Bob Beck's Foreign Policy Blog

As the Persian Gulf war enters its second month, President Trump continues to frequently vacillate between threatening more “fire and brimstone” on the Iranians and proclaiming that the two sides are on the cusp of a major agreement to end the fighting. As of this writing (29 March), hostilities persist between the primary combatants in the gulf with secondary battlefields active in Southern Lebanon and the Red Sea. The current situation, therefore, begs the question “what comes next in the Persian Gulf?”

While U.S. and Israeli air and naval operations have seemingly been extremely effective in destroying much of Tehran’s military power, President Trump’s oft-heard bluster about “obliterating” this or that enemy capability has been repeatedly mocked by Iranian missiles and drones hitting targets across the Middle East. Those strikes and Tehran’s continued stranglehold on the critically important Strait of Hormuz highlight the gross failure of understanding by the administration of how Tehran would likely retaliate to the combined U.S./Israeli assault.

The sycophantic panjandrums advising Trump were apparently not aware of, or interested in, the fact that Persia is an ancient civilization, the cultural and linguistic roots of which go back three millennia. Moreover, Iran’s recent history, in which it sacrificed terribly during eight years of war with Iraq in the 1980s but never surrendered, suggests a people with a much higher tolerance for pain and discomfort than exists in America. As such, regardless of the depravity of its current leadership, Iran is a nation that will not likely capitulate without a bloody resistance.  

Accordingly, the White House has backed itself into a geopolitical corner with one potential off ramp leading to a peace deal with Tehran, leaving in place remnants of the current Iranian Republican Guards Corps (IRGC) and Shia religious leadership. Option number two is to roll the dice and intensify the conflict, possibly to include inserting U.S. ground troops into the battle. Both choices come with serious complications for Washington, Tel Aviv, and the entire Persian Gulf region. 

The peace alternative, while representing the best bad option at the present time, would likely only freeze the strife, frustrating the Israelis, particularly if any agreement did not verifiably end Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Furthermore, leaving Iran’s current leadership structure in place would almost guarantee future regime malfeasance across the region, to include another round of blocking the Strait of Hormuz, the deleterious global ripples of which we are now witnessing from the Philippines to India to sub-Saharan Africa to the European Union to our local gas pump. In fact, the only clear winner to this point in the war has been Tsar Vladimir (I want to be) the Great’s petrostate. Additionally, while Trump may envision a post-Maduro Venezuela scenario for Iran, that country’s geography, demography, culture, and national pride are bulwarks against that type of American hegemony. 

From a political standpoint, ending the war sooner rather than later is in the White House’s interest as the downstream economic hardships from the conflagration will surely sap support from MAGA as America heads to the polls in November. The view from Tel Aviv is different, however, as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s political lifeblood is sustained conflict. The battle with Tehran is extremely popular in Israel, as well, with 78 percent of Jewish Israelis expressing support for continuing the war, according to a late March poll conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute. Thus, what is beneficial to Trump’s political future—an early end to the war, is bad for Netanyahu’s. Quite the quandary. 

The second route out of America’s Persian predicament is to double down and intensify the conflict. The president has repeatedly threatened to do that should the Iranians not submissively settle for peace in two days, five days, ten days—can we get a month? Make no mistake, however, the administration is preparing to up the military ante, deploying to the region two Marine Expeditionary units (2,500 troops each) and elements of the 82nd Airborne Division. A truism of military operations is that you don’t deploy thousands of troops halfway across the world if you don’t intend to use them. 

Possible targets for the ground troops are Iran’s main oil facility on Kharg island near the northern terminus of the Persian Gulf, Qeshm island astride the Strait of Hormuz near Bandar Abbas, or an attempt to secure or destroy Iran’s enriched uranium at multiple sites in the interior of the country. 

The latter of the above military schemes is almost certainly a non-starter given the difficulty of locating all of the uranium, the inherently unstable (read deadly) nature of the material, and the daunting logistics of maintaining a relatively small force operating hundreds of miles inland in hostile territory. A locally retired, former U.S. naval officer with years of nuclear experience opined to this scribe that any attempt to confiscate Iran’s enriched nuclear material could take several months, at least, to accomplish, adding that “this would not be a snatch and grab operation.”

That leaves one of the two (or both?) aforementioned islands as plausible targets for the approaching American boots. The bet here is that Qeshm may be choice number one as part of an attempt to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. While the Iranians reportedly have the island heavily armed, the loss of said real estate would not necessarily equate to smooth sailing through the strait as Iran assuredly has significant drone and missile capacity left elsewhere in the south of the country to deny free passage through this geopolitical bottleneck.

The enduring lesson from the current crisis is that wars of choice come with serious and often unforeseen consequences which can reverberate across the globe. The Trump administration’s choices for extracting America from the specter of another forever war in the Middle East are limited and fraught with dangers for all parties involved. Moreover, how the White House manages this crisis in the coming weeks will unquestionably influence, in the short term, the results of the upcoming November elections—provided they happen, and, in the longer term, the effectiveness of the remainder of the Trump presidency.

Note: This article was submitted on 29 March to both the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript and the Brattleboro Reformer for consideration.