The escalation trap: how the Iran war could become more costly and complex | US-Israel war on Iran

In its current phase, the Israeli-US war against Iran and its proxies has become a proof of concept of two rival military tensions, each of which threatens to turn into a trap.

On the one hand, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have so far failed in their ill-defined and variable strategic goals. Despite the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei and other key leaders in the opening salvo of the campaign, the religious regime remains in existence and Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium remains unsecured. Air strikes are intensifying and hitting more targets.

Tehran’s counter-move is a “horizontal escalation” that has long been prepared by the regime, aimed at expanding the conflict geographically through attacks on Gulf countries, but also in terms of costs to Washington and the global economy, especially energy supplies.

The coming days and weeks will likely reveal important lessons. especially about the strength of US military power in an increasingly fragile and multipolar world.

Experts particularly point to the risks of an escalation trap, where the aggressor is drawn into a much more complex, protracted and costly conflict than originally anticipated, due to the growing disparity between the tactical and strategic level in the US-Israeli campaign. Simply put, the tactical level includes specific military missions (for example, air strikes that hit intended targets) in which the campaign was successful. The strategic level defines whether the political and national security objectives of the war are achieved and what the cost will be.

“These are several stages into the escalation trap,” said Robert Pape, a US historian who has studied limiting air power and advised many US administrations.

“What we saw in the first attack was almost 100% tactical success,” he said. “The problem is, when this does not lead to strategic success… you move into the second stage of the trap.

“The attacker still has escalation dominance, so there’s a doubling down, which then moves up the escalation ladder, which still doesn’t lead to strategic success. Then you get to the third phase, which is the real crisis where you consider much riskier options. I would say we’re in the second phase and on the verge of the third phase.”

He said the Trump administration was fascinated by the initial attack and had an “illusion of control” based on the accuracy of its weapons. All of this, Pape and other critics say, is pushing Tehran toward its own pattern of escalation that has much broader global economic and political impact.

By targeting Gulf states and shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has demonstrated that it can increase the cost of war to Washington far beyond its military capacity to directly counter a US-Israeli attack.

Pape said Iran’s attacks were “designed to create rifts between the United States and the Gulf countries, and therefore to create rifts between the Gulf countries and their societies.”

“They are forcing public opinion in the Gulf to ask: ‘Why are we paying the price for a war that appears to be driven by Israel’s expansionist policies?’”

Israel has signaled a new escalation. Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that he had ordered the military to prepare to expand operations in Lebanon, where it is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah would “take land” if its rocket fire does not stop.

How the United States moves forward in the conflict and what level of de-escalation or de-escalation is adopted will likely be defined by Trump’s psychology rather than clearly defined strategic considerations, said Robert Malley, a former U.S. envoy to Iran and chief negotiator for nuclear talks with Tehran.

“At some point, I assume, there will be an exit ramp, but I could imagine the escalation reaching levels we couldn’t have imagined even a month ago… Troops in the field, going after basic infrastructure, seizing parts of Iran, working with Kurdish or other ethnic groups. These are all escalatory in a different way.

“But that could trigger reactions on the Iranian side, and then who knows what happens. I wouldn’t be shocked if we saw terrorist attacks on soft targets, soft, quote-unquote American targets. If that happens, whether it’s directed by Iran or not, who knows how the president would react then?”

“But what we should be afraid of at this point is that the ladder Trump is most comfortable with is the climbing ladder, because I don’t think the Iranians are going to make life any easier for him. I don’t think they’re going to hand him the victory he wants on a platter and say, ‘Okay, we’ll stop shooting.'”

Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute argues that the course of the conflict has been driven by a series of debates: between US defense policy professionals and Trump’s inner circle; Between the USA and Israel; and among the political and military echelons in Iran, especially among the revenge-seeking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“There is a view in the US strategic community, if not in Trump circles, that sees a risk of an interstate conflict with China in the near future,” he said. From this perspective, there has been a desire in the United States to avoid the risk of simultaneous threats and conflict involving Russia, Venezuela, and Iran, leading to a schism between those who envision the war as a narrow set of achievable goals to humiliate Iran and Trump’s desire for “coercive control” over the country’s future.

He said that for Iran, the model of retaliation in the Gulf is not just about mutual attacks, but also about restoring deterrence in the region. He warned that if Iran seeks to maintain the intensity of its current missile and drone strikes, turning into a longer-term threat to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, this may not mean the end of Tehran’s horizontal escalation.

US author and foreign affairs expert Robert D Kaplan noted another risk that, although not immediately escalatory, could lead to the same end point, the “slippery slope of incrementalism”.

“If there’s a civil war in Iran or something like that, [Trump] “The administration may feel compelled to send in special forces and advisors to assist one side,” he wrote in the State Department.

“And from now on it will enter a spiral of risk of escalation. It took years for the war in Vietnam to turn into a medium-scale war… The situation in Iran may follow a similar course.”