Tehran and Washington face a ‘wake up moment’ over the war

WASHINGTON – After more than a week of strikes that unraveled an ill-fated ceasefire, the conflict between the United States and Iran stands on a knife’s edge.

Now is the time, analysts say, to find a way to draw down an exponentially destructive confrontation – or risk provoking a war that cascades beyond what they may be able to contain.

And though the dangers of escalation are growing, analysts say, neither side can really afford it, either economically or politically at home.

Over the past few days, Iran and the US have dealt blows that quickly went beyond battering military targets and have gradually raised the stakes of their renewed war.

Both sides have struck water and desalination plants that risk depriving tens of thousands of power and water supplies during the deadly Gulf summer heat.

Traffic through the vital Strait of Hormuz is once again blocked both by officials in Tehran, the Iranian capital, and those in Washington, while the US has reinstated a blockade of Iranian ports.

US strikes have heavily bombarded roads and infrastructure in southern Iran, killing and trapping civilians, while raising anxieties it is preparing the ground for a potential invasion in the area.

Iran’s strikes on US forces in Jordan have now killed three US soldiers and wounded dozens, bringing the human cost of war much closer to home for Americans while puncturing the Trump administration’s projection of complete military dominance.

“This is the wake-up moment for both sides,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “They either take the diplomatic off ramp now or risk allowing the war to spiral beyond managed escalation.”

As both sides’ targets expand, so does the war’s potential geographic reach.

Houthi supporters rally against the Saudi-led coalition’s restrictions on Houthi-controlled areas, which the group describes as a blockade, in Sanaa, Yemen. PHOTO: REUTERS

The growing tit-for-tat of infrastructure strikes in Iran and Arab Gulf countries could quickly devastate civilian populations in the region. Iran has already warned that if it is hit badly enough, it will gun for Gulf installations critical to international energy supplies.

US-allied Saudi Arabia struck an airport held by Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Sanaa, Yemen, last week. That has increased the likelihood, Geranmayeh said, of Tehran calling on its Yemeni allies to block the crucial Red Sea shipping lane, Bab al-Mandab. Such a move would quickly compound risks to the global economy.

The costs of accelerating the conflict are high for both sides.

Both the Trump administration and Iran’s new hard-line leadership face all of the same economic and political risks that compelled their warring governments only a month earlier to sign a vaguely worded “memorandum of understanding”, which aimed to negotiate an end to the conflict.

As then, the havoc the war has wreaked on the global economy since the initial US-Israeli attack on Iran last February has yet to abate.

Expanding the unpopular war further risks damaging President Donald Trump’s Republican allies in the upcoming midterm elections.

Iran’s economy was so dire before the war that it sparked nationwide protests that were suppressed in a deadly crackdown. Now, battered by wide-scale destruction, it faces a dangerous economic reckoning that is worsened by the US blockade on its ships.

The very factors that make escalation so dangerous for Washington and Tehran may also be what is pushing them to riskier attacks, as they seek to increase the pressure on each other.

Ships idling in the Strait of Hormuz, from Musandam, Oman. PHOTO: REUTERS

“The conflict has now become a contest against time and a war of endurance,” wrote Hamidreza Azizi, an Iranian security expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, on social media.

“The decisive question will be whether Iran’s deteriorating economic and infrastructural conditions outpace the rise in energy prices driven by instability in the Strait of Hormuz, or vice versa,” she said.

Discontent over the human and economic cost of war is starting to be more palpable in Iran.

On July 18, 268 prominent Iranians, including academics, politicians, athletes, clerics and trade unionists, signed a “No to war” petition – a risky move at a time when the government, backed by a fiercely pro-war hard-line base, has continued to crack down fiercely on dissent.

“The government will have a very difficult time convincing people that they should continue fighting this war at the cost of Iran’s destruction,” said Omid Memarian, an Iran analyst at DAWN, a Washington-based Middle East research institute. “So time is ticking for them, too.”

That sense of time slipping away is likely what encouraged Iran to launch the attacks on ships that began the latest spiral, said Farzan Sabet, an Iran analyst at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland, not with the aim of expanding the war, but to take advantage of strategic gains while they have them.

“They saw their leverage in terms of being able to control the strait quickly decline,” he said, as the United States encouraged ships to navigate the waterway beyond Iranian oversight during the ceasefire.

These attacks should be seen as Iranian efforts to “keep themselves relevant at the likely negotiating table” more than to signal that they aim to win militarily, Memarian said. And they could easily backfire.

President Donald Trump has few palatable options for escalation. PHOTO: REUTERS

At the same time, with the economic and political stakes so high, Trump has few palatable options for escalation.

Between now and early to mid-August, Sabet said, the Trump administration is likely to try to weaken Iran’s leaders militarily, or to destroy Iran’s ability to control traffic in the Strait of Hormuz through asymmetric attacks.

Yet, he said, there was little sign the United States could succeed in doing that.

“I am sceptical of any one-off US escalation being able to dramatically change Iran’s calculus,” he said. “It would have to be something truly earth-shattering.” NYTIMES

• This article originally appeared in The New York Times.