An Unpopular, Doomed, Bloody War

People will die and nothing will be accomplished

The United States and Israel have launched a war against Iran with the explicit goal. of regime change in Tehran.

This will go poorly; it is stunningly unlikely to achieve its objectives; it will undermine the U.S. position in the Middle East and elsewhere; it will be unpopular at home in the United States; and it runs the risk of catastrophe for limited upsides at a certain cost in Iranian, Israeli, American, and possibly Arab lives.

An Offer You Can’t Accept

Let’s start with why this is happening. Standard international relations theory holds that war is a possible outcome of a (failed) bargaining process. Generally, you hope to reach a negotiated outcome that both sides prefer to the costly lottery of war, which could leave both sides worse off. There’s many exceptions to this—some leaders might be made privately better off by war, for instance—but it is actually hard to get to war if you have any interest in avoiding it simply because war is costly and uncertain.

Some of the most important factors thus involve what the goals of each party is, and in particular whether you can negotiate over these at all. (There’s a long debate over how you can split these goals, but I do increasingly think there are some goals that you can’t easily compromise on to the point we can treat them as indivisible.) And if one party’s favored resolution is something the other side can’t easily accept, or can’t accept without losing every subsequent interaction (that is, showing you’re vulnerable to being bullied or bluffed), conflict becomes much more certain.

I’ve mentioned before Phil Haun’s book Coercion, Survival, and War, which addresses the puzzle of why the United States—a very powerful country—only rarely gets its way when it issues threats of military force. Haun argues that many of these threats fail because the United States is so powerful that it jeopardizes the existence of the (government of the) threatened state, making it impossible for the other side to give in. More than that, some of those threats are issued not to be successful but merely to give a pretext—a fig leaf that negotiations have taken place—precisely because those threats are unacceptable to the other side, leaving the impression that talks have fallen through. Cynical strategy, but plausible.

In the case of the United States and Iran, over the past few months practically every goal that the Trump administration has floated for its interactions with Tehran has been one that Tehran can’t accept. Those include protecting protesters against the government (admirable in some ways but obviously a call for regime change), making Tehran not only give up its nuclear stockpile but forswear nuclear proliferation, and, of course, regime change itself. Governments simply cannot agree to terms like these unless they are already defeated.

It is, by the way, notable that the Trump administration has adopted a maximalist goal—regime change—that is not clearly in U.S. interests and is far from achievable via the means (airstrikes) that are being employed. A limited strike on conventional and military targets might have signaled a goal of something less than regime change and more like pulling the regime’s teeth—humiliating for Tehran and costly for both sides, but not existential. And indeed you can imagine that violently reducing Tehran’s stocks of short and medium range missiles might have been quietly welcomed in European and Middle Eastern capitals threatened by them. Taking advantage of Tehran’s weakness to achieve that goal would have been brutal and unfair but more calculable. Regime change, by contrast, is a goal likelier to have originated with American extremists and the government in Israel, and it is one that risks perennial frustration unless U.S. and Israeli ties to an opposition in Iran are far greater than they appear in public.

The Consequences

By beginning hostilities in a joint operation with Israel, the United States has guaranteed that the war will be almost maximally unpopular. Iran is likely to retaliate against American and Israeli targets, which will not exactly be unpopular with regional publics given the circumstances (and it’s not like the Iranian government is super popular, to be clear, but acting against Washington and Tel Aviv is a cheap way of gaining popularity). Expect regional governments to hedge or even outright protest this, especially if they suffer directly via Iranian retaliation.

And we should expect some forms of retaliation. Iran is not a military superpower but it is also not a paper tiger. Iranian doctrine privileges asymmetric and distributed warfare against a variety of targets using drones, anti-ship missiles, proxy war, and ballistic missiles. These are all hard to defend against, and just as Golden Dome proved less capable over time we should expect some of these missiles to hit. In extremis, we might even see a Falklands War-esque successful strike on a U.S. naval vessel—this is not inconceivable. More likely (if sadder) is that civilians in oil facilities and in airliners will suffer, as during previous rounds of U.S.-Iran confrontation. Israel, of course, will be a more prominent target, especially Ben-Gurion Airport which has become (incredibly) a staging ground for U.S. military air assets.

The U.S. reputation as a fair dealer and reliable partner will be in shambles. Yet again, the Trump administration has apparently used peace talks as a pretext for striking at an adversary, making it pointless for future adversaries to engage in negotiations. If negotiations are a way of resolving disputes without overt conflict even if “all options are on the table”, then scuppering your own reputation for negotiating is folly—and harmful in the long term. Other countries will also now be vastly more wary of letting the United States place bases on their soil, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see U.S. forces evicted or substantially limited in the future.

U.S. military prowess is also being risked. A lucky Iranian Silkworm missile could deal a blow to the Navy’s reputation (how close were navy vessels to being hit by the Houthis?); attacks on Al-Udeid or refineries in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere (should they be allowed to be publicized) could become iconic images of America’s inability to protect its allies from aggression.

And, of course, people will die.

Europe, Australia, Japan, and other “Western” powers will probably actually, finally accelerate their move toward security self-reliance rather than engaging with an erratic, dangerous superpower that shows little regard for its partners. De-risking America will become a priority. By contrast, outside the region, China will look awfully sensible and reliable. (What of their military purges? Well, what of them—it’s not like the United States isn’t also purging its military for political reasons, just by terminating contracts with colleges and corporations.)

On a deeper level, a war of this magnitude and these objectives entirely bypassing not only the UN system but also the Arab League or other regional organizations will strain the fabric of international order and make the United States, for all its might and wealth, an incipient pariah.

And what if regime change were to succeed? Regime change may sound desirable—Trump has clearly bought this farm—but it is neither easy nor durable. The history of U.S.-backed regime change operations in Iran in particular is, well, not great. And foreign-induced regime change is also, well, not likely to be particularly stable at all.

It is cold comfort that this war is being conducted under circumstances that will make it maximally unpopular in the United States. Congress has not blessed it; international organizations have not blessed it; there are not even any U.S. allies participating (and given Israel’s newfound unpopularity in the United States, it’s likelier that this partnership will make the war less popular than a fully unilateral one).

As I write, missiles are inbound to Qatar.