End Iran’s Endless War Against Its Neighbors
Tehran’s recent actions should prompt a new U.S. policy approach.
The tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Iran over the last month were a watershed moment for the Iranian regime, representing the biggest test of the Islamic Republic’s ideological foreign policy agenda since the 1979 revolution. Recent events also offer the United States and its partners in the Middle East an important opportunity to shape Tehran’s next moves and force it to choose between its ideology or more security and prosperity for its people. But it’s more complicated than ever before for the United States to lead the sort of coordinated collective action needed to offer Tehran this choice.
For years, the Iranian regime’s approach to the Middle East focused on building a network of partners in the form of militias and terrorist groups that have weakened states across the region. The central concept was “forward defense” against what the regime perceived as external threats to its survival. Core to the Iranian regime’s approach was to use its regional network in the “Axis of Resistance” to challenge Israel and undermine the security of regional rivals among Gulf Arab states.
This “war of attrition” model, conducted mostly through a network of regional partners like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and a number of militias and terror groups in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Syria and Iraq, aimed (among other things) to bleed Israel over a prolonged period of time to exhaust its will to fight for its survival.
A decades-long shadow war becomes open confrontation between Israel and Iran
The October 7 attack and its aftermath forced Israel to accept the reality that its various security paradigms were insufficient to keep Israelis safe. Israel now focuses considerable efforts to change the cost-benefit analysis for the Islamist rulers in Tehran, hoping to force Iran to choose between its core national interests, including its ongoing nuclear program and the removal of sanctions strangling its economy, and its ideological commitment to Israel’s demise.
The Israeli military strike that killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Damascus on April 1 was the latest blow against Iran’s proxy model. Since October 7 (and later attacks against American troops in Jordan and international shipping in the Red Sea), both Israel and the United States have together hit hundreds of Iranian-backed groups and figures from Lebanon to Syria and from Iraq to Yemen.
The April 1 strike represented a turning point in the Iran-Israel rivalry, but a broader regional war can be avoided if Tehran can be pressed, or alternatively incentivized, to go in a different direction. This should not be hard for Iran to do if Tehran chooses its narrow national interests overs its militant Islamist agenda; the core reality is that the cost-benefit analysis justifying the proxy war model is rapidly shifting for Iran. No longer can Tehran arm and finance anti-Israel and anti-American terrorist groups and militias across the region while claiming innocence.
Suddenly finding itself overextended and exposed, Tehran has been forced to return forces and assets, including a naval asset in the Red Sea, back home. Tens of thousands of pro-Iran Arab militants are also possible targets, and each time they are hit represents another blow to Tehran’s image. Iran’s regime has decided to strike back, but the basic truth is that this is conflict amounts to a war of Tehran’s choice. Very few ordinary Iranians will be sorry if the regime dropped its costly anti-Israel and anti-U.S. campaign.
Iran retaliated on April 14 by launching some 350 missiles and drones against Israel. But the way Iran conducted this strike demonstrates its inherent fear of an open confrontation with Israel and its strategic ally, the United States. With very little public support at home for such a war and an acceptance of its military weakness against both Israel and the United States the Iranian leaders face a fundamental dilemma: maintain its costly ideological foreign policy approach of fostering endless wars across the region or restrain its ambitions.
Israeli and American actions have so far kept Iran in this critical zone of decision without pushing Tehran down a road of no return. The April 18 Israeli air strikes on Isfahan are a case in point: the Israelis, very likely aided by the U.S., have now shown Tehran that its nuclear sites are within reach and Iranian air defenses not impenetrable. This Israeli action sent a clear message: we can hit your most sensitive targets, but it is not too late to pull back. The asking price remains obvious: Tehran should roll back its “Axis of Resistance” across the region and look for political solutions and ways to compromise, not only with United States and Israel but also the bulk of the Arab world that equally loath Iran’s use of militant proxies.
A choice for Iran’s regime about its foreign policy approach
The proxy model was meant to keep Tehran’s wars of choice away from the Iranian homeland. Today this is no longer possible. In fact, the proxy model is the reason why hot wars have come directly to Iran itself. But Tehran shouldn’t feel it can’t change course; indeed, it already has in some ways just in recent weeks. Even the health of its cherished “Axis of Resistance” is up for debate and for good reason.
Some Iranian media reports, for instance, indicate that elements in the Syrian regime served as intelligence sources for Israel’s strikes against IRGC targets in Syria; some members of the Assad regime may want the Iranians out of their country. In recent days, moreover, Tehran has event resorted to using Egyptian intelligence services to message Israel that the regime is not after a regional war. To resort to one rival, Egypt, to convey a message to another rival speaks to Tehran’s capacity to change course as circumstance change. Perceptions matter, and at a minimum these developments will feed the argument that Tehran should pause and perhaps think harder about its next steps in the region.
With shifting attitudes among its Arab partners and flexibility on the part of the Iranians, the Iranian regime has an option to chart a new course away from its Axis of Resistance approach and shift its focus on protecting the Iranian homeland and the interests of ordinary Iranians who yearn for a very different regional agenda.
U.S. policy remains adrift on Iran
The U.S. intelligence community’s recent annual report on global threats assessed that Iran:
will continue to threaten U.S. interests, allies, and influence in the Middle East and intends to entrench its emergent status as a regional power while minimizing threats to the regime and the risk of direct military conflict.
The report also enumerated the many ways the Iranian regime undercuts regional and global security by supporting terrorist groups, sending drones to Russia in its war against Ukraine, and engaging in cyberattacks and malign influence operations, including efforts to impact America’s elections. Yet the United States currently lacks a clear strategy to meet these threats posed by Iran—something that even some Biden administration officials admit.
A new U.S. approach on Iran is missing in action, particularly one that has bipartisan support. But less than seven months before America’s election, a healthy dose of realism is needed about how soon the United States will be able make a strategic shift in its Iran policy. The Biden administration already faces significant bandwidth challenges as it juggles many problems in the Middle East and the rest of the world, and domestic politics in an election year will serve as another distraction.
Nonetheless, the U.S. foreign policy experts and leaders on both sides of the aisle in Congress should start constructing a framework for a new strategic approach to Iran that recognizes new global geopolitical realities. Iran’s growing ties with Russia and China serve to undermine global security, for instance, and its regional actions risk a wider war in the Middle East. Add to that the fact that the regime in Iran faces considerable opposition from its own people and an inevitable leadership transition with the aging Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—at 85, older than both Joe Biden and Donald Trump by a few years—in office since 1989.
Over the next five years, unless Tehran opts to change course due to recent heightened tensions, the United States and its regional partners in the Middle East will continue to face threats from Iran on several fronts, including its ongoing support for proxy warfare and terrorism and a nuclear program still operating outside of the rules of the road set by the international community.
The April 2024 attacks between Israel and Iran offer an opportunity for the two countries to pull back from the brink of a wider regional war, and only increased U.S. engagement in the Middle East working with its partners can present Iran’s leaders with a clear choice between higher costs and isolation versus relief for its people and a pathway to integration with the region.
Alex Vatanka is the founding Director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute.