A War Scare in the Middle East

Why the deterrent threat is not enough

There is a real risk that Israel and the United States will get drawn into a war with Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, and Iran itself.

The idea that all the US has to do is deter Iran and server as Israel’s arsenal is wrong. Biden seemed to imply that the American deterrent threat is the air weapon. But that may not be enough. The attrition imposed by our combination of the air weapon and the economic weapon is likely within Tehran’s tolerance. Indeed, Tehran may be willing to tolerate anything short of a US policy of forcible regime change—only credible with millions of boots on the ground. But the US does not have the stomach for such an offensive land war. And without a credible ground threat, decisive Iranian defeat cannot be guaranteed by the airforce and the navy.

Moreover, Iran won’t be alone. We can see the interlocking matrix of geopolitical response functions reminiscent of the onset of the Great War: Hezbollah does not want to see an important ally in Israel (Hamas) disappear, but we certainly do; Iran does not want to see its main ally in the Levant (Hezbollah) disappear, but we almost certainly do; Russia does not want to see its main ally in the Middle East (Iran) disappear, but we may soon; and China does not want to see its main ally in the world (Russia) disappear, but we are already committed to seeking Russia’s strategic defeat.

What is in it for China? Well, American policy elites are now committed to containing China. They have doubled down on the chips escalation. This is the harebrained idea of trying to prevent China from catching up in semiconductor production by garrisoning the world economy. It is almost certain to fail on its own terms. More worryingly, it constitutes, in effect, a strategic warning for China. Indeed, the most important historic consequence of the Biden escalation might have been to convince the Chinese that they must fight us to secure their place in the pecking order of nations.

So, American policy errors have forced into being an asymmetric tripolar alliance of China, Russia, and Iran. This strategic alliance must be assumed to be in play for the foreseeable future—at least until a revolution in US foreign policy obtains that removes the systematic driver of this alliance formation.

Russia just deployed nuclear-capable, long-range strike aircraft to the Black Sea on regular patrol. This may have been an adjustment to balance the US redeployment of two carrier groups to the Levant. But the rebalancing of the Russian nuclear force-posture is also no doubt meant as a deterrent threat—which also seemed to be the intent behind their social media plant of the Russian nuclear football caught on camera in China.

But if so, what exactly is the Russian red line in the Middle East? The Russian position at Tartus? Syria under Assad’s control? And, as I suspect, Iran? What makes the threat credible in the first case is the fact that the militaries of the great nuclear powers are mechanically under the nuclear umbrella. That logic extends to the second for a military-technical reason—the operational range of Russian air-defence in the Levant—and a geopolitical one: Assad is a Russian client.

The third is related to a development of great strategic significance. Putin seems to have secured a green-light from Xi to potentially bleed the Americans in the Middle East. The idea seems to be that, if Iran gets into a fight with the US-Israeli alliance, Russia will provide the nuclear umbrella and perhaps weapons to the Islamic Republic, while the Chinese will serve as the financial and economic lifeline—and, depending on the temperature of Sino-American relations, as the armorer.

If this line of reasoning is correct, then deterrence may very well fail unless the US and Israel exercise greater restraint than they have hitherto displayed or seem to be signaling now. And a regional war between Israel and Iran would run a very serious risk of further escalation to a global war between the United States and the great powers backing Iran.

At any rate, war with Iran will be extremely costly and practically unwinnable, as I wrote on Twitter:

Let me be very clear: Iran is not Afghanistan or Iraq. Iran has as many engineers as the United States!

A real US-Iran war would be very painful indeed. It would be unwinnable with the combined might of the air-weapon and the economic weapon (already long exhausted with Iran). … If policy errors do force the US into a second proxy war, it would be no less painful than the proxy war US policies have gotten us into with Russia.

Even if only a relatively low-intensity proxy war obtains, one that Western elites can pretend to be confident of winning, as they are doing in Ukraine, it would still be one front in a broader hegemonic struggle against the tripolar alliance of the Eurasian powers. If war breaks out with Iran, we would be fighting in a context where the Iranians own the Palestinian cause simply by openly fighting for it and precisely when the salience of it is greatly magnified. This is a recipe for losing the entire Islamic world and most of the Global South to the tripolar alliance. I can think of no surer way of undermining our world position.

So, we must move mountains to prevent a regional war. Our deterrent threat is not enough. In order to prevent escalation to the regional level—and to control the risk of escalation to the global level—it is extremely important at this juncture for the United States and Israel to signal restraint; not just resolve. In order to successfully deter Hezbollah and Iran, we must reassure them that the Israelis won’t come after them next; after they are done with Gaza. Establishing the credibility of that commitment will be very difficult, given that Hezbollah has good reasons to be fearful of, and want to preempt, that very scenario. For if they’re to fight Israel in any case, they’d much rather it was while Israel was still preoccupied with Hamas.

Both deterrence and reassurance is ultimately about communication with the enemy. In order to contain the war in the Middle East from escalating any further, US foreign policy principals need to engage earnestly not the Arab strongmen states or the oil monarchies, but with Iran. For it is the security interaction of Israel and Iran that is driving the logic of escalation in the Middle East.