The missile strike intersects with two other flash points. The Administration blames Tehran for attacks on international shipping—six foreign oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman since May 12th—and for aggressive acts by proxies in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. Iran is also threatening to breach the landmark 2015 nuclear deal in July, unless major powers, notably in Europe, provide the economic benefits that it promised. Trump unilaterally—and recklessly—abandoned the deal a year ago, then reimposed punitive sanctions. Iran’s oil exports have plummeted—from 3.2 million barrels a day to some half a million. Now, in response, Tehran says that it will exceed the limits that the deal placed on its nuclear program, starting with the enrichment of a higher grade of uranium. The threat may be brinkmanship, but, in theory, that uranium could also be used to fuel a bomb within a year.
“The United States does not seek conflict with Iran,” Patrick Shanahan, the Acting Secretary of Defense, said on June 17th, just hours before he resigned. Yet, since May, the Pentagon has committed thousands of new troops to the region, along with B-52 bombers, Patriot air-defense missiles, and a carrier strike group led by the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. Trump now has four options to rectify a crisis of his own making. One is to steadily increase his “maximum pressure” campaign to cut off Tehran’s oil exports, while pushing to negotiate a broader accord that would address terrorism, ballistic missiles, regional meddling, and human rights. The prospects of success are small. “There’s zero incentive for Iran to talk to us,” John Kirby, a retired admiral and a former spokesman at the State Department and at the Pentagon, said. “We’ve damaged Iran’s economy, but not enough to bring it to the table.” Nor does the Islamic Republic want to reward Trump for scrapping the nuclear accord.
Another proposal is to flaunt even more troops, ships, and aircraft around Iran’s borders—or even to deploy the U.S. Navy to escort tankers through the Persian Gulf. It’s been tried before: in 1987, during the Iran-Iraq War, Operation Earnest Will, the largest U.S. convoy since the Second World War, had thirty ships in the Gulf to escort reflagged Kuwaiti tankers ferrying Iraqi oil. The first tanker struck an Iranian mine. Iran blamed “invisible hands,” but heralded the incident as “an irreparable blow to America’s political and military prestige.’’ In 1988, the U.S.S. Samuel B. Roberts hit a mine and almost sank; in retaliation, the U.S. destroyed two Iranian oil platforms and four ships. The United States was not an innocent party: the U.S.S. Vincennes mistakenly downed an Iran Air passenger plane, killing two hundred and ninety people. Earnest Will lasted for fourteen months, ending only after Iran and Iraq agreed to a ceasefire.
A third option is a tit-for-tat military response to any provocation. That is what the White House was considering on Thursday night—the equivalent of its “precision strikes” on Syrian sites in 2018. The targets were reportedly Iranian missile batteries and radar sites. But Iran is not Syria, the shell of a former state; it has the world’s eighth-largest military, with more than half a million forces. Punitive action would send a strong signal, but it could also trigger a potentially catastrophic escalatory cycle.
