Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

Here's what else they have to wonder about: December 2016, the Chinese captured, studied, and displayed an American submarine drone. They eventually gave it back, but it was an aggressive seizure of American property and probably should have met more of a response than it did.

https://twitter.com/GalipDalay/status/1141996426764926981

That said, it wasn’t a cause for war — and so it is difficult now to see the Iranian shootdown of an American aerial drone as a cause for war.

The interesting thing here is less what we will do than what the Iranians will do. They are manifestly climbing the escalation ladder:

first attacks on neutral shipping, and no response; now attacks on American material assets, and likely no response to that too. The next step is plausibly to kill Americans, and that may get a response —

although, given the GWB Administration’s willingness to give them a pass when they killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq, it may not. The perplexing feature of our relationship with Iran since 1979 is that we usually do literally let them get away with murder.

So, let’s say they succeed in killing Americans. What then, and what next?

Let’s further say we hit them hard in response. Why do they want that?

What is the upside? They aggressively seek the conflict—but why? It makes no sense, and the less-sensible explanations—that it benefits China/Russia elsewhere on a grand-strategic level, or that it is simple apocalyptic fanaticism from the Iranians — are grim and unsatisfying.

Iran appears to want a war of some sort, but we aren’t sure why, which does not mean we shouldn’t give it to them — but it does mean we need to know what they desire when we do.

Could this be Iran trying to show the world that the United States (and by extension, its political and military leadership) is a tired old dog, the once-great alpha who's no longer able to maintain his leadership of the pack due to infirmity of body and spirit?

Is our lack of response to brazen violence what they actually seek?

Or might Iran seek to draw out a Vietnam-like conflict; another Iraq War with its divisive political sectarian rifts?

As the Iraq War has wound-down, Afghanistan has returned to the state of a backwater, and Syria has been given-over to the Russians,

could Iran be seeking to entice the United States into a conflict that, they hope, will embroil us in a new wave of internal strife and decrease our ability to act as the world's lone superpower?

Strife that will invite other players (China, Russia) to engage in the same type of social-influencing behavior that the KGB and Vietnamese engaged in during that conflict?

How much of this saber-rattling is really meant for us, and how much is it mere posturing for their own people?

I obviously have no special insight into the regime, but a few hypotheses:

1) I don’t know how well they understand our behavior, but I presume they have a fairly sophisticated handle on it. (By “they” I mean those in a position to make these decisions.)

2) Clearly we’re not eager to go to war with them. We’ve done nothing like what we would if we meant seriously to invade, topple the regime, and occupy the country. They see no major mobilization or deployment to the region.

3) I presume they know a major conflict in the Gulf would not be in our strategic interest. They probably assume that Trump’s a weak and senile dotard. They can see there’s no public appetite for war with Iran in the US.

4) Perhaps they calculate that if we retaliate at all, it will be a matter of a few nights or even weeks of airstrikes.

They’ve perhaps concluded the regime will be strengthened by that, both by the domestic rally-round-the-turban effect and because it will liberate it from any remaining fealty to international norms and treaties.

4) Their objectives, I presume, are a) sanctions relief, and maximizing the number of countries willing to engage in sanctions-busting, and b) to demonstrate our impotence and humiliate us by showing how little our allies trust us and how unwilling they are to follow our lead.

5) I assume their larger strategic goal is the land bridge, regional hegemony, and the Bomb.

6) Who knows what conclusions they’ve drawn from Trump’s love affair with Kim: perhaps they’ve concluded that the way to deal with Trump is to behave in a way that causes global panic and then send him a love letter, allowing him to claim credit for solving the crisis?

(Meanwhile, I assume, they'd continue to enrich;) I don’t know if they’re that shrewd, though. They may be too proud to allow Trump to feel like a winner, even if that's the best way to get one over on us.

6) Perhaps from their perspective, *we’ve* been climbing up the escalation ladder; they may view their behavior as "deterrence.”

Or, to the contrary, they may seen that Trump has consistently overruled and undercut the Iran hawks:

We’re “pulling out” of Syria; we’re “getting out” of the Middle East. They may have noticed we lost interest in Venezuela,

Our policy may strike them as so random and vacillating that they may have concluded they'll never get a better chance:

They may be gambling that if they can pull off one big hit that causes many US casualties, we’ll leave the region for good, as we did in Lebanon.

Here's what else they have to wonder about: December 2016, the Chinese captured, studied, and displayed an American submarine drone. They eventually gave it back, but it was an aggressive seizure of American property and probably should have met more of a response than it did.

That said, it wasn’t a cause for war — and so it is difficult now to see the Iranian shootdown of an American aerial drone as a cause for war.

The interesting thing here is less what we will do than what the Iranians will do. They are manifestly climbing the escalation ladder:

first attacks on neutral shipping, and no response; now attacks on American material assets, and likely no response to that too. The next step is plausibly to kill Americans, and that may get a response —

although, given the GWB Administration’s willingness to give them a pass when they killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq, it may not. The perplexing feature of our relationship with Iran since 1979 is that we usually do literally let them get away with murder.

So, let’s say they succeed in killing Americans. What then, and what next?

Let’s further say we hit them hard in response. Why do they want that?

What is the upside? They aggressively seek the conflict—but why? It makes no sense, and the less-sensible explanations—that it benefits China/Russia elsewhere on a grand-strategic level, or that it is simple apocalyptic fanaticism from the Iranians — are grim and unsatisfying.

Iran appears to want a war of some sort, but we aren’t sure why, which does not mean we shouldn’t give it to them — but it does mean we need to know what they desire when we do.

Could this be Iran trying to show the world that the United States (and by extension, its political and military leadership) is a tired old dog, the once-great alpha who's no longer able to maintain his leadership of the pack due to infirmity of body and spirit?

Is our lack of response to brazen violence what they actually seek?

Or might Iran seek to draw out a Vietnam-like conflict; another Iraq War with its divisive political sectarian rifts?

As the Iraq War has wound-down, Afghanistan has returned to the state of a backwater, and Syria has been given-over to the Russians,

could Iran be seeking to entice the United States into a conflict that, they hope, will embroil us in a new wave of internal strife and decrease our ability to act as the world's lone superpower?

Strife that will invite other players (China, Russia) to engage in the same type of social-influencing behavior that the KGB and Vietnamese engaged in during that conflict?

How much of this saber-rattling is really meant for us, and how much is it mere posturing for their own people?

I obviously have no special insight into the regime, but a few hypotheses:

1) I don’t know how well they understand our behavior, but I presume they have a fairly sophisticated handle on it. (By “they” I mean those in a position to make these decisions.)

2) Clearly we’re not eager to go to war with them. We’ve done nothing like what we would if we meant seriously to invade, topple the regime, and occupy the country. They see no major mobilization or deployment to the region.

3) I presume they know a major conflict in the Gulf would not be in our strategic interest. They probably assume that Trump’s a weak and senile dotard. They can see there’s no public appetite for war with Iran in the US.

4) Perhaps they calculate that if we retaliate at all, it will be a matter of a few nights or even weeks of airstrikes.

They’ve perhaps concluded the regime will be strengthened by that, both by the domestic rally-round-the-turban effect and because it will liberate it from any remaining fealty to international norms and treaties.

4) Their objectives, I presume, are a) sanctions relief, and maximizing the number of countries willing to engage in sanctions-busting, and b) to demonstrate our impotence and humiliate us by showing how little our allies trust us and how unwilling they are to follow our lead.

5) I assume their larger strategic goal is the land bridge, regional hegemony, and the Bomb.

6) Who knows what conclusions they’ve drawn from Trump’s love affair with Kim: perhaps they’ve concluded that the way to deal with Trump is to behave in a way that causes global panic and then send him a love letter, allowing him to claim credit for solving the crisis?

(Meanwhile, I assume, they'd continue to enrich;) I don’t know if they’re that shrewd, though. They may be too proud to allow Trump to feel like a winner, even if that's the best way to get one over on us.

6) Perhaps from their perspective, *we’ve* been climbing up the escalation ladder; they may view their behavior as "deterrence.”

Or, to the contrary, they may seen that Trump has consistently overruled and undercut the Iran hawks:

We’re “pulling out” of Syria; we’re “getting out” of the Middle East. They may have noticed we lost interest in Venezuela,

Our policy may strike them as so random and vacillating that they may have concluded they'll never get a better chance:

They may be gambling that if they can pull off one big hit that causes many US casualties, we’ll leave the region for good, as we did in Lebanon.

7. The sanctions have caused huge economic pain: they may be calculating that the value to them of rising oil prices outweighs the risk that we’ll respond in a regime-ending way.

8. I could imagine they’re being encouraged by Russia and China. If they do succeed in chasing us out of the region, the US will be Britain after Suez. That may seem a goal worth the risk to both Moscow and Beijing. It’s an awfully exciting time for revisionist powers.

If I were an Iranian strategic planner—and I’m not, and I’m aware that mirror-imaging is a classic trap—I'd be trying to persuade Europe to import Iranian oil in partnership with Russia and China, and persuade Russia to swap oil with Iran and China to import Iranian crude--

thereby generating credit to inject into Instex. My objective in escalating the conflict is to scare the shit out of everyone, providing a huge incentive to Europe, Russia, and China to allow Iran to trade without access to the US-dominated global financial system.

Perhaps I’ll even get "development aid” to "repair my infrastructure" out of it. So Iran's not just wondering what we're thinking, it's wondering what Europe, Russia, and China are thinking. It's hard to get all of that right at once. Better hope they do.