Will the U.S. now attack Iran? 10 thoughts

Signs that Washington sees an opportunity as well as a threat

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Let’s do this in bullet points:

1. You’ve seen by now, I’m sure, footage of the Iranian ballistic missile attack against Israel. The attack seems to have been intended to be much more serious than the April strike, which used mostly slow-moving munitions and was signalled way in advance. This attack used hypersonic cruise missiles and came with only a few hours’ notice. Right now there are reports of very minimal damage and casualties in Israel, but it’s likely we’ll learn about more later. There is not a free flow of information from Israel right now. Still, the U.S. is claiming that the Iranian attack was mostly “ineffective”.

2. This is big: there are a lot of indications from Washington that the U.S. is considering joining Israel in some kind of retaliatory action against Iran. Both before and after the Iranian strike, various U.S. officials warned Iran of severe consequences for any attack and talked about coordinating a response with the Israeli government. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that "There will be severe consequences for this Iranian attack and we will work with Israel to make sure that is the case". We perhaps stand on the cusp of a situation that has been speculated about for 15 years or more: a joint American-Israeli attack on the Islamic Republic.

3. How did we get here? The most important factor is surely the complete collapse of Iran’s deterrence, which rested on two central pillars: Hezbollah, and Iran’s own missile arsenal. Israel’s weaponization of Hezbollah’s pagers and walkie-talkies allowed it to throw the organization into chaos and then decimate its senior leadership in a series of strikes. Since then, Israel has reportedly destroyed almost half of the arsenal of rockets and missiles Hezbollah built up over three decades while suffering virtually no damage in response. In war games held a year ago, strikes on Beirut and Israeli ground operations in south Lebanon were supposed to trigger massive and destructive missile barrages against Israeli population centers. That hasn’t happened.

4. Iran’s own deterrence has also suffered, including in this latest attack. The April strike could at least be explained as more about sending a signal than actually attempting to cause much damage, but it’s hard to say that about the latest barrage. I suspect we’ll learn later that there has been some damage, but clearly it’s not a lot. Yesterday it looked like Iran was going to just sit by and let Hezbollah be taken apart because it didn’t want to stop Israel; today it looks like it can’t stop Israel even if it wants to.

5. Back to the U.S. There are indications that all of this is changing official thinking in Washington. U.S. officials have been warning Israel against escalation in Lebanon for months, but their thinking changed in the aftermath of the communications attacks. They started to agree with the Israeli government that an opportunity existed to severely degrade Hezbollah, and that the benefits of doing so outweighed the risks. They praised the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, and did little to dissuade Israel from its subsequent attacks on Hezbollah. Benjamin Netanyahu has surely noted that nothing succeeds like success.

6. The million dollar question now is whether U.S. officials will make the same assessment with regard to Iran, and whether they would be willing to support Israel in seeking relatively broad goals with its response. For years, Israeli and American hawks have dreamed of a joint attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which they bill as a final end to the threat of an Iranian bomb. They’re likely wrong about that - it’s not clear how much damage can be done to Iran’s nuclear program from the air, and it could be reconstituted later - but there will be pressure now from some quarters to see the present moment as an opportunity to realize this goal. They’ll argue that it kills two birds with one stone: it constitutes retaliation, and it takes something away from Iran’s leadership that it deeply values and will struggle to replace.

7. On the other hand, and counterintuitively, the U.S. has more to lose than Israel from going down this path. Iran might launch further missile barrages against Israel, and they might even be bigger and more successful, particularly if coordinated with what’s left of Hezbollah. But thus far, the ability of Iran and its proxies to inflict harm on Israel seems limited. The U.S., by contrast, has much more vulnerable military and civilian assets in the Middle East; it has to worry about protecting the flow of oil and shipping through the Straits of Hormuz and the Red Sea; it has geopolitical commitments all over the world which it sees as more pressing; and the fact it has all of these vulnerabilities makes it more likely to get sucked into an open-ended conflict rather than being able to call it quits when it chooses to.

8. (A related point. These calculations are incredibly complex; they require wisdom and experience. The current president of the United States has both, but he also was forced to step down from his campaign earlier this year because of his inability to from coherent sentences due to his advanced age. I’m amazed this isn’t more of a subject of media commentary. But it also shows how many people operate with a de facto broad view of what the presidency is: For as long as Jake Sullivan is out giving press conferences and we hear leaks from the interagency meetings, they assume the system is running just fine. But is it?)

9. But you can imagine another argument which is being aired in both Washington and Tel Aviv: With Iran’s conventional deterrence shattered and the region entering a period of prolonged conflict, the regime will have a much more compelling reason to seek nuclear weapons to ensure its future security. Some Americans and Israelis will undoubtedly argue that it’s necessary to take this possibility off the table, and to do it right now.

10. What we are witnessing right now are attempts to communicate through violence: to send a message that the other side interprets as a signal of resolve yet does not feel compelled to respond to in a way which only invites more violence. History is littered with examples of this failing, and ending in a war far more destructive than either side desired. We are, I judge, just one step away going over that precipice this time around. The next move will be crucial in determining if we actually do.