Have Israel and the United States Done Enough to Deter Iran?

Matt Kroenig: Hi, Emma! Greetings from Singapore. I am here for a conference on weapons of mass destruction in the Indo-Pacific, so it has been pretty dark—with China’s massive nuclear buildup, North Korea’s illegal programs, and many other scary scenarios. Perhaps you have some good news from other parts of the world to cheer me up?

Emma Ashford: The Indo-Pacific? That’s a blast from the past! I remember back when Americans were going to pivot toward Asia to compete with China, back in 2008, 2014, 2020, 2023…

But as always, this administration has been sucked back into the Middle East. Now we’re looking at the prospect of a regionwide war, kicked off by Iran and Israel.

I feel like I already know your opinions on this, though, so tell me: Time to bomb Iran? Or still time to bomb Iran?

MK: Yes. And yes.

Of course, you are referring to Iran’s massive missile and drone attack on Israel last weekend. Israel and a coalition of allies successfully shot down almost all of the more than 300 offending projectiles. In response, Israel appears to have conducted a pinprick reprisal aimed at deescalating the conflict.

I think that was a mistake.

The better move would still be for Washington and Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear fuel-cycle facilities to exact a steep price on Iran and restore deterrence in the region. Indeed, this may be the world’s last best chance to keep Tehran from the bomb.

EA: Uh, let’s back up here. I’m relieved that we appear to have avoided the worst-case scenario. The Israeli response to this attack was small and non-escalatory. Thank goodness some sanity prevailed.

But the Israelis have not been entirely blameless in this whole affair. The significant Iranian attack last weekend itself was not unprovoked. It was a response to an Israeli strike on an Iranian embassy compound building in Syria that killed several senior Iranian generals. Israel’s strike may not have been technically a violation of international law, but it certainly violated a whole pile of international norms about the inviolability of embassies.

Iran’s response was both entirely expected, and, quite honestly, fairly restrained given the circumstances. Any country would respond in that situation.

MK: Israel’s strike on Iranian generals in Syria was not the start of the conflict. Remember when an Iranian-backed terror group raped and massacred Israelis on Oct. 7? And there has been a long shadow and proxy war between the two sides for many years. Untangling the start of the conflict would be impossible and unproductive.

But Iran’s attack last weekend was a watershed moment. Usually, Iran conducts its malign activities through proxies. This was the first time it conducted a direct, and large-scale, attack against Israel.

Israel needed to respond. The message coming out of this episode cannot be that it is OK for rogue states to launch hundreds of missiles at U.S. partners because they can shoot them down. Iran intended to kill many with this attack, and there is no guarantee that the defenses will be as successful next time.

EA: You’re certainly right that the origins of Israel-Iran tension go back much further than this. But U.S. intelligence initially assessed that Iran had no role in planning the Oct. 7 attacks, and perhaps more importantly, had no prior knowledge of them. Hamas may be an Iranian proxy, but in this case, it acted unilaterally.

And Iran has been remarkably restrained since October. It’s kept a pretty tight leash on Hezbollah, is talking to other regional states, and is clearly worried about escalation. The embassy strike upset that equilibrium, and the Israeli government is clearly to blame. Saying that Israel now must clearly respond is like hitting a guy in the face, and when he slugs you back turning to observers and saying, “Look what he did to me!”

MK: I strongly disagree. The better analogy is two guys have been shoving each other, then, suddenly, one of them unloads an AR-15 at the other, who happens to luckily survive because he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for most of the region’s disorder. Iran’s ghastly ideology is responsible. As Henry Kissinger famously said, Tehran needs to decide if it wants to be a country or a cause.

If the clerics hadn’t funded, trained, and armed proxies across the Middle East, the region would be a much more peaceful place. Without Iran, the Hezbollah terrorist group wouldn’t exist. Without Iran, the Houthis wouldn’t be holding international shipping hostage. Without Iran, three American service members wouldn’t have been killed in Jordan in January. And so on.

EA: You could play that blame game forever. If the United States hadn’t invaded Iraq, then maybe Iran wouldn’t have so many regional proxies. If Arthur Balfour hadn’t supported a Jewish state in Palestine, it wouldn’t have happened. We can’t change any of that, though frankly, I hardly see how you can blame Iran for the existence of the Israel-Palestine problem, which has existed far longer than the regime in Tehran has been in power.

At a certain point, it’s just pointless trying to blame one side for an ongoing rivalry. I’m partial to a quote from the great British satirist Terry Pratchett on this point. Every society, he argued, has a rallying cry related to their biggest enemy and the wrongs that have been done to them, “but only in a very few do they come out with the complete, unvarnished version, which is, ‘Remember-the-Atrocity-Committed-Against-Us-Last-Time-That-Will-Excuse-the-Atrocity-That-We’re-About-to-Commit-Today! And so on! Hurrah!’”

The proximate cause of the current crisis was the Damascus embassy complex bombing. The bigger-picture cause was the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Neither originated in Tehran, and we should be aware of that as we decide how to respond. Israel is using U.S. protection to shield itself from the repercussions of its own actions. To be honest, it might have miscalculated, thinking that because this embassy was in Syria, the normal rules didn’t apply. Again, I’m very glad to see that it decided not to roll the dice this time around the way it did a few weeks back.

MK: It’s really not that complicated. The Islamic Republic of Iran is evil. It is the instigator of almost all the conflict in the Middle East today. Period. The question is what to do about it.

Iran needs to understand that the costs of attacking the United States and its allies and partners greatly outweigh the benefits. If it doesn’t incur significant costs, the mullahs will instead learn that they can conduct large-scale attacks on the Israeli homeland without consequence.

EA: You say Iran is “evil,” a “cause” and not a country. It’s certainly not a good actor in world affairs. But those are strong words and imply a level of irrationality and irresponsibility that suggests one should treat Iran differently from other countries.

But I look at this attack on Israel, and I see a state desperately trying to calibrate its response in a way that doesn’t invite escalation, while still trying to create some level of deterrence. The Iranians telegraphed this attack well in advance. Not only did they announce that it was coming beforehand, but they also mixed waves of slow-moving drones with rockets in a way that almost ensured that defenders had time to shoot most of them down. Israel certainly got lucky that there was only one serious injury, but it’s very clear that the Iranians wanted to send a message, not escalate things.

Honestly, the only way they could have signaled that more clearly would have been to mail a copy of Tom Schelling’s Arms and Influence to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Maybe they actually did, and that’s why Netanyahu’s own response here was so well-calibrated?

MK: Let me restate. An evil regime launched a strategic attack on a U.S. partner and then signaled clearly to the world that it is deathly afraid of retaliation and hope that everything can just simmer down.

And your advice would be to essentially let Iran get away with it?

No, the right response would be to capitalize on Tehran’s worst fears and teach it a lesson. Iran’s supreme leader had to be worried that Israel might retaliate by hitting his nuclear facilities. That is exactly what the United States and Israel should do.

The other factor here is that the Pentagon reports that Iran’s breakout time to the bomb is a mere 12 days. The Iran nuclear deal is not coming back, and a nuclear Iran would be unacceptable, so this is a two-for-one deal: Restore deterrence with Iran and degrade its nuclear program.

EA: Debating who started this is pointless. The real question to consider is whether U.S. interests are served by escalating this conflict or not. A few points are relevant here: First, the Iranians isolated themselves in the region through this attack. Honestly, the world had been starting to turn on Israel for its punitive campaign in Gaza; now, Western states feel that they have to back Israel and dial down that pressure. Arab states have to slow their conversations with Iran! With Israel’s more limited response now clear, it will probably buy the Netanyahu government some breathing space internationally.

Second, the United States has no interest in seeing a regional conflict in the Middle East. You’re suggesting that we encourage Israel to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities? Or that we do it ourselves? That might hurt Iran’s nuclear latency—the term political scientists use to describe civilian nuclear technology that can easily be turned into weapons—a bit, but it certainly won’t delay it for long.

It will almost certainly push Iran to develop actual weapons, rather than just the latent capacity. And in the meantime, you will probably start a broader regional war in which the United States will spend scarce resources defending U.S. partners. You’ll suck us back into the Middle East for years.

I can hear the laughter in Beijing from here.

MK: Actually, the United States does have an incentive to escalate this conflict. It has been reported that Washington urged restraint because it feared escalation. But the Biden administration’s theory of escalation is unfounded.

Its eagerness to seek de-escalation only leads to further escalation, as U.S. rivals learn that they can conduct attacks with impunity.

EA: Good thing we have allies to escalate for us, then, isn’t it? As James Acton pointed out this week in Foreign Policy, the moral hazard problem—the idea that security guarantees can embolden a U.S. ally—is particularly acute. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

 MK: I agree with the former question. I don’t follow the latter.

Formal U.S. strategy documents routinely state that a foremost goal of U.S. defense policy is to deter and, if necessary, defeat armed aggression against the United States and its allies. Deterrence is nothing more than the threat of escalation held in reserve. If the United States is always unwilling to escalate and prohibits its allies from doing so, then deterrence will continue to erode.

And how would the United States get sucked into a broader regional war? Iran’s missiles and drones were revealed to be much less effective than many feared. Hamas is nearly incapacitated. The Houthis and Hezbollah are already conducting attacks with uncertain ability and will to escalate further at Iran’s command.

What else is Tehran going to do? To paraphrase Monty Python, are they going to bleed on us?

EA: Directly engage U.S. forces in the region, putting U.S. service members’ lives at risk. Shoot a variety of ordnance at critical targets in the region, from oil infrastructure to U.S. bases. Tell Hezbollah that it’s free to start an actual war with Israel in the north. Any of these, or plenty of other options. I’m not saying these would turn out great for Iran—I think it would be a mistake— but it has the options.

And a larger war will certainly push Iran to move from almost having a nuclear weapon into full-blown nuclear weapons power. You might be able to delay that with strikes, but I have my doubts you could delay them all that long. A war today means Iran will look like North Korea in five years. And it probably won’t even change the regional balance of power that much.

MK: Iran is already on the path to a bomb. What is your proposal to stop it? You think the nuclear deal is coming back?

And, seriously, what is your recommendation to Israel and the United States? To allow a rogue state to attack a U.S. partner with hundreds of drones and missiles, hit back with a token response, and call it a win?

EA: What’s your proposal to stop it? Maximum pressure failed. The nuclear deal was stopping progress toward a bomb. And you’re right, it’s not coming back. But that’s why we shouldn’t have withdrawn in the first place.

And in the current situation, I agree with the Biden administration for once: take the win. Israel got to commit a pretty flagrant—but operationally effective—violation of international norms, in exchange for an ineffectual Iranian attack and a rally-round-the-flag effect for Israel in the region. It then responded with minimal force to show that it could penetrate Iranian defenses and luckily didn’t trigger escalation. That is a better situation than before the Damascus attack for Israel! Take the win. Accept that mutual deterrence in the region is back in force.

And maybe in doing so, signal to Israel that it can’t just decide to escalate and pull the United States into a broader war in the region. This is about as clear a case of allied “reckless driving” as I’ve ever seen, and we certainly shouldn’t be rewarding it.

MK: We can have interesting historical debates about whether the nuclear deal was a good deal or not, but the relevant question is: What to do going forward? Everyone recognizes the deal is not coming back.

And imagine what the region would look like after Iran gets the bomb. We would have been in a Cuban missile crisis-like situation since Oct. 7, and this weekend’s attacks could have included nuclear-tipped missiles.

EA: Iran would be stationing nuclear missiles off the coast of Florida? I fail to see how the two are comparable. Nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction still function just fine. God knows, I’m not exactly happy about a nuclear Iran. And I’m no Ken Waltz, arguing “the more the merrier” on nuclear proliferation. But it’s not the end of the world.

MK: Well, call me crazy, but I think the past six months would have been much more dangerous with an Iranian nuclear shadow cast over the conflict.

Unfortunately, the only remaining option to keep Tehran from the bomb is military action against Iran’s nuclear fuel-cycle facilities. Justifying such an attack in peacetime would be difficult, but Iran just handed the United States and Israel an opportunity to hit back hard and restore deterrence that should not be wasted—and nuclear facilities are an obvious target.

EA: I think our fundamental disagreement is this: Is it worth a major war with Iran to prevent them from getting a nuclear bomb? Is that trade-off—in lives, ammunition, military spending, even opportunity cost—worth it? I don’t think so.

And let’s not forget it’s an election year, the Biden administration is already struggling to sell any coherent foreign policy to the U.S. public, and Congress is in open revolt over Ukraine spending.

MK: It’s not a fundamental disagreement between you and me. Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden also disagree with you. They have said that our policy is one of prevention and that all options are on the table to keep Tehran from the bomb.

Maybe you can run on a third-party “no labels” ticket in November to usher in a new Iran policy? I hear they are looking for a good candidate.

EA: Honestly, persuading Sen. Joe Manchin to adopt the Green New Deal would be easier than trying to persuade you to change your mind on Iran. I think we have to chalk this one up to “irresolvable conflict.” Let’s just try to avoid going nuclear, OK?

MK: You are afraid of escalation? Unlike you, I am not self-deterred.