Yves here. Yves here. While Andrew Korybko’s conclusion about Iran seems reasonable, one can get there by a somewhat different route. There is a considerable body of thought, as well as evidence, that Iran has more than enough in the way of deeply bunkered missiles for them to survive even a US nuclear strike handily. That would mean the end of Israel and likely a lot of Saudi oil production facilities. That’s even before getting to the question of whether Iran also has the means to detect and therefore potentially shoot down not-perfectly-stealthy B2 bombers if they reach Iranian air space.1
So the equation is not that Iran is actually lacking in leverage (being able to drive oil prices to the moon on a sustained basis is a lot of leverage) but the US does not accept that Iran has meaningful power (as in its believes it can destroy the regime and/or the nation).
But the US grossly underestimated Russia before the Special Military Operation and seems disposed again to excessively discount a hostile power’s capabilities (mind you, the US made them hostile…). And Iran may have helped feed that perception by having a nuclear program that is believed capable of building a bomb in short order.2 If Iran were confident that it had a mutual assured destruction capability with respect to Israel, US bases in the region, and oil infrastructure in the region, why would it need to be keeping a nuclear capability close at hand?
Korybko does not point out, as we did in a recent post, that the US demands of Iran are so extreme that Iran can’t say yes. They want Iran to give up not just nuclear development but also its missiles, as in conventional deterrence. And with the US demonstrably agreement-incapable with Iran and generally, why should Iran bother with this exercise, except to delay and hope the eye of Sauron US attention moves elsewhere?
Many commentators are weighing the odds of Israel (and thus the US) attacking Iran, given the buildup of forces in the area (not just the B2s in Diego Garcia; see John Helmer in his latest talk with Nima for a brief mention at 3:00 of more assets being moved from German to Qatar, consistent with a “raid on Iran”).
It seems likely that the immediate US objective is not Iran but the Houthis, given that the US is already making frequent strikes to try to decapitate its leadership. If the US were to succeed in stopping Houthi attacks on Israel shipping, it might back off on Iran, since the recently leaked Hegseth memo indicated the US really does want to focus on China.
But it does not seem likely that the US will subdue Ansar Allah, since Saudi Arabia and past US efforts failed. Admittedly, there is the possibility if we collectively get lucky, that the Houthis will even deliver the US a bloody nose, say by shooting down one of those precious B2s. That hopefully would lead to a major rethink about taking on Iran.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website
Iranian-US tensions are boiling after Trump threatened to bomb Iran following its rejection of direct talks over a new nuclear deal. He also ordered the Pentagon to move six B-2 stealth bombers, which CNN assessed to be a full 30% of the US’ stealth bomber fleet, to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. The Iranian Supreme Leader responded by promising strong retaliation if the US attacks while one of his chief advisors warned that their country would then have “no choice” but to build nukes if that happens.
Although the US Intelligence Community’s latest Annual Threat Assessment claimed that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”, there have been long-standing concerns that it could quickly do so if the decision is made due to its nuclear program allegedly have a rapid breakout potential. This makes it no different in principle than Japan’s, which could begin churning out nukes in a matter of months, but neither the US nor its regional allies consider Japan to be a threat, unlike how they view Iran.
The US’ renewed bombing campaign against Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen might have been partially intended to send a message to the Islamic Republic aimed at getting it to enter direct talks over this issue by signaling that Trump 2.0 does indeed have the political will to initiate military action if it refuses. Despite Iran’s recent rejection of his demand, Trump might still hold off on this for now due to the likelihood that Iran could inflict unacceptable retaliatory damage to the US’ regional bases and allies.
Furthermore, diplomacy hasn’t yet been exhausted since Iran didn’t reject indirect talks of the kind that Russia offered to mediate after reportedly being asked by the US to do so, which was discussed here. Therefore, it would be premature for the US to seriously consider bombing Iran at this time, yet that option isn’t off the table if indirect talks fail to reach a deal. Iran lacks the leverage for a fair deal with the US, however, so it’ll either have to accept a lopsided one or prepare for a major war that it might lose.
Iran is a proud civilization-state that’s loath to subordinate itself to anyone, hence the difficulty in getting it to agree to drastic curbs on its nuclear energy program that would enshrine its status as a second-class country in this regard, all while abandoning any chance of nuclear weapons in the future. From Iran’s perspective, this could embolden Israel into one day launching a large-scale conventional or even nuclear war against it, which Iran believes has only hitherto been deterred by dangling this Damocles’ sword.
That said, while Iran could inflict unacceptable retaliatory damage to the US’ regional bases and allies (first of all Israel) if it’s attacked over its refusal to agree to a Russian-mediated lopsided deal, it cannot inflict such damage to the US’ nuclear triad and would thus likely be destroyed. Iran couldn’t count on Russia intervening to help it either since their newly updated strategic partnership doesn’t include mutual defense obligations and Moscow doesn’t want war with Washington or West Jerusalem.
Even though the US could survive a major war with Iran, it still prefers to avoid one. So long as the US’ demands remain limited to drastically curbing Iran’s nuclear energy program and don’t expand to include curbs on its support for regional allies or its ballistic missile program, then creative diplomacy could prevail. For that to happen, Russia would have to devise a set of incentives for Iran that the US approves of and Iran then agrees to, but that’s still a far way off and Trump might strike first if he loses patience.
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1 Many military-connected but not Israel-friendly commentators have claimed that an Israel effort to strike Iran after Iran retaliated successfully for the assassinations of Hassan Nasrallah and Ismail Haniyeh was curtailed because the Israel pilots could detect that Iran was “seeing” and therefore could shoot their supposedly stealthy F-35. But the F-35 apparently throws off a lot of electronic signals and is less stealthy than the B2.
2 I discount the days to less than two weeks claims, but “not much longer than that” seems credible. There is also the wee issue of missile delivery, but I have read experts that have claimed that Iran would already have solved the big technical issues in building a hypersonic missile.
