The Strategy From Iran is To Expand The War, Increase The Cost and Outlast Trump

The aftermath of a strike in Doha, Qatar, on Sunday. Iran is working to enlarge the battlefield.Credit...Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

By Steven Erlanger

Steven Erlanger writes about European and Middle Eastern diplomacy and security.

New York Times

 The Islamic Republic of Iran’s first priority is to survive. To do that, its leaders will want to drive up the cost of the war for President Trump — in terms of American casualties, energy costs and inflation — to try to persuade him to declare victory and go home.

Faced with the overwhelming firepower of the United States and Israel, diplomats and analysts say, Iran is working to enlarge the battlefield from its own territory to the broader region. The goals are to damage oil and gas infrastructure in neighboring countries, shut the Strait of Hormuz to shipping and curtail air traffic — all to disrupt the economies of the Persian Gulf and drive up global energy prices and inflation. Iran will also be trying to exhaust the number of expensive missile interceptors held by its enemies.

“The war has become a test of wills and stamina,” said Vali Nasr of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. “Iran is facing qualitatively superior militaries, so the strategy is to test their will by expanding the battlefield, complicating the war and increasing the danger to the world economy.”

The strategy is not complicated.

Ali Vaez, the Iran director of the Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group, said, “The Iranians want to spread the pain as much as they can, regardless of the cost to themselves and burned relations with their neighbors, hoping to create enough opposition to the war to compel President Trump to back off.” 

“For the Islamic Republic,” he added, “survival is a victory, even if it is a pyrrhic one.”

A group of people surveys a large area of collapsed buildings and debris. In the foreground, large sheets of blue material are visible.

Clearing rubble in Tehran on Tuesday after U.S.-Israeli airstrikes. “The war has become a test of wills and stamina,” one analyst said.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

The plan is so-called asymmetric endurance, accepting initial damage to preserve the ability to escalate when Israeli, American and Persian Gulf air defenses are stretched thin. The thinking behind that strategy is that Mr. Trump, facing midterm elections and a skeptical MAGA movement, will choose to curtail the war before American casualties, and inflation, go much higher.

Already, U.S. and even some European bases and embassies have been attacked, six American troops have been killed and three planes shot down. Hezbollah has entered the war, and the Persian Gulf countries are anxious and running out of expensive interceptors used against cheap Iranian drones. Saudi and Qatari energy installations have been struck. Oil and gas prices have shot up and shipping has practically stopped through the Strait of Hormuz, through which at least a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas normally travels.

Ali Larijani, secretary of the Iranian National Security Council, claimed on social media on Monday that Iran, “unlike the United States, has prepared itself for a long war,” including plans for gradual escalation and expansion of the battlefield.

Franz-Stefan Gady, a military analyst, called the conflict “a race for and against time.” Israel, the United States and their allies are trying to destroy missiles, launchers and communication nodes as quickly as possible, he said, so that more advanced Iranian missiles cannot easily be launched when interceptors are in short supply. 

Even the heavily armed Israel, toward the end of the 12-day war against Iran in June, had to limit its use of interceptors, allowing some Iranian missiles to land if they were not deemed to be close to key sites or cities.

A city glows brightly at night, featuring ancient stone walls and many illuminated buildings. Multiple light trails curve into the dark sky above.

Air defenses firing in Jerusalem on Sunday to intercept missiles launched from Iran.Credit...Mahmoud Illean/Associated Press

If Iran’s strategy is clear, so are the risks. And those are already coming into view.

On Monday, Mr. Trump vowed to continue the war for at least another month and did not rule out the use of American ground troops. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “The hardest hits are yet to come,” and the Pentagon said it would send more soldiers and fighter jets to the war.

And there are suggestions, analysts say, that the United States is encouraging Iranian minorities, like the Kurds and the Baluchis, to rise up against the government, bombing police and army positions in those territories, hoping to create at least the start of a popular uprising.

Although Iran has attacked Persian Gulf countries, including hotels and airports, Tehran has so far failed to drive a wedge between them and Washington. 

The nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council, including Saudi Arabia, issued a statement on Sunday underlining “their unified stance in confronting these attacks, stressing that the security of G.C.C. member states is indivisible” and reserving the right to respond in self-defense.

While calling for a cessation of hostilities, the members have not criticized the U.S.-Israel war against Iran and are likely to allow American forces to have overflight rights, which they denied at the start of the war.

In the past, the Persian Gulf nations have acted as mediators, urging Washington to pursue negotiations with Tehran instead of war. But, under attack from Iran, those countries are now more likely to allow American forces greater operational access to their airspace and territory that would help the United States conduct operations more efficiently, said Hasan T. Alhasan, a Middle East expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London research organization.

Britain, France and Germany, which have criticized Iran but did not initially support this war, have also now indicated that they could act to protect their own troops and interests in the Persian Gulf, Mr. Alhasan told the BBC, “because everyone realizes that the collective global interest here is at stake.” 

But having tried to wean itself off Russian gas, Europe is more dependent than ever on energy from the Persian Gulf, while half of India’s oil travels through the Strait of Hormuz. So pressures on Mr. Trump to shorten the war will grow, even if Israel is anxious to force a conclusion to end the threat of the Islamic Republic.

A person in black clothing and head covering walks past an open gate. Other people are visible in the background, walking through a large, covered entrance.

A school in Beirut, Lebanon, used as a shelter for people forced to flee their homes.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

Mr. Trump often talks about wanting to do a deal with Iran and has recently brought up the example of Venezuela, where he was content to capture President Nicolás Maduro but leave his government largely in place. “What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” Mr. Trump told The New York Times on Sunday.

It may be that Iran, too, will replace the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed on the first day of the war, with a less ideological government that could be willing to negotiate a deal on its nuclear program to preserve the system.

As ever, it is hard to know Mr. Trump’s mind, said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, a research group. “Trump already took out Khamenei, which no other president dared to do,” she said. “He has an offramp if he wants, even if Israel sees a momentous window to take out this regime.”

Matthew Kroenig, a former U.S. defense official under Republican presidents who studies Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, agreed. Mr. Trump “is skeptical of long, drawn-out military campaigns” and could be satisfied with a number of outcomes, including the Venezuela model, he said. 

“They’ve already achieved several of their objectives,” added Mr. Kroenig, who is vice president of the Atlantic Council in Washington. Ayatollah Khamenei and much of the leadership of a major American adversary are dead, and Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and other military capabilities are badly degraded, Mr. Kroenig noted.

“So I think they could go home almost at any time and declare this a success,” he said. Right now, he added, “I think the strategy is more about what they want to avoid than about exactly what they want to achieve.”