Where do we go from here? Day 5 of the Israel-Iran war

The past four days have clarified much about what Israel wants from this conflict, what Iran can and cannot do to fight back, and what decisions confront the American president over the next few days.

Israeli objectives: The Israeli campaign goes well beyond Iran’s nuclear program. Besides the decapitation effort aimed at the Iranian military and nuclear scientific establishments (and we have reports that Israel was also ready to target Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei but the US waved them off), the Israelis have been hitting the civilian energy infrastructure, among other targets. They are increasing the pain that average Iranians are feeling in this conflict, in the hopes of triggering some kind of regime change — a military coup, a popular uprising, or some combination thereof. They have not yet hit the heavily fortified Fordow enrichment facility, whose survival would leave Iran with a fast, intact pathway to acquiring weapons-grade uranium. It could be that they are hoping the US will join them in striking Fordow, a facility deep inside a mountain that can only be destroyed in an airstrike by a bunker-busting bomb that only the US has and can deliver. However, the extent of the air campaign indicates that this attack is about more than Iran’s nuclear capacity.

The predicament for Iran: The Iranian leadership is clearly looking for an off-ramp. The Iranians are suffering more from the military exchanges and seem unable to deliver commensurate blows to Israel. They are reaching out to European and Arab parties to try to persuade the US to restrain Israel and have signaled their willingness to talk directly to the Trump administration on the nuclear question. It is not clear whether they are willing to accede to President Donald Trump’s demand to give up any capacity to enrich uranium on their own soil. Without that concession, there does not seem to be the possibility of reaching a deal with the US.

The choice before the US: The United States remains a question mark, as it will always be under President Trump. Certain political forces in the US are pushing him to buy into the regime-change strategy and join the attack. Equally significant elements of his coalition are urging him to stay out of the fight. He clearly does not want to lead the US into another Middle Eastern war on the model of Iraq and Afghanistan. However, he is all about making deals, and he sees the leverage potential American participation in the attack gives him as a way to force Iran into a zero-enrichment deal. The problem with this kind of high-stakes poker is that bluffs can be called. If Tehran does not knuckle under, the incentives for Trump to pull the trigger grow.

If the US joins the fight: The possible effects of active American participation in the conflict are potentially dire. An Iran under direct US attack could throw off the guardrails that have governed its responses so far. It is certainly possible that Iran would target American forces and bases in the Persian Gulf. However, a potentially more likely target would be the oil facilities of American-allied Gulf states like Saudi Arabia. In September 2019, Iran launched missiles and drones against a major Saudi oil facility, closing it for weeks and temporarily driving oil prices up. The first Trump administration offered no military response then. With Iran unable to strike effective blows against Israel and America fully involved in the assault against it, the temptation for Tehran to strike in the Gulf will be enormous.

The longer-term effects of the conflict remain uncertain. It is unlikely that regime change in Iran will work. American opponents of the Islamic Republic have been hoping for it for decades, but the clerical regime has overcome numerous crises. It is a weak reed on which to base a policy. Regime change would, however, redraw the regional balance of power. It would be an earthquake, maybe of the same magnitude as the original 1979 Iranian Revolution. A weakened Iranian regime that stays in power is just that — not a huge regional change, but a continuation of the results of the Gaza war, which has weakened the Iranian position both indirectly through attacks on its proxies (Hamas, Hizbullah) and directly through attacks on Iran itself. Such an outcome might make it easier for the new Lebanese government to disarm Hizbullah. It might strengthen groups in Iraq that want to break away from Iranian dominance in the coming Iraqi elections this fall. But Iran will retain influence in Iraq and Yemen and will still be able to be a spoiler elsewhere, maybe even in Syria.

The longer term for Iran: If the Iranian regime remains in power without having to negotiate a nuclear deal with the US, the great danger is that it will choose to work furiously to obtain deliverable and secure nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrent. It will make more likely the result that the Israelis at least say publicly is the reason for their war on Iran. Regime change, were it to occur, would be the biggest question mark for the region, critical for its future but difficult if not impossible to control. Even with tens of thousands of troops in Iraq, the United States could not direct the development of politics there in a way it would have liked. There will not be tens of thousands of American troops in Iran in any scenario.

The longer term for Israel: Israel will emerge from this conflict with its military power supreme in the region, but that was the case before the war as well. As 19th-century German statesman Otto von Bismarck once said, you can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it. This is the Israeli problem. The Israelis show little ability to translate their military power into changed political realities that will enhance their security in the long term. Few if any local parties — state or non-state — want to ally with them. They do not have proxies and allies in other states, the model that made Iran a regional power for decades. A weaker Iran means that Arab states like Saudi Arabia will be less likely to see Israel as a potential partner and more likely to see it as a threat to regional stability. Saudi-Israeli normalization, sought by both the Biden and Trump administrations, will become less likely.

This Israeli government has no political horizon beyond Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu staying in power and preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has no political project for Gaza, except reoccupation or massive population transfer, which would be very difficult to do and gain Israel no friends at all. The same holds true for the West Bank, where it is undercutting the Palestinian Authority, its local partner, to forestall even the possibility of a Palestinian state. The Netanyahu government is also trying to destabilize the new Syrian government through military strikes and occupation of Syrian territory beyond the Golan Heights. By occupying swathes of Lebanese territory along the border, it is not helping the new Lebanese government disarm Hizbullah, which has contended for decades that it needs to retain its arms to fight Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Israeli actions in the West Bank, by encouraging population transfer, present a long-term threat to Jordan, the Arab state that has cooperated with Israel on security issues for the longest period, since the 1950s. Israeli military power is unmatched in the region, but if its political project is to use that power for regional destabilization, it will find few partners in the Arab world.

The longer term for the United States: An America that participated in the attack on Iran will own the results. The dream of the three past presidents to disengage from the Middle East and “pivot” militarily and politically to East Asia would become even more of an impossibility. A wounded Islamic Republic rushing toward a nuclear weapon would be a major American preoccupation. Even a change in the Iranian regime will keep the US in place for some time, for fear that it could turn even more hostile or descend into the chaos that engulfed Iraq and Afghanistan after the successful regime changes there. The United States would also be even more strongly linked to an Israel that would increasingly be seen regionally and internationally as a force not for stability but for chaos. It is hard to see a clear exit ramp for the United States from this crisis.

 

F. Gregory Gause III is a Visiting Scholar at the Middle East Institute. He is also a professor emeritus of international affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.

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