Iran And The US Are Slipping Closer To War

JANUARY 22ND 2024 War Room - the defence newsletter from The Economist SUBSCRIBER ONLY The War Room The best of The Economist’s defence coverage PHOTO: AP Shashank Joshi Defence editor You could be forgiven for losing track of the missiles flying around the Middle East at present. Israel is dropping bombs on Gaza, Lebanon and Syria; rockets are returning in the other direction, as well as from Iraq and Yemen. America has bombed the Houthi rebels in Yemen six times in one week; the defiant Houthis continue to attack shipping. Jordan and Turkey have both bombed Syria. In this melee one country has been busier than most. Last week Iran directly attacked three countries—Iraq, Syria and then Pakistan—within the space of 24 hours, apparently in retaliation for a devastating terrorist attack in Iran on January 3rd. The strike on Pakistan was against Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni militant group that is active in the Baloch region straddling the Iran-Pakistan border. Pakistan promptly hit back with air strikes. Both countries seem content to leave it at that—they have now agreed to restore full diplomatic ties after briefly suspending them. But Iran’s relations with America and Israel show no sign of improving. On January 20th a suspected Israeli air strike in Damascus killed five members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including a senior intelligence official. Shortly afterwards, and perhaps in response, Iran upped the ante further by launching ballistic missiles at an American air base in Iraq—the same base that it attacked in January 2020. The barrage was sufficiently large and threatening to force America to fire 15 interceptor missiles from its Patriot air-defence system. All this underscores the fact that Iran has been at the centre of the region’s escalatory spiral. It funds, arms and trains Hamas, the militant group that massacred Israelis on October 7th—though Israel and Western intelligence officials say they have no evidence that Iran organised the attack or knew of it in advance. Since October 7th Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria have launched around 140 rocket and drone attacks on American troops, as part of a strategy to put pressure on Israel and to squeeze America out of the region. Iran has also given the Houthis their anti-ship missiles and helped them target ships. Some reports suggest that an American strike against a Houthi launch site on January 20th may also have killed a pair of IRGC members. As my colleague Anton LaGuardia wrote over the weekend, the White House faces growing pressure to hit back. Neither side wants an all-out war. The Biden administration does not want to be dragged into a big conflict in the Middle East in an election year. Iran’s regime, which faces a succession crisis and a weak economy, knows that a war could be highly destabilising. Yet Iranian attacks could easily cross a red line. My colleagues have also written about other news: Ukraine’s use of ketamine to treat war trauma, why a war scare on the Korean peninsula is probably overblown and the Pentagon’s hunt for new types of explosives. Thanks for reading. Any thoughts on our defence coverage? You can reach us at thewarroom@economist.com.