There’s plenty of good analysis and reporting out there on the point of how this could lead to a wider conflict, but I’ll try to break it down here myself. Thread.
Iran just said this morning that it will strike U.S. military targets. That makes the possibility of it only hitting “soft” targets much less likely. Iran has proxies across the Middle East, from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon to Yemen, and the U.S. has assets across the Middle East.
Iran is nothing if not calculating in its provocations, so it is quite likely any retaliation will be limited in scope and could be viewed as more of “an eye for an eye” regarding Soleimani’s killing rather than a move meant to start open war with America. BUT...
President Trump has repeatedly said that ANY response by Iran that targets U.S. assets, no matter how limited, will be met with swift and serious retaliation by America. He could backtrack on this, of course, in the vein of “Fire and Fury,” BUT...
4. There are plenty of people around Trump right now who have demonstrated time and time again that they are actively seeking a wider conflict, and have seemingly been stymied on this point thus far by Trump himself, whose overall instincts are isolationist. BUT...
Trump also doesn’t like being directly challenged and very well could see any attempt by Iran to go head-to-head or even eye-for-eye with America as a fight he would be quite psychologically inclined to escalate.
Also, If you are putting your money on the reliability and unchanging nature of Trump’s instincts, you have been asleep for three years.
If it gets to the point where Iran retaliates and America retaliates with more force, etc, Iran’s proxies could simultaneously activate against U.S. assets in or around the countries where they are present, as well as potentially against U.S. allies like Israel or Saudi.
All of this makes it likely that any resulting war wont be contained to a single country. Thus, the potential for wider conflict.
I keep hearing that proxy war is not the same as conventional warfare. If you say so, but the point isn’t whether Iran will directly strike America or vice versa, it’s that this kind of war has a high likelihood of spreading across the region; thus, potential for wider conflict.
Lastly, I’ll just point out that the substantive difference between conventional warfare vs. proxy war is highly debatable in this context, particularly for the civilians who are sure to die in either case.
And make no mistake, civilians will pay the highest price no matter the semantics you choose to describe any resulting conflict, whether that be Americans in the region or Middle Easterners—much more likely the latter. End.
