Provoking a war with Iran could be a deadly miscalculation for Trump

 Once again, President Trump is steering the U.S. toward a perilous and unnecessary confrontation with Iran.

In January, Trump threatened to topple the Iranian regime for violently crushing protests. Now, as U.S. forces amass in the Middle East, his rationale for pressuring Iran has shifted.

Trump is demanding new concessions from the regime, including caps on Iran’s missile program and the total removal of enriched uranium from the country. He is also threatening consequences “far worse” than last June’s Operation Midnight Hammer. The president’s ultimate goals in the region remain unclear, as are the military measures he might adopt, which could include airstrikes, a naval blockade, or even regime change.

The risks of escalation are grave, with each side poised to misjudge the other’s determination.

Iran could potentially justify retaliation as solving the twin threats currently facing the regime: the external threat from Trump and the internal threat of revolution. Resistance that imposes real pain on the U.S. could convince Trump that the costs of fighting Iran outweigh the potential benefits. At the same time, it could also afford a chance to redeem the regime’s internal legitimacy, by improbably standing up to U.S. demands.

With both survival imperatives dovetailing toward the same policy of resistance, a U.S. attack on Iran could yield a surprisingly protracted and dangerous conflict. Iran will fight back, hard — and its defeat is not a foregone conclusion.

History is replete with examples of weak countries prevailing over stronger ones that believed their conventional predominance would guarantee triumph. Paraphrasing asymmetric war theorist Andrew Mack, weak states don’t need to win; they just need to not lose, to outlast their opponent until it inevitably tires of a non-essential fight where the costs dwarf the benefits.

Iran has a good chance of pulling this off, because while the balance of power favors the U.S., the balance of resolve favors Iran. Iran cannot seriously threaten the U.S. homeland, but conflict with the U.S. threatens Iran’s very survival.

Trump’s regime-toppling rhetoric has escalated the conflict to an existential level for Iran’s leadership. Last year, Iran opted for a largely symbolic retaliation to avoid turning limited U.S. strikes on nuclear facilities into war. But the incentives for restraint in Tehran are dramatically weaker if the leadership believes the U.S. is bent on destroying the regime.

Iranian leaders might reasonably expect to outlast Trump, even if he attempts regime change. Trump’s rapid success against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro is unlikely to be repeated in Iran, as most regime change operations unfold over months, not hours. Trump’s aversion to prolonged military operations is well known — he abandoned the campaign against the Houthis after barely two months.

Further, the Iranian regime might doubt Trump’s willingness to stomach U.S. casualties to achieve his shifting aims.

Iran is much more capable than the Houthis and has several options for retaliation in the Middle East, where the U.S. has roughly 40,000 troops stationed. Iranian-linked militant groups have struck dozens of U.S. facilities in recent years, most often with nuisance attacks designed to harass U.S. troops and remind Washington of Tehran’s capacity for deadly violence. Iran could target lightly defended outposts in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, or it could attack larger, more visible U.S. bases that carry greater symbolic value, like al-Udeid in Qatar — the site chosen by Iran last year — which can house up to 10,000 troops.

Even if U.S. forces were to quickly capture or kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his most trusted officials, the rump state would almost certainly resist rather than cooperate with U.S. orders. The Iranian regime deeply distrusts the United States, which supported Saddam Hussein in the devastating 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War and encircled Iran in the 2000s with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. More recently, the U.S. government has professed “ironclad” support for Israel, the greatest threat to Iran in the region, and bombed Iran — at Israel’s request — amid nuclear negotiations.

Retaliation for a U.S. attack could also redeem the Islamic Republic’s domestic legitimacy, which was damaged by its inability to prevent Israeli and U.S. attacks last summer. Embattled regimes are known to engage in risky foreign policy actions in the hope of reversing their political fortunes, a phenomenon political scientists have referred to as “gambling for resurrection.” Leaders facing dire domestic circumstances like revolt may lash out externally, concluding they have little to lose and much to gain from a successful military conflict. Even a slim possibility that fighting the U.S. could save the regime from overthrow might entice Iranian leaders desperate to shift the domestic narrative from regime failure to national resistance.

Finding a way to punish without inflaming Trump is a tricky balance that Iran could easily miscalculate. Because Iran may view itself as compensating for too-weak retaliation in the past, it is likelier to overshoot rather than undershoot the goal, meaning there is a significant risk the conflict could spiral beyond what either side wants. Iran can impose pain, but there’s no guarantee Trump will drop the porcupine in response. That is the root of the miscalculation problem — and what makes this conflict so dangerous.

The clear imperative for the U.S. is to avoid pointless war with Iran, which could easily escalate beyond what either side expects or wants. So far, Trump’s second-term military gambits have avoided the tragedy of losing U.S. lives for dubious goals. But there is no guarantee that past will be prologue.

 

* Rosemary Kelanic is the director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities.

 

Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5734208-trump-iran-conflict-escalation/