Pressed economically by robust sanctions, the rulers of the Islamic Republic are likely to decide that violent confrontation with the U.S. is worth the risks—especially if doing so helps put a Democrat in the White House in 2021—argues Reuel Marc Gerecht in a detailed analysis:
[It is] likely that Tehran [will] aggressively test the United States, which is exactly what happened before [U.S. forces killed the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani], when Iran-backed Shiite Iraqi militias repeatedly fired rockets U.S. forces, eventually killing an American contractor. . . . And American attacks against Iraqi Shiite militias tied to Iran aren’t likely to have any lingering dissuasive effect on the mullahs’ intentions and actions. A tit-for-tat game with these forces, where the administration refrains from striking Iran for the lethal actions of Shiite militias that Iran controls or subventions, will undermine the perception that President Trump is willing to kill Iranians. For President Trump to deter Tehran, he must strike its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps directly.
Jerusalem has fundamentally changed Iranian calculations and plans in the Levant by its continuous bombing of Iranian bases, vehicles, and personnel [in Syria]. According to Israeli defense and intelligence officials, Tehran had plans to open major Revolutionary Guard Corps bases in Syria; they have shelved them. What is striking and instructive is the significant damage and fatalities Israel has inflicted upon the clerical regime, and Khamenei’s understated response. How Trump does what is required to deter, assuming he is willing to, given opposition in Congress, is an open question.
And Khamenei has little to lose by being aggressive, especially if he doesn’t directly target Americans, since doing nothing leaves him in a losing status quo, where his economy slowly crashes, his people become angrier and possibly more rebellious, and the more religiously militant forces in his own society demand vengeance against Washington’s “maximum-pressure” campaign. Wounding the United States, driving back its physical and cultural presence in the Muslim Middle East, remains a raison d’être of the Islamic Republic.
Moreover, writes Gerecht, there is every reason to believe that Iran has all the while been working toward a nuclear weapon, and could some day soon come very close to the point of no return:
If the military option exists [to destroy Tehran’s nuclear capabilities], it’s probably Israel that will exercise it. And given the considerable success the Israelis have had in Syria in checking Iranian ambitions, the odds of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear sites have certainly increased. Israeli senior officials seem less fearful, of both Iranian and American repercussions, than they did in 2011 and 2012.
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