The escalation trap: how the Iran war could become more costly and complex

Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute argues that the trajectory of the conflict is being driven by a series of debates: between US defence policy professionals and Trump’s inner circles; between the US and Israel; and between political and military echelons in Iran, not least the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps seeking revenge. “There is a view in the US strategic community, if not in Trump circles, that sees a risk of state-on-state conflict with China in the near future,” he said. From that point of view there has been a desire in the US to avoid the risk of other simultaneous threats and conflicts – involving Russia, Venezuela and Iran – and this has led to a split between those who envisaged the war as a narrow set of achievable objectives to degrade Iran, and Trump’s desire for “coercive control” over the country’s future. For Iran, he said, the pattern of retaliation in the Gulf was not simply about reciprocal strikes but also re-establishing deterrence in the region. He cautioned that if Iran struggled to maintain its current intensity of missile and drone strikes, it would not necessarily mark the end of Tehran’s horizontal escalation if it transitioned to a longer-term threat against shipping through the strait of Hormuz.