US-Iran
tensions: Is Iran deliberately playing with fire?
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/us-iran-tensions-is-iran-deliberately-playing-with-fire/
The United States and
Iran are on a collision course because they hold very different interpretations
of reality, US-Iranian tensions cannot be reduced without the political will to
revisit perceptions of one another, but when the Iranian leaders hope that
heightened tension will open the door to the negotiating table, will it be
possible?\·
The United States and Iran, acting on
perceptions of one another that seem to be engraved in stone, are on a
collision course that could have devastating consequences for Arab Gulf states
and Iraq. The risk is magnified by each one’s adoption of policies and
strategies that are based on faulty assessments of the other.
The United States and Iran have waged a
contentious dialogue of the deaf for much of the past four decades.
It is a dialogue that seemingly brought the
two countries to the brink of war in January following tit-for-tat attacks with
potentially devastating consequences for Arab Gulf states.
The tit-for-tat culminated in the killing
of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani that initially was thought to have deterred
Iran.
It did not, and the talking past one
another heightens the risk of things getting, again, out of hand.
Read more: Why Donald Trump is putting the US into a
corner on Iran?
Successive US and Iranian governments are
the culprits even if US President Barak Obama and his Iranian counterpart,
Hassan Rouhani, attempted to change the course of history with a 2015
international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The agreement failed to
revise deep-seated distrust, including US perceptions that Iran
seeks to destabilize the Middle East and sow regional mischief and Iran’s
conviction that successive US administrations and their regional allies seek
regime change in Tehran.
A dangerous trend is emerging in Iraq amid
the spread of COVID-19 and withdrawal of US troops from military bases across
the country. ISIS has increased attacks in central Iraq over the past month,
targeting members of the Iraqi army, federal police, and the PMF.
Vivi@aveeenkarim
. While the withdrawal of coalition forces
can be attributed to the virus, the threat of terrorism goes beyond the
COVID-19 crisis. Intelyse had previously warned that an ISIS resurgence was
imminent following the heightened escalation in US-Iran tensions.
Post-pandemic tensions
In a sign of the times, the global pandemic
has become another Iranian-US battlefield in which both sides are driven by
perceptions of one another rather than a will to create opportunities to break
the logjam.
Perceptions have been reinforced not only
by a US refusal to ease harsh sanctions, but also Saudi Arabia’s failure to
follow in the footsteps of the United Arab Emirates by shipping medical
supplies to Iran and by Iran’s attempt to use the pandemic to pressure
Washington and secure financial aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The divide is further magnified by the fact
that misperceptions have filtered into the fabric of foreign policy communities
of both countries that lead to policy recommendations potentially based on
problematic analysis.
Read more: Iran Vs. America: How there was never going
to be a war
Iran’s policy of playing with fire
The killing of Mr. Soleimani did everything
but send a message warning Iran that it was playing with fire.
It missed the point that Iranian strategy,
after initially failing to pressure the Trump administration into reversing its
2018 withdrawal from the nuclear accord, is centred on playing with fire.
Iran last weekend stepped
up Revolutionary Guard speed boat patrols in the Gulf after the United States
warned that there had been “dangerous and harassing approaches.”
Rightly or wrongly, Iran
is likely to believe that it is a strategy that may not have achieved its main
goal so far but has produced results.
The National
✔@TheNationalUAE
Even amid the #coronavirus pandemic, political and military escalation
continues between Iran and the UShttps://bit.ly/34LWfFB
No let-up in US-Iran tensions even during
pandemic
Attacks and threats have steadily continued
since heightened confrontation that led to downing of Ukrainian jet in January
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Iran appears to see forcing a withdrawal of
US troops from Iraq as achievable and will interpret the recent concentration
of US forces in a smaller number of Iraqi bases as a step in that direction.
The US says the redeployment was planned
prior to President Donald J. Trump’s assertion that Iran was planning “a sneak attack” against American forces.
Iran last year opted for gradual escalation
involving attacks on US targets in Iraq as well as critical national infrastructure
in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in a bid to bring the region to
the brink of war.
Iran: Experimenting with two diverging
policies
Convinced that neither the United States
nor Iran wants a war, Iranian leaders hope that heightened tension will open
the door to a return to the negotiating table.
If that were correct, it would throw into
doubt recommendations that the United States should adopt a strategy of
deterrence against Iran, similar for example to Israel’s successful bid to push
Iranian and Iranian-backed forces in Syria away from the Jewish state’s border.
Read more: Qassem Soleimani’s assassination: Was it a
plan to spread anarchy?
Some 200 airstrikes against 1,000 targets
“slowed Iran’s military build-up in Syria while avoiding a broader regional
conflagration that would have been damaging to Israel’s interests,” the Center for a New American Security said in a report released last week.
The problem is that
comparing Iranian policy towards the United States and Israel amounts to comparing
apples and pears. Iran has no interest in pushing Israel towards a negotiation
nor does it want to risk an all-out war.
In other words, Israel
may find it far easier than the United States to deter Iran. Escalated US
attacks on Iranian targets, unlike Israeli strikes, would probably serve Iran’s
immediate purpose.
The lay of the land is complicated not only
by the rejiggering of US forces in Iraq but also the country’s internal
political dynamics.
The killing of Mr. Soleimani and Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis, an Iraqi commander who died alongside the Iranian general, has
brought to the surface differences among pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. The two
men were pivotal figures in keeping the militias in line.
Some militias are demanding that they be integrated
into the Iraqi military while others want to continue operating independently
albeit in close association with the military and yet others have forged
alliances with criminal networks.
Different interpretations of reality
All in all, little suggests that US-Iranian
tensions can be reduced without the political will to revisit and puncture
perceptions of one another. That may be a tall order given that the nuclear
accord failed to create a real opening.
Yet, even without an opening, both the
United States and Iran would do well to take a hard look at their perceptions
in a bid to realistically assess their options.
Read more: Iran at the crossroads: Internal challenges
vs. Regional ambitions
“The United States and Iran are
on a collision course . . . because [they] . . . hold very different
interpretations of reality,” said strategist and Middle East scholar Ross
Harrison. “
The United States, which had built its
doctrine around combatting a global threat from the Soviet Union, found itself flatfooted
in dealing with a regional phenomenon like post-revolutionary Iran…. The United
States can injure Iran, but it is unlikely to be able to compromise Iran’s
regional influence.”
Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at
the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the
University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The
Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog. This article is republished with
the permission of the author. The views expressed in this article are the
author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Global Village Space’s editorial
policy.
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