Iranian-US tensions are boiling after Trump threatened to bomb Iran following its rejection of direct talks over a new nuclear deal. He also ordered the Pentagon to move six B-2 stealth bombers, which CNN assessed to be 30% of its stealth bomber fleet, to the Indian Ocean island base of Diego Garcia.
The Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded by promising strong retaliation if the US attacks. One of his chief advisors, Ali Larijani, warned that Iran would have “no choice” but to build nukes if the US or through it Israel bombs the country.
Although the US intelligence community’s latest Annual Threat Assessment found that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”, there are long-standing concerns it could do so quickly with its program’s alleged rapid breakout potential.
This makes Iran’s nuclear program no different in principle than Japan’s, which reputedly could begin churning out nukes in a matter of months if it so chose, but neither the US nor its regional allies consider Japan to be a threat.
The US’s renewed bombing campaign against Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen may be partially intended to send a message to the Islamic Republic that the Trump 2.0 administration does indeed have the political will to initiate military action if Iran refuses to enter talks.
Trump might hold off on bombing for now due to the likelihood that Iran could inflict unacceptable retaliatory damage to US regional bases and allies.
Furthermore, diplomacy hasn’t yet been exhausted since Iran didn’t reject indirect talks of the kind that Russia offered to mediate after reportedly being asked by the US to do so, which was discussed here.
It would thus seemingly be premature for the US to seriously consider bombing Iran at this juncture, but the option isn’t off the table if indirect talks fail to reach a deal. Iran lacks the leverage for a fair deal with the US, however, so it’ll either have to accept a lopsided one or prepare for a major war that it might well lose.
Iran is a proud civilization-state that’s loath to subordinate itself to anyone, hence the difficulty in getting it to agree to sovereignty-eroding curbs on its nuclear program that would effectively make it a second-class country in this regard, all while abandoning any chance of acquiring nuclear weapons in the future.
From Iran’s perspective, this could embolden Israel into one day launching a large-scale conventional or even nuclear war against it, which Iran believes has only hitherto been deterred by dangling a sword of Damocles nuclear weapon threat.
That said, while Iran could inflict severe retaliatory damage to US regional bases and allies (first and foremost Israel) if it’s attacked over its refusal to agree to a Russian-mediated lopsided deal, it cannot inflict such damage to the US nuclear triad and would thus likely be destroyed.
Iran couldn’t count on Russia intervening to help it either since their newly updated strategic partnership doesn’t include mutual defense obligations and Moscow doesn’t want war with Washington or Jerusalem.
Even though the US could survive a major war with Iran, it no doubt prefers to avoid one. So long as US demands remain limited to drastically curbing Iran’s nuclear energy program and don’t expand to include curbs on its support for regional allies or its ballistic missile program, then creative diplomacy could yet prevail.
For that to happen, Russia would have to devise a set of incentives for Iran that the US approves and Iran then agrees to, but that’s still a long way off and Trump might strike first if he loses patience.
This article was first published on Andrew Korybko’s Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber here.
