The latest growing discord between Israel and Iran is often portrayed as yet another improvement of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. After all, Hamas and Iran have a close relationship and both have a vision for the destruction of the Israeli state.
But there’s more to it than that.
As a researcher of Middle Eastern issues for over 20 years who has studied the region’s issues, I would contend that the US international policy in the region has failed to significantly reduce Iran’s ambitions and has instead contributed significantly to the current increase.
As is obvious from recent events along Israel’s north borders, Washington’s ability to project power and protect its Mideast objectives has declined but significantly since 2010 that Iran has only a limited concern about the impact of its proxies directly attacking US allies like Israel and attacking US allies like Israel.
Egyptian successes
Iran, a Shia-majority country in a Sunni Muslim area, expands its local influence by funding and physically supporting violent proxy militias in neighboring nations. Those organizations, in move, attack and destroy those nations.
Over the past century, this clever strategy probably has turned Iran into the Mideast’s most influential power.
Hezbollah, the Shia political and military organization it supported in Lebanon in the early 1980s, was Iran’s just real hold in the area up until the early 2010s. The Houthi rebels in Yemen and a devoted system of Shia militants in Iraq are among Iran’s current relationships.
In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad has allowed Iran’s wealthy fighting force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, to create a large military appearance.
Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel, triggering the Gaza conflict, these organizations have instantly attacked Israel, British military bases and US human resources in the region over 170 times. Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq’s political and military autonomy weakened to the point where some American leaders view them as Iran’s marionette governments.
Over the same time, Iran’s military nuclear programme has reached its most advanced level. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Iran was days away from having the capability to provide its huge and expanding arsenal of nuclear missiles with nuclear weapons six years after the Trump presidency backed out of the international nuclear agreement.
Misconceptions, isolation and exaggerated diplomacy
Iran’s new military and political advancements over the past ten years have persistently understated the country’s desire for regional dominance. Together, in my judgment, it has overvalued the effectiveness of long-standing US” sweet power” plans toward Iran: isolation and de-escalation.
Washington places a high value on taking steps that will almost certainly prevent any military conflict with Iran in order to stop the Middle East from escalating. Instead, to include Iran’s expanding regional effect, the US has banned arms sales and tech to Iran, imposed strict financial sanctions, frozen Egyptian financial resources and socially isolated its government.
Yet, Iran’s influence continues to expand. This, in my opinion, demonstrates that containment and de-escalation cannot stop a regime whose fundamentalist ideology drives its core policies. The leaders of Iran use religious convictions to defend their commitment to violent conflict, regional superiority, and the destruction of Israel.
” Allah willing, there will be no such thing as a Zionist regime in 25 years”, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in 2015, calling the fight to annihilate Israel a matter of” jihadi morale”.
In the majority of global conflicts, diplomacy, negotiation, and legal and economic punishment are the best options, in my opinion. These policies cannot, according to modern history, force change on fundamentalist, non-democratic regimes that defy the laws of global international relations, such as Nazi Germany, North Korea, and the Afghan Taliban regime.
How not to deal with proxies
According to my research into terrorist organizations, US policy has also been erred in dealing with Iran’s proxies. Each proxy is treated by the US as an independent actor operating in a particular location as part of a distinct network, rather than trying to contain or de-escalate that threat.
In Yemen, for example, the US did not stop the Iran-backed Houthi rebels from seizing territory and essentially supplanting the government. In their bloody battle to retain power, the Biden administration even put pressure on US allies Saudi Arabia in 2021 to stop militarily supporting the nation’s legitimate leaders. After the Gaza war began, the Houthis, doing Iran’s bidding, began lobbing dozens of missiles at Western-flagged ships in the Red Sea.
Only in the first year of the year did the US confront the Houthis and launch retaliatory military strikes on Houthi bases in Yemen.
As long as these forces continued to support the Islamic State group, the US was long willing to overlook that Iran was supporting them in the fight against the Islamic State. These Iraqi militias have attacked numerous American military installations in the area in the last year, failing to account for their growing strength’s long-term effects.
In Syria, despite Iran’s growing influence in the wake of the Syrian civil war, the US has gradually slashed its support for pro-democracy Kurdish forces and anti-Assad rebels.
Collapse of American deterrence
All of these unsuccessful foreign policies have resulted in the demise of American deterrence in the Middle East. Simply put, the US does n’t have the resources to halt Iranian hostilities there.
In April 2024, after Israel killed high-ranking officials in Iran’s embassy complex in Syria, Iran launched one of the largest missile attacks in history, lobbing over 300 missiles at Israel – its first-ever direct attack on Israel. Yet it has suffered marginal consequences, mainly economic sanctions and diplomatic outcry.
The US, which rallied Israel’s allies across the Mideast to shoot down most of the Iranian missiles, again preferred to block a meaningful response. The Biden administration argued that the lack of missile strikes on Israel was a “win” and that the US would not ally itself with Israel in any retaliation against Iran.
Following the targeted assassination of top Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, America’s deep aversion to escalation was further exposed. Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr was killed in a bombing at a government guesthouse in Iran in late July 2024, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was also killed in a bombing in Beirut, Lebanon.
According to The New York Times, Iran is held responsible for Haniyeh’s murder. Additionally, several US officials reached out to them who requested anonymity. Iran immediately vowed to retaliate.
The US had been pressing Israel to start more precision-based military operations to stop more civilian casualties from the Gaza war, which had already claimed the lives of nearly 40, 000 people in its first six months.
American policymakers were concerned that such cross-border attacks could lead to regional escalation when Israel apparently finally did that, eliminating specific terrorists responsible for killing Israelis and Americans.
The US must first acknowledge the inadequacies of the previous ten years if it wants to achieve long-term peace in the Middle East. The evidence backs my conclusion that Iran is an enemy that cannot simply be deterred, contained or de-escalated.
Arie Perliger is the UMass Lowell professor of criminology and justice studies and the director of security studies.
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.