Joe Biden's decision to send two aircraft carriers to the Middle East, following Hamas's attack on Israel last month, had a message for Iran and its allies: "Don't do it." Since then, Iran's network of allied militias across the region has launched rocket, drone and missile attacks against Israel and US troops, but there has been no escalation that led to a regional confrontation. On November 3, Hasan Nasrallah, top leader of Hezbollah, the very powerful militia backed by Iran, gave a speech in Lebanon full of bombast, but in which he also gave the impression that he was moving away from an immediate escalation.
Now, amid the bloody fighting in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, what is growing is a broader and potentially more dangerous rivalry with Iran. After abandoning the “maximum pressure” approach of the Trump era, the Biden administration had tried in recent months to quietly reduce tensions. However, today Iran not only celebrates Hamas attacks and, through its agents, threatens American interests, but appears to be acting with the tacit cooperation of Russia, and even China, in a kind of grouping of autocracies. This raises serious doubts about whether Biden will be able to reformulate a new strategy for the Middle East.
Since October 7, Iran's approach has been to escalate tensions without provoking an all-out confrontation. Its leaders claim that the country has not participated directly in the planning or execution of the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas, a claim broadly corroborated by American and Israeli public statements. Sporadic attacks on Israel by pro-Iran Houthi fighters from Yemen and drone attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria by local militias have raised the temperature without reaching the boiling point. Nasrallah noted that Hezbollah's calibrated violence, consisting primarily of rocket attacks on northern Israel, has nevertheless harmed the Israeli economy by forcing the evacuation of its communities on the Lebanese border and causing military uncertainty.
Iran is now busy trying to maximize diplomatic dividends, as the world moves from the horror of the Hamas attack to the suffering of Palestinians facing Israeli retaliation. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian has been as active as Blinken in regional consultations. Many countries are urging Iran to intercede, either to contain the conflict or to assist in the release of hostages. Iran hopes to increase its influence and thwart US-backed plans to strengthen ties between the United States, Israel and the Gulf countries under the Abraham Accords. He rubs his hands watching the pro-American side come under increasing tensions. Israel and the Arab states are withdrawing ambassadors from their respective capitals. In the West, pro-Palestinian demonstrations are growing. Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Washington (D.C.) calling for a ceasefire.
However, it is too early for Iran to rejoice. In the United States, there is a rapid and potentially profound shift in policy toward Iran, which has been a flashpoint since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. Forty-four years ago this month, Islamist student activists took Iran hostage. 52 people at the American embassy in Tehran. Barack Obama sought to neutralize the most dangerous aspect of the US-Iran enmity – Iran's growing nuclear program – through the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was negotiated in 2015 and sought to rein in Iran's weapons program. Donald Trump abandoned the agreement in 2018 and began applying sanctions. After trying unsuccessfully to recover the nuclear deal, the Biden administration opted for low-profile diplomacy. Thus, before October 7, some fragile understandings were in place: Iran diluted the concentration of uranium produced in its centrifuges and the United States softened the application of sanctions.
Iranian oil exports went from about 380,000 barrels a day in 2020 to around 1.5 million today, directed mainly to China through obscure intermediaries. In September, a controversial deal that secured the release of five Americans detained in Iran unlocked $6 billion in Iranian income in South Korea (now tied up in an account in Qatar).
The approach followed by the White House is now impossible to maintain. One reason is that Iran is increasingly cooperating with Russia and maintaining closer economic ties with China. As Secretary of State Blinken declared before the Senate on October 31: “Simply put: for our adversaries, whether they are states or not, this is all one fight.” Blinken urged Congress to pass a $106 billion supplemental budget to help Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.
He added that there were “deep connections” between America's autocratic enemies. Iran supplies Russia with drones for use in Ukraine. The two cooperate in Syria, and Russia has welcomed Hamas visitors to Moscow. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, the Russian mercenary group Wagner may have supplied anti-aircraft weapons to Hezbollah. Those ties could become even closer. After the long-standing United Nations arms and missile embargo on Iran expires on October 18, Iran could, Western officials say, increase trade related to ballistic missile technology, perhaps including the supply of missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine.
How might the United States respond to all of this? Republican congressmen want a tougher official position. Senator Lindsey Graham has stated that the United States must draw a clear red line and announce that the killing of an American soldier by Iran or its allies will lead to a direct attack on Iran. Republican Senator Marco Rubio has asked if the United States is willing to use its forces deployed in the Middle East to hit Iran. “Right now we don't have a credible deterrent,” he said. Pressure groups are also up in arms: United Against a Nuclear Iran, one of the most prominent lobbies, has called for the United States to bomb Iran now. “We have gone from maximum pressure to maximum deference to the regime,” complained Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, another think tank.
So Biden finds himself on the defensive. He is likely to impose more sanctions, even if Trump's “maximum pressure” did not significantly change Iranian behavior. The regime has survived years of economic isolation and, more recently, more than 12 months of street protests. On the other hand, Biden and his advisers also know that taking military action against Iran would entail a huge gamble. At best, an attack on the nuclear facilities would delay the program and, at worst, launch the country toward the bomb; and would probably trigger the regional war that the United States fears.
Consequently, diplomacy with Iran is the idea that will not die, if only because the alternatives seem even worse. “The nuclear issue seems immunized from all other pressures and considerations. I suspect that kind of arms control approach will be with us for some time,” says Ray Takeyh of the US think tank the Council on Foreign Relations. In fact, there is something that would make the war in Gaza even more terrifying: a nuclear-armed Iran standing behind its “axis of resistance.” The slaughter by Hamas makes a deal between the United States and Iran seem more necessary than ever, and yet that deal also seems harder than ever to imagine.
