, President Trump ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln and its battle group, along with four B-52 bombers, to the area. Since then, Iran has reportedly deployed short-range ballistic missiles within range of the U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, also endangering Israel.
Actions and threats by one side or another have followed almost daily. One of Iran’s ruling ayatollahs, Yousef Tabatabai-Nejad, said our fleet could be destroyed with one missile. That, of course, cannot be done without a nuclear weapon.
Meanwhile, oil tankers coming out of Saudi Arabia have been sabotaged, probably by Iranian proxies, and Houthi rebels in Yemen (also Iranian proxies) used a drone to attack Saudi oil pumping stations. About two weeks ago, Gen. Qassem Solemani, commander of Iran’s terrorist “Quds Force,” reportedly warned Iranian-backed militia that there would soon be a “proxy war” with the United States.
Mr. Trump reportedly told acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and other top advisers that he doesn’t want to go to war with Iran. At the same time, the president and his team have been unwilling to let Iranian bellicosity go unanswered. National Security Adviser John Bolton has warned that any attack on U.S. forces would be answered by “unrelenting force.”
About a week later, after a rocket attack on the Baghdad “Green Zone,” probably by an Iran-backed militia, Mr. Trump tweeted that war between America and Iran would result in ” the official end of Iran,” and warned the Iranians to never threaten the United States again. Answering Mr. Trump, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif tweeted that Mr. Trump’s “genocidal taunts” and “economic terrorism” wouldn’t “end” Iran.
Iranian saber rattling is nothing new, but there are two indications that the risk of open conflict is quite serious.
First, on May 18, the FAA issued a warning that commercial airliners flying over the Persian Gulf risked being misidentified and, impliedly, shot down by U.S. forces. (In 1988, the USS Vincennes, exchanging fire with Iranian ships in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner.)
Second, at about the same time, the State Department withdrew all non-essential personnel from Iraq.
The principal force behind Iran’s new level of risk-taking are the U.S. economic sanctions on Iran which are aimed to, among other things, stop Iran’s oil exports. Though China, one of Iran’s principal oil buyers, will continue to buy Iranian oil, those and other economic sanctions are making the Iranians desperate.
The Democrats seem intent on spreading fear by saying that the Trump administration is misinterpreting intelligence as an excuse for war. There have been disagreements among the Trump team (and with our allies) about what the intelligence indicates. But such disagreements are essential to the development of reliable intelligence.
Though Mr. Trump’s policy seems unclear to many — a fact that he apparently revels in — he is dealing with Iran in much the same way as he has dealt with North Korea. Threatening statements are answered in kind. Military threats — missile launches by the North Koreans and missile deployments by Iranians — are answered by deployment of significant military forces such as increasing our THAAD anti-missile batteries in South Korea and the dispatch of the USS Lincoln battle group and B-52s close to Iran.
Moreover, sanctions are being increased to bring maximum pressure on the regime. The big difference is that Iran’s regime may be made more reckless than even North Korea’s because our sanctions are literally strangling its economy.
Mr. Trump doesn’t want war, but the economic and political pressures he’s placed on Iran means Tehran will be looking for other ways to make war on us and our allies. Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani’s warning of a proxy war reminds us that Iran chooses to make war by its proxies because it can deny responsibility for their attacks and because the United States is very unlikely to strike at the regime because of a proxy’s attack.
Because it’s financially strapped, Iran is less able to fund its various proxy forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and militias in Iraq. That by no means precludes Iran from ordering its proxy forces to war. A large-scale Hezbollah missile attack on Israel is very likely, making this a hot and bloody summer.
As Mr. Shanahan has indicated, tensions have cooled for the moment. As Messrs. Trump and Bolton have indicated, any strike against U.S. forces by Iranian proxies should result in military action against the regime. Deal with the organ grinder, not his monkey.
• Jed Babbin, a deputy undersecretary of Defense in the George H.W. Bush administration, is the author of “In the Words of Our Enemies.”
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