On Capitol Hill, where memories are short, concern about open-ended military conflicts — or as one might call them, war — is now considered “hysteria.” Such was the case when Senator Tom Cotton, during hearings on the recent nomination of US Air Force Lieutenant General Dan Caine, mocked concerns about the prospect of US strikes on Iran’s nuclear program as “hysteria” while dismissively referring to concepts such as endless war or forever war in scare quotes. The Senator from Arkansas further justified the idea by invoking the Tanker War as a historical analogy; an example of a “forceful but discriminant application of military power” that led “to peace.”
Like other historical comparisons used to justify Washington’s current or prospective war, this one too falls short, failing to account for the strategic and geopolitical differences between the present and a comparatively limited naval campaign of the late 1980s. And, like other euphemisms for war, Senator Cotton’s attempts to ignore likely contingencies that would stem from such military action, one that even hawkish think tanks have categorized as “a lengthy campaign employing military strikes, covert action, and other elements of national power.” In a town that overflows with tortured analogies and euphemisms, Cotton’s recent statements are nevertheless impressive in their myopia.
The strategic situation in the Middle East is considerably different than during the height of the Tanker War. The maritime skirmishes that constituted that conflict with Iran were primarily defensive, meant to reestablish deterrence, and not designed to elicit escalation. This is a far cry from the prospect of a sustained air campaign on Iranian soil. Unlike the late 1980s, the United States military’s footprint in the region is considerably larger, and includes Iran’s near abroad, Syria, and Iraq.
In the event of US airstrikes inside Iran, those troops, approximately 4,500, would present prime targets for Iranian retaliation, thereby creating incentives for an escalatory spiral, the very forever war that Cotton dismisses.
Unlike the Tanker War or the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, another example that Cotton positively invokes, the prospect of an air campaign launched against Iran’s most cherished strategic asset, its nuclear program, is inherently escalatory. Iranian military capacities have improved significantly since the late 1980s, and, unlike the Tanker War, when Iran was embroiled in a war with Iraq, the Iranian government could focus on retaliation against US assets in the region and would assuredly do so. Assassinating a general on Iraqi soil is orders of magnitude lower than an active bombing campaign inside Iran. Cotton’s conflation of the two reflects not only poor judgment, but hubris.
Unlike the Tanker War, military strikes on Iran would be conducted without the buy-in of the Middle East’s Arab states, and thereby risks their alienation. US naval operations during the Tanker War were conducted to protect Kuwaiti and (implicitly Iraqi) shipping from Iranian interference and occurred against the backdrop of the Iran-Iraq War. Such a setting does not exist today, at least as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait see the current situation, as all have reportedly assured Iran that they will not allow their territory to conduct strikes. The United States would need to conduct them alone, the optics of which would undoubtedly scuttle the Trump administration’s attempts at political normalization and regional stability.
Similarly, an air campaign against Iran’s nuclear sites would strain US relations outside the region as well and pose stiff geopolitical costs. Again, on the broader geopolitical front, Senator Cotton’s invocation of the Tanker War as a model of limited war worth emulating falls flat. Operation Earnest Will, the naval task force that protected third-party shipping from Iranian attack, had diplomatic cover via the unanimously passed United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 and was enforced in concert with British and French naval forces, as well as those of the United States.
That is no longer the case, as Iran’s primary international patrons — Russia and China — would almost certainly condemn any US strikes on Iranian soil. As to the former, such strikes would jeopardize a core White House goal of de-escalation with the Russian Federation and retrenchment in Europe. China, too, would publicly balk at the strikes but likely view them as an opportunity for the United States to overcommit itself further and spiral into even deeper insolvency.
Given this unparalleled risk of escalation, going to war with Iran via bombing its nuclear sites would be a foolish endeavor with no upside for American security interests. Such a prospect is especially imprudent considering that the Trump Administration’s own intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
War with Iran would also undermine the Trump administration’s stated objectives, including its rejection of the logic of forever war. Only two and a half months ago, President Trump declared during his second inaugural, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”
So far, the Trump White House has failed to live up to either of the first two promises and is poised to blunder itself into violating the third.
