It would be a mistake to assume that Israel’s “Friday the 13” strikes on Iran will not trigger further escalation.
It has finally happened. Israel struck Iran’s nuclear sites and military leadership and is carrying out an air campaign to degrade their capabilities further. As one might expect from Israeli military operations, they appear to have been meticulously planned and startlingly effective. After two decades in which policymakers, analysts, and pundits have continuously opined on what would happen—from a democratic uprising in Tehran to utter devastation and an oil-led recession—we will now get to see these assumptions put to the test over the coming weeks.
In all of this, the top tier of the Trump administration, perhaps excluding Steven Witkoff at the beginning of negotiations, has seemed woefully disconnected from reality. The first theory that has fallen by the wayside is that Iran would give up uranium enrichment completely if it faced a credible and immediate threat of massive force. The Trump team publicly spun the early rounds of talks in a positive direction.
Still, there was never any real movement from either side on the core question of whether Iran would be permitted to keep enrichment in the long term. Trump seems to have genuinely thought that because he is perceived as a “stronger” leader than his predecessors, he could secure concessions from Iran that had eluded President Barack Obama.
Another assumption Trump is making, and which is being tested now, is that Iran may be open to coming back to the negotiating table. Trump’s posts on Truth Social today have more or less invited Iran’s leaders to crawl back to the table to capitulate “before there is nothing left.” Trump even told Axios that the Israeli strikes could “help [him] make a deal with Iran.” It is true, of course, that in history, many negotiations have taken place after a limited amount of warfare had clarified the power relationship between the belligerents and forced one side to calculate that it would be better to negotiate rather than fight on.
In the present case, this explanation underestimates Iran’s resolve and the issue of strategic depth. The United States eventually went to Baghdad. Yet, nobody is seriously discussing a campaign to capture Tehran. The Islamic Republic is simply too big and too populous. From Iran’s perspective, it can absorb the blow, retaliate, and live on long enough to enrich and perhaps weaponize another day. The heavy targeting of Iran’s leadership—in a strike without US participation—suggests that Trump may understand this. Nonetheless, along with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is putting some credence in hopes for regime change.
That lack of US participation has surprised many observers and for good reasons. Without American B-2 heavy bombers to deliver the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), the strike was carried out without the necessary capabilities to strike targets buried deep underground, particularly the Fordow enrichment site. Perhaps more importantly, US participation would have allowed strikes on hundreds of additional targets. This would have been key to suppressing Iran’s retaliatory capabilities before it could disperse its many road-mobile ballistic missiles, attack drones, and anti-ship cruise missiles.
Instead, American officials have stated that the United States is not a co-belligerent. However, this makes it clear that Washington was neither surprised nor angered by Jerusalem’s decision to spoil the next round of nuclear negotiations, which had been scheduled for Sunday. Trump himself admitted today that “I always knew the date,” which means the negotiations announcement may have been a feint intended to cover Israel.
The Trump administration is betting that Iran will not make good on their repeated threats to target US bases in the region, fearing that doing so would bring the might of the US military down on them. That is a risky gamble, especially given how even small-scale US-Iran friction involving warships or US forces in Iraq or the Persian Gulf could escalate.
Many proponents of the strike are likely to point to the lack of a serious Iranian response as validation of their optimistic assumptions that a US intervention can be avoided and no harm will come to the energy sector. That would be a mistake. With the leadership of Iran’s military forces in disarray, it may take time to brief Supreme Leader Khamenei and decide how to escalate. The expectation that escalation would accelerate immediately on the first night was always unrealistic.
It bears remembering where the United States was three weeks into the 2003 Iraq campaign. Baghdad had fallen on April 9 with much less resistance than most commentators had expected from the Republican Guard “dead-enders.” A significant percentage of Iraq’s population was clearly glad to be rid of the Saddam regime. Less than a month later, President George W. Bush stood on an aircraft carrier deck before a banner reading “Mission Accomplished.” Wars take time to play out, and it is seldomly clear early on how history will ultimately judge them. Now, we all know who won that war: Iran.
About the Author: Greg Priddy
Greg Priddy is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and does consulting work related to political risk for the energy sector and financial clients. Previously, he was director of global oil at Eurasia Group and worked at the U.S. Department of Energy.
Image: John Karrak / Shutterstock.com.
