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Iran Is Too Smart to Go to War

(Jerusalem Post) Hillel Frisch - Iran's leaders are certainly belligerent toward their neighbors, with clear ambitions to dominate areas far beyond Iran's borders in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, but they have hardly ever been reckless. They will make sure that tensions fall far short of war. When they contemplate war with the U.S., they recall Operation Praying Mantis, undertaken by the U.S. Navy during the Iraq-Iran war in April 1988. Retaliating against Iranian attacks to disrupt Gulf oil shipping, the U.S. Navy in a single day of battle sank an Iranian frigate, a gunboat, three speedboats, two moving platforms and damaged a second frigate at the cost of 55 Iranian lives. U.S. losses amounted to two helicopter crew members whose helicopter malfunctioned and crashed into the sea. They also recall the allied conquest of Iraq in 2003, led overwhelmingly by U.S. forces. The U.S. conquered a state the size of Poland at the cost of 157 allied lives. Iran is so vulnerable, the U.S. will hardly need forces on the ground to bring it to its knees. Over 80% of its energy exports are shipped out of one port, Kharg Island. Nearly four-fifths of container imports run through the port of Bandar Abbas. U.S. cruise missiles can certainly knock out a part or all of these complexes. The Iranians will avoid war at all costs, sticking instead to the proven strategy of acting through proxies to undermine Arab state order. The writer is a professor and senior research associate of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
2019-05-22 00:00:00
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