It’s been speculated that the failure of the US air campaign to cow the Tehran regime into submission has forced Donald Trump to “look for an exit ramp” from the war he started. But the president has consistently spoken more about escalation than exit. Some of that escalatory intent was apparent from the conflict’s earliest days, with his threats to destroy Iranian infrastructure, including desalinisation plants, which would have inflicted huge suffering on the people he claimed to want to help.
Trump apparently reconsidered whether to commit such crimes against humanity. The ceasefire suggests the presence of at least a modicum of prudence on his part. Yet the blockade on ships carrying Iranian oil, which Trump announced on Sunday – soon after JD Vance’s 21 hours of diplomacy ended in failure at Islamabad – is another attempt to increase the pressure, this time without killing non-combatants. But the US Navy’s embargo, if actually enforced, will proceed on an escalatory knife-edge. What happens if a Chinese tanker challenges the blockade? Any decision to intercept or board it would carry a high risk of expanding the war in a way that Trump and his advisers likely haven’t contemplated.
The blockade will tempt Iranian light coastal forces to attack US naval vessels, something they have practised for years in “Great Prophet” military exercises around the Gulf. Their term for the swarm tactics they developed is esbah, which translates as “saturation”. This involves attacks on enemy naval vessels from several directions simultaneously, with guns, missiles and drones, kamikaze-style. If any of these attacks succeed in damaging navy ships and causing casualties, Trump will doubtless feel forced to bring another round of “fire and fury” down on Iran.
The US president would see this as the moment to unleash the significant forces he has made available for amphibious and airborne operations, most likely striking at points on the Iranian coast from where missiles were being fired and fast-attack boats sortieing. Such an escalation would spark counter-escalation by Iran, perhaps leading to attacks on hitherto safe oil tankers sheltering in waters up-Gulf from the Strait of Hormuz. This would probably be the moment when the Iran-friendly Houthis would join in by attacking ships transiting the southern exit to the Red Sea at the Bab el-Mandeb (“Gate of Tears”). For all this sort of retaliatory escalation, though, I can just imagine what Trump’s advisers are telling him: “Don’t worry, Mr President. We have escalation dominance. We can ratchet up our responses higher and more effectively than they can.”
I have heard this kind of high-level talk before, especially from nuclear strategists, but also in settings of conventional conflict, from Kosovo to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It is the kind of rhetoric that encourages confidence in the use or threat of force to resolve crises. And it will likely lead to an escalation of the war with Iran when the current partial ceasefire – at this moment, the Israelis are still not observing it – ends or is broken. By either side.
Should the war “hot up” again, it will be important for US leaders to pay special attention to the possibility that Iranian operatives and their friends, such as the Shia militias in Iraq, will make a point of attacking Americans wherever they may be found. There might even be an extensive widening of the “battle space” – terrorist cells dispersed throughout the world could mobilise and engage in violent, disruptive attacks against American interests. The US clearly has a greater capacity for destruction; but the Iranians have already shown, by closing the Gulf, that they have the greater ability to cause disruption to the global economy.
The forces that Trump and his minions have mustered in the Gulf region reflects a desire for substantial escalatory options. That the peace talks in Islamabad were called off so soon suggests a lack of patience. But if the next several days afford Trump – and some around him – a bit of time for introspection, perhaps they will realise that the Iranians have escalatory options, too, and that finding an exit ramp now makes more sense than ramping up the war.
With world opinion, and the majority of American opinion, firmly opposed to this war, it is also clear that Trump is losing “the battle of the story”. US military escalation will not rectify the situation. Only a negotiated peace forgoing future attacks on the Islamic Republic in return for a verifiable Iranian pledge never to develop nuclear weapons can save Trump’s presidency now.
[Further reading: Trump’s blockade is a desperate measure]
Content from our partners
Related
Join the debate
Subscribe here to comment