War - a test of theory under pressure

The war on Iran is not a mere battlefield contest but a test of how states behave under extreme insecurity. To be able to understand any real foreign policy situation, one must be able to clearly relate how theories, assumptions and conditions interact with each other in the given situation. I would like to unfold the combined US-Israel aggression against Iran and Iran's response to this aggression under the framework of two different theories.

In the case of US-Israel aggression, the Theory of Offensive Realism guides the action. Both states clearly demonstrate that they cannot be certain about Iranian intentions, not today and not even tomorrow. In the language of the realist school of thought, both states may be driven by the classic security dilemma instead of pure aggression. Given this demonstrated uncertainty by the two states, Iran has been pushed to believe in its own insecurity and views every US-Israel action with suspicion.

Reasoning and reading the context, Iran's current foreign policy is built on the Balance of Threat Theory, which states that any state will always balance against a threat. This theory is driven by the combination of three variables. The first variable is the aggregate capability and capacity of a state to wage war. Iran has continued to fight and continues to inflict costs for fighting this war on both the US and Israel. The second variable is geography, and Iran, by utilising and maximising the utility of its geography, appears to have strangulated the Strait of Hormuz and has managed to establish a deterrence against the US and Israel. The third and most important variable is how Iran perceives the aggressive intentions. Iran knows that the aggression is aimed at neutralising its nuclear programme, knocking out the armed groups or proxies that support it in the region, and executing a military action to capture islands in the south of Iran to control, influence and manage the Strait of Hormuz. Given how Iran perceives the aggressive intentions, it is more than unlikely that it will give up on its will to fight.

Although the Cold War was not just about the balance of threat but also ideology and nuclear deterrence, the US state practitioners still dealt with the Soviet Union under the framework of the Balance of Threat Theory. The Soviet Union was inferior to the US in most categories of power. The Western alliance overwhelmed the Soviet Union in almost every dimension of power. It was the location of Soviet power in the heart of Europe that forced the US to balance against the threat. The Soviet threat was also inherent. A secretive government and perceived aggressiveness forced the US to continue to balance against the threat until the Soviet Union capitulated and produced the desired outcome for the US.

Theories are important, but they continue to relate to the assumptions and ongoing conditions on the ground. Some of the assumptions that can be made about the ongoing Iran war include: Will either side show any flexibility in the fixed positions they have taken? Are the red lines that both sides have drawn genuine or situational? Given the ongoing increased deployment of the US troops in the region, will the US initiate a military action to occupy the islands south of Iran? Will Iran give up its right to uranium enrichment? Will Iran compromise on its ballistic missile capability, especially when it is under attack? Will the US be able to open the Strait of Hormuz by military action? And finally, are we once again looking at the US to indulge in fighting another forever war?

These assumptions can be tested and questioned in terms of how conditions on the ground are changing. Iran was at the negotiating table twice before the start of this war. Now, given how conditions have changed on the ground, Iran's terms on the negotiating table have changed; it now demands sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. It seems that there is no flexibility on the red lines that both the US and Iran have drawn, and unless the enormous gap between their position doesn't change or the conditions of war take a dramatic shift, this war is likely to go on. Both the US and Israel have aggressed, and unless there is a unilateral ceasefire announced by the US, Iran seems to have decided to continue to fight a war of its survival. The US may carry out a military action, but Iran may be ready to ambush and raid the US ground force and thus continue to escalate the war. Even if the US tries to exercise control of the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranians may further force the war to climb the escalation ladder by activating its proxies to block Bab al Mandeb and the Suez Canal, the choke points at the Red Sea.

Today, the conditions on the ground dictate that the biggest bargaining chip that Iran has is the Strait of Hormuz, and it would not allow the US to take it off the table for any negotiations to take place in the future. The assumption that the US will be able to force Iran to submit and compromise its ballistic missile capability is also built on a wrong premise. Iran could have negotiated on its missile capability if it were not under attack. Iran, under attack, would not want to surrender its most potent weapon. On the matter of showing any flexibility, Iran feels it has been stabbed in the back not once but twice and so there is a huge trust issue, and the US red lines are a matter of deception being drawn only to buy time. And since Iran doesn't trust the very process that has let it down twice earlier, there is no question of showing any flexibility.

The Iran war likely reflects that it was never about the weapon-grade uranium enrichment by Tehran. Like the war in Iraq was never about eliminating the weapons of mass destruction. In an anarchic international system, Iran will continue to balance against the threat, and this war, given the aggressor's intentions, will continue with horrible outcomes not only for the belligerents but also for the entire world – unless the US and Israel, the two states and practitioners of the Theory of Offensive Realism, can reconsider the realist adage, 'inhumanity is in fact humanity under pressure.'