The strategic logic behind the Iranian escalation

Dr. Issam Menem

The coordinated offensive between the United States and Israel against Iran, launched in the early hours of February 28th, drastically altered the geopolitical landscape of the region and led to an unprecedented military escalation in recent decades.

At first glance, the Iranian military action of regionalizing the conflict by attacking targets in the territories of Arab countries may seem irrational or even suicidal. However, when viewed within a broader strategic context, it may represent a calculated choice.

In situations of strong asymmetry, where a state faces militarily and economically superior adversaries, traditional options tend to be quite limited. Maintaining the status quo may mean accepting a permanently unfavorable environment, with increasing costs and little prospect of change. In these cases, escalation does not necessarily seek a short-term military victory, but rather to alter the game conditions that, until then, had been weakening Iranian capabilities.

Since the beginning of the offensive against Iran, seven Arab countries have been hit by Iranian armed forces: Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The attacks included various types of US military structures, but also airports, ports, and high-end hotels.

By targeting these countries, Iran is boldly and riskily seeking to increase the domestic costs for these governments by directly impacting their economies, particularly in the energy, tourism, and aviation sectors, thus generating social and political pressure. The Iranian calculation is that these governments will then have incentives to engage diplomatically, pressure Washington, and seek mediation.

Iran would therefore be deliberately expanding the theater of conflict with the aim of converting the formal neutrality of certain Arab states into material involvement, transforming an originally bilateral confrontation (Iran vs. United States) into a systemic issue. By expanding the negative externalities of the war and targeting countries that host strategic US infrastructure, Tehran reclassifies these actors from third-party observers to affected parties, redistributing the costs of the conflict regionally.

This is a strategy of indirect coercion based on the intentional regionalization of the crisis and the socialization of costs, whereby inaction ceases to be politically sustainable, and diplomatic engagement becomes the rational alternative.

In Arms and Influence (1966), Thomas Schelling argues that the power to inflict harm is often communicated through some demonstration of its execution. Whether through deliberate violence to induce an irrational response, or through cold, premeditated violence to persuade the adversary that the threat is credible and repeatable, what matters is not the pain or harm itself, but its influence on the behavior of others.

Schelling argues that it is the expectation of future violence that elicits the desired behavior, if indeed the power to inflict harm is capable of eliciting it. To exploit the capacity to wound and cause damage, it is necessary to understand what the adversary values ​​and what frightens them. In the case of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the Iranian attacks directly impact the image of a politically stable oasis, endowed with extensive and sophisticated international tourism infrastructure, consolidated as a privileged destination for major stars of the global cultural industry, businesspeople, and multinational corporations. Furthermore, the hostilities have already impacted the economic base of these monarchies by targeting critical gas and oil infrastructure.

The deliberate creation of risk, usually a shared risk, characterizes a dispute over the willingness to assume risks. It involves setting in motion a dynamic that can spiral out of control, initiating a process that carries with it the possibility of an unintended disaster.

The risk is intentional; the disaster is not. One cannot initiate a certain disaster as a profitable way to exert coercive pressure on someone, but one can initiate a moderate risk of mutual disaster, provided that the other party's compliance is feasible within a sufficiently short period to keep the cumulative risk within tolerable limits.

Ultimately, however, the same logic that seeks to convert neutrality into pressure can produce the opposite effect for Iran, by running the risk of transforming affected third parties into adversarial coalitions and consolidating an active alignment with its rival. It is, therefore, a strategy with high potential return, but equally high strategic risk.