Tension
between Washington and Tehran has been a growing undercurrent of the
war in Gaza, even as both countries tried to prevent it from sparking a
direct confrontation during the first six months of fighting. Robin
Wright, a joint fellow at USIP and the Wilson Center, explores
the evolving flashpoints in the world’s most volatile region as well as
the challenges for U.S. diplomacy, the new triggers for a wider regional
conflagration and the historical backdrop.
What are the dangers to the U.S. of a wider war in the Middle East?
Tensions
have sporadically escalated during the first six months of the Gaza war
as the U.S. and Iran’s network of allies have increasingly been pitted
against each other — in Gaza and beyond. The primary danger for the U.S.
has been getting sucked into disparate roles — either as an ally or
adversary, as an arms supplier or diplomatic broker— on other fronts.
The Middle East has consumed top U.S. officials and diverted attention
from China's ambitions in the Indo-Pacific and Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine. A war that spawns greater instability in the Middle East could
also impact the global economy. By April 7, the six-month mark of the
Gaza war, the price of Brent crude oil — the benchmark — rose above $90 per barrel and could hit $100 per barrel by September, JPMorgan Chase predicted. The U.S. is active — and vulnerable — on multiple fronts.
Where is the U.S. deployed — and vulnerable?
The U.S. has more than 10,000 forces
deployed across the Middle East — in Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan,
Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, northeastern Syria and the
United Arab Emirates. After the Gaza war erupted, the U.S. also deployed
two aircraft carrier groups in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea with
more than 7,000 additional military personnel. They increased force protection, but they also became targets.
The most vulnerable are the 900 American forces deployed in northeast Syria and another 2,500in
Iraq. Both have been part of international coalitions to contain the
remnants of ISIS, which still has active cells in both countries. U.S.
forces were engaged in counterterrorism operations unrelated to Israel
or Iran. Their small and scattered posts have nevertheless been hit dozens of times by Iranian-backed militias since the Gaza war erupted.
Another
350 Americans have been based at Tower 22, a Jordanian post on the
border with Iraq and Syria to support Operation Inherent Resolve against
ISIS. The U.S. also has hundreds of diplomats in the Middle East,
although none in Iran — the nexus of threats against U.S. personnel,
interests and allies.
What are the U.S. diplomatic options?
The U.S. has important leverage in the Middle East, although its influence has diminished amid the growing military
and economic roles of Russia and China. It has faced a diplomatic
balancing act. In April, President Biden threatened to shift U.S. policy
on Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not do more to support a cease-fire that included the release of hostages by Hamas andmore
humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. In the same conversation,
however, he vowed that Israel could count on American support for any
threat from Iran.
The U.S. has limited diplomatic
options in dealing with the Islamic republic, with most of Iran’s
allied militias already on the U.S. terrorism list. Washington has had no formal relations with
Tehran since April 1980, after the then new revolutionary government
refused to free dozens of American envoys seized in the U.S. Embassy
takeover. It relies on messages relayed through Switzerland, which represents
U.S. interests in Iran, or other allies. “We have the ability to send
messages, very clear messages, to Iran both directly and indirectly, and
we do so when it’s in our interest,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on April 3.
But
the political environment in Tehran has grown even more hostile to
Washington since the election of President Ebrahim Raisi, in 2021, and a
harder line parliament, in 2024. The U.S. had a short-lived direct
channel to Tehran in 2013 during negotiations by the world’s six major
powers to limit Iran’s nuclear program. Led by the U.S. in the final
phase, the often-torturous talks produced a controversial deal with Iran
in 2015. President Trump withdrew from it in 2018. Iranian envoys have
since refused to talk directly to U.S. officials.
What are the U.S. diplomatic obstacles?
U.S.
diplomacy in the Middle East was stuck on multiple fronts during the
first six months of the Gaza war. The Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 and
the prolonged Israeli military response were unanticipated setbacks. Since 2020, the Trump and Biden administrations had concentrated on extending the Arab-Israeli peace process launched in the Abraham Accords.
Both presidents personally tried to convince Saudi Arabia, the
birthplace and guardian of Islam’s holy places, to recognize Israel as
the most significant step to end a conflict that began in 1948. Of the
22 states in the ArabLeague, only six have formally recognized Israel. But the U.S. initiative froze in place as the Gaza war deepened.
Amid
that impasse, Washington struggled to broker cease-fires and a post-war
plan for Gaza. It helped orchestrate the first cease-fire, which lasted
from Nov. 24 to 30, 2023. Hamas released 105 captives, including some
foreign workers, and Israel freed 240 Palestinian prisoners. For months,
senior U.S. officials then held several rounds of talks with Egyptian,
Qatari and Israeli officials on a second cease-fire to last six weeks.
It was unlikely, however, to end the Gaza war, which both Israel and
Hamas defined as an existential conflict — or a fight to the finish of
the other. Washington faced similar obstacles in navigating terms to end
thousands of cross-border attacks between Israel and Hezbollah. The
region became a diplomatic quagmire.
What have been the triggers for a wider war?
During the first six months of war, hostilities between Israel and Hamas spilled onto other fronts in the Middle East. Militias
aligned with Iran escalated attacks on Israel as well as U.S. forces
deployed in the Middle East and international shipping in the Red Sea.
They vowed to continue their campaigns until the Gaza war ended. The triggers played out in disparate arenas.
In January 2024, a drone strike killed
three American forces and injured 40 others deployed at Tower 22 in
Jordan. The Pentagon implicated Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed
group that operates in both Iraq and Syria. “We know that Iran is behind
it,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told
reporters. “Iran continues to arm and equip these groups to launch these
attacks, and we will certainly hold them responsible.” The attack was
the first time that Jordan, a close U.S. ally, was drawn into the
standoff between Washington and Tehran.
The U.S. hit back on February 2 with a blitz of
airstrikes — 125 precision munitions fired on 85 targets at seven
facilities spread across Syria and Iraq. Each site was used by Iran's
Revolutionary Guards “and affiliated militias” to attack U.S. forces,
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement. The counterstrikes
were just “the beginning of our response. There will be more steps,”
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told ABC News. “Some of those steps will be seen, some may not be seen. But there will be more action taken to respond to the tragic death of the three brave U.S. service members.”
Tensions
escalated further in April, when Israel launched an unprecedented
attack on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus. The airstrike, by
two U.S.-made F-35s, killed three generals in the Revolutionary Guards
and other officers in a building abutting the Iranian embassy in Syria.
It was leveled. The attack reportedly coincided with a meeting between
the Revolutionary Guards and a Palestinian militia to discuss the war in
Gaza. Among the dead was General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the
Revolutionary Guard coordinator of Iran’s covert operations in Syria and
Lebanon.
All U.S. forces were put on high alert after the
Israeli attack. “We have made clear directly to the Iranian Government
that it should not use this incident as a pretext to attack American
troops or American facilities in the region,” Miller, the State
Department spokesman, said on April 8. “And we will continue to make
clear to them that they should not take any escalatory actions.
Who is now making threats of a wider war?
The
dangers of a wider war were reflected in the increasingly inflammatory
language as the Gaza war hit the six-month mark. Iran vowed revenge for
the Israeli attack on its generals in Syria. “The time, type, plan of
the operation will be decided by us, in a way that makes Israel regretwhat it did,” General Mohammad Bagheri, a Revolutionary Guard commander on Iran’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the April 6 memorial for the slain Iranian officers. “This will definitely be done.” A second general issued a broader warning that no Israeli embassies were safe anymore.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that his forces had not yet used it major
weapons in their attacks on northern Israel. The militia is estimated
to have more than 150,000 rockets and missiles. “The Resistance in
Lebanon doesn’t fear war. We are fully ready to engage in a war that the
enemy will regret,” he said in a televised speech on April 5 to mark
the annual Quds Day.
The event was created by Iran after the 1979 revolution to support
Palestinians and oppose the Israeli occupation. “The enemy knows well what a war with Lebanon means, if they want war then hello and welcome!” Nasrallah boasted.
Israel issued its own warnings. General Herzi Halevi, chief of the Israel Defense Forces, vowed that his military knew how to deal with Iran “offensively and defensively. We prepared for this. We have good defense systems. We know how to act powerfully against Iran in places near and far," he saidon the six-month anniversary of the Gaza war.
Naftali Bennet, the former Israeli prime minister, said Israel
needed to be more persistent in directly targeting Iranian assets.
“Iran is an octopus of terror,” he told CNN on April 7. “Its head is in
Tehran and then it sends its tentacles all around Israel and the Middle
East.” Tehran “loves to use other people’s lives” to promote its agenda.
Its allies “have been pounding Israel using their arms while their head
was sort of immune,” Bennet said. “So the age of immunity for Iran’s
head isover.”
What is the historic backdrop of tensions?
Iran
and Israel have engaged in an increasingly deadly shadow war since
1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon to force the Palestine Liberation
Organization away from the southern border. The biggest unintended
consequence of the conflict was the emergence of Hezbollah among
Shiites, who dominated southern Lebanon and became enraged by Israel’s
occupation. Iran tapped into Shiite fury to foster, train, and arm the
embryo of Hezbollah.
As it grew, the Lebanese militia repeatedly targeted Israeli troops during their 18-year occupation of the south. The U.S. was sucked into their war. In 1983, the first generation of Hezbollah operativesbombed
U.S. peacekeepers in Beirut, killing 241 marines and naval personnel.
It was the largest loss of U.S. military life in a single incident since
Iwo Jima in World War II. For Israel, Hezbollah evolved into a far
greater threat than the PLO had ever been. And Lebanon became the
frontline for Iran’s effort to eliminate Israel and elevate its own
influence across the MiddleEast.
In 1985, Yitzak Rabin, then the Israeli defense minister, reflected,
“Among the many surprises, and most of them not for the good, that came
out of the war in Lebanon, the most dangerous is that the war let the
Shiites out of the bottle. No one predicted it; I couldn’t find it in
any intelligence report.” He warned that
if Israel’s war in Lebanon had resulted in the PLO being replaced by
Shiite extremism, “we have done the worst [thing] in our struggle
against terrorism.” Lebanon’s Shiites “have the potential for a kind of
terrorism that we have not yet experienced.”
What was the tipping point?
The rise of Hezbollah transformed the Middle East. Israel had fought
four wars between 1948 and 1973 — all against the armies of states.
Between 1982 and 2000, Hezbollah was the first non-state actor to engage
in a war that forced a unilateral military withdrawal. In 2000, Israel
opted to end what had become known as its Vietnam. “This 18-year tragedy
is over,” Prime Minister Ehud Barak said at the time. Then Foreign Minister David Levy declared that the withdrawal meant that Israel was “regaining controlof the initiative.”
Yet Hezbollah was not disarmed. Hostilities across the border continued. Israel fought a second war in Lebanon in 2006 after a Hezbollah incursion across the border captured Israeli soldiers. That war lasted 34-days — Israel’s longest war until 2024. It, too, ended with an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and without enduring termsto stabilize the border.
Hezbollah was the first strategic success for Iran’s revolutionary regime. It marked the beginning of a trend that spread across the MiddleEast. Militias in Iraq, Yemen, the Palestinian territories and Syria now share the long-term goal of defeating Israel and forcing U.S. troops out of the Middle East.
Where do things stand in 2024?
Between 1982
and 2024, Iran built the most powerful and well-armed alliance in the
Middle East — with branches from the Mediterranean across the Red Sea to
the shores of the Persian Gulf — dubbed the Axis of Resistance. It also
developed an independent arms industry. By 2024, the largest share of
the world’s drones in use were manufactured in Iran, the Global Terrorism Trends and Analysis Center reported. Iran’s nuclear advances also narrowed the time required to produce a bomb.
Over the decades, U.S. and Israeli counterstrikes on Iranian allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen have had impact.
Some militia arms were destroyed. Military infrastructure was disabled.
Smuggling routes were hit. Leaders and fighters were killed. In January
2020, a U.S. airstrike assassinated General Qassem Soleimani, commander
of the Quds Force and the mastermind of Iran’s covert activities across the Middle East, and the leader of Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq.
Yet attacks by the Axis of Resistance did not stop, even as Tehran demonstrated what the Iranian media called “strategic patience”
in not directly taking on the U.S. with its own assets. During the
first six months of the Gaza war, Iran’s allies all escalated their
separate campaigns, claiming sympathy with Hamas. By April 2024, Iran
and its disparate allies were linked to the deaths, directly or
indirectly, of thousands of Americans and Israelis in suicide bombings
and hostage-takings as well as rocket, drone and missile attacks over
four decades. And there was no end in sight.