As Iran and the United States assessed the damage inflicted by American airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, the initiative suddenly shifted to Tehran and the looming decision of whether to respond or accept the attack and de-escalate.
The expectation in Washington and its allies is that the Iranians will choose the latter path, seeing no advantage in getting into a violent war with a far greater power, with all the risks that entails. But it is not yet clear whether the various proxy forces that have carried out numerous attacks on American bases and ships – and that rely on Iran’s money, weapons and intelligence – will conclude that standing back also serves their interests.
In response to a drone strike by an Iranian-backed militia that killed three American soldiers on Jan. 28, the United States retaliated with 85 targeted strikes Friday evening against that group and several other Iranian-backed militias. American officials subsequently insisted that there was no ulterior motive discussion with Tehran and no tacit agreement that the United States would not attack Iran directly.
“There has been no communication with Iran since the attack,” John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a call with reporters Friday evening after the retaliatory strikes were completed.
But even without direct conversation, there were plenty of signals in both directions.
Mr. Biden is engaged in a military, diplomatic and election-year contest in which he can first restore a semblance of deterrence in the region and then help bring about a “pause” or ceasefire in Gaza to facilitate a hostage exchange with Israel , and then the biggest challenge of all is to reshape the dynamics of the region.
But all this is happening in a part of the world that just five months ago he had hoped would be pushed into the background as he focused on competition with China and the war in Ukraine, and in the midst of an election campaign, in which his opponents, led by former President Donald J. Trump, will declare almost every move a sign of weakness.
The Iranians, for their part, have publicly stated that they want to turn down the temperature – on attacks, even on their rapidly advancing nuclear program – although their ultimate goal of driving the US out of the region once and for all remains unchanged.
Their initial reaction to the military strikes on Saturday morning was remarkably mild.
“Last night’s attack on Syria and Iraq is an adventurous action and another strategic mistake by the American government that will have no result other than increasing tensions and destabilizing the region,” said Nasser Kanaani, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
Until Friday evening, any U.S. military action had been calibrated and cautious, the hallmark of Mr. Biden’s approach. But the deaths of the American soldiers forced him to act, government officials said.
He had to make it clear that the United States would try to take away many of the capabilities of the groups calling themselves the “Axis of Resistance.” That’s a nod to the one concept that unites a fractious, often undisciplined group of militias – opposition to Israel and its main backer, the United States.
And the attacks, Mr. Biden’s advisers quickly concluded, had to target facilities used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
But the president made the decision to attack mostly facilities and command centers without beheading the force’s leadership or directly threatening Iran.
There are no serious considerations of an attack in Iran, a senior administration official said after the first round of attacks concluded. And reporting the hit gave the Iranians and their proxies time to evacuate senior commanders and other personnel from their bases and place them in safe houses.
For Mr. Biden’s critics, this is too much calibration, too much caution.
“The overarching intellectual construct of Biden foreign policy is avoiding escalation,” said Kori Schake, a former defense official in the George W. Bush administration who leads foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
“You are not wrong to be concerned about escalation,” she said. “But they don’t take into account that it emboldens our opponents. We often seem more worried about fighting wars we can win, and that encourages them to manipulate our fear.”
For Ms. Schake, who was one of the early leaders of the “Never Trump” camp of Republican national security officials, there is a middle ground between attacking Iran and focusing on proxy groups like Kataib Hezbollah and the Houthis, who have attacked American forces. Mr. Biden could make clear, she said, that Revolutionary Guard officers “will be targeted whenever they leave Iran.”
Mr. Biden’s decision to launch the attack with B-1B bombers taking off from the continental United States, of course, had its own message: While Pentagon officials said the B1s were the best bombers available for the complexity of these attacks , they were the same fighter jets that would be used in any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities should Tehran decide to make a final push for a nuclear weapon. Nothing reminds Tehran more of the reach of American power than a strike next door, an official said Saturday morning.
What seemed to some in Washington to be overcautious was still seen as hostile in the region. The Syrian Defense Ministry described the attack as “obvious airstrikes,” without addressing the fact that the Assad government allowed these militias to operate from an area it claims to control. The Iraqi government, which Washington is not trying to destabilize, said 16 people were killed and 25 wounded on its territory and that the attacks were “a threat that will plunge Iraq and the region into unforeseen consequences.”
But the Iranians themselves were slow to respond, even then pointing to the Gaza war rather than the United States as the culprit. In a statement, Mr. Kanaani said that “the roots of the tensions and crisis in the region go back to the occupation by the Israeli regime and the continuation of that regime’s military operations in Gaza and the genocide of the Palestinians with the full support of the US “
And when Kateeb Hezbollah, one of the groups that U.S. intelligence believes was involved in the deadly attack in Jordan, said earlier this week that it would no longer target American forces, it made clear that she was under pressure from Iran and Iraq – and wasn’t happy about it.
It was a telling moment about the two strategies Iran appears to be pursuing. The first is a short-term approach to the war in Gaza, where proxies have opened multiple fronts against Israel and escalated attacks on American bases to pressure Washington, which they see as a supporter of Israel, into a ceasefire. A senior American official recently noted that proxies had stopped their attacks when a brief pause was declared in November and hostages were exchanged.
But there is a longer-term goal for Iran: driving Americans out of the region with the help of its proxies in Iraq and Syria.
“This is not an all-or-nothing moment for Iran — this is just one point in a much longer story arc of Iran’s strategic agenda in the Middle East,” said Afshon Ostovar, an associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey , California, and an expert on the Iranian military. “Iran can suffer as many Iraqi and Syrian casualties as it wants,” he said. “It does not feel compelled to respond to the deaths of proxy militants. But when Iranians are killed, that’s different.”
“For Iran, this is a long war, not a short war, and it has nothing to do with Gaza.” It is, he said, “about Iran’s long, steady march through the Middle East to drive out U.S. forces and to weaken US allies.”
Evidence from recent years suggests that U.S. military actions may affect its capabilities but do not provide long-term deterrence. When Mr. Trump ordered the American drone strike that killed Quds Force chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani, he claimed he was deterring Iran and its proxies from attacking Americans and their allies. It led to a pause, but not a standstill.
The negotiations achieved more, but not much more. Last year, when Washington and Tehran negotiated indirect negotiations involving Oman and Qatar to release $6 billion in frozen oil revenues in exchange for a prisoner swap, the attacks targeted U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria significantly back.
But that failed after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, resulting in around 1,200 Israeli deaths and triggering the Gaza War. Iran and its allies have claimed that calm will be restored if a permanent ceasefire is reached in Gaza. However, it is still unclear whether a ceasefire or even another temporary pause can be negotiated. And the history of the Middle East suggests that the calm may not last long.
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2024-02-03 16:55:05
www.nytimes.com
