By ANDREW KORYBKO*
Non-nuclear Iran is incapable of existentially threatening the US like nuclear-armed Russia
O jornal Politico quoted a senior Senate official and two sources in the Joe Biden administration as saying on Wednesday that the US is much more afraid of an uncontrollable escalation with Russia than with Iran, due to the latter’s nuclear capabilities. Proof of this is that the US does not hesitate to shoot down Iranian missiles launched against Israel, but does not consider shooting down Russian missiles launched against Ukraine, which has angered Volodymyr Zelensky and some of his compatriots, who thus feel like second-class allies.
The difference between Russia/Ukraine and Iran/Israel in this regard explains the different US approach to each partner. As explained last month in this analysis of why “Putin explicitly confirmed what was already evident about Russian nuclear doctrine”, the comparatively more pragmatic policymakers who still hold the final say in Russia and the US have so far managed to avoid the sequence of uncontrollable escalation that their respective warmongering rivals desire.
Here’s how they did it: “The comparatively more pragmatic rivals [of the US hawks], who still call the shots, have always signalled their escalation intentions well in advance, so that Russia could prepare and thus be less likely to ‘overreact’ in any way, risking World War III. Likewise, Russia continues to refrain from replicating the US ‘shock and awe’ campaign to reduce the likelihood of the West ‘overreacting’ by intervening directly in the conflict to save its geopolitical project and thus risk World War III.”
“One can only speculate whether this interaction is due to responsible behavior on the part of each country’s permanent military, intelligence and diplomatic bureaucracies (‘deep state’), given the enormity of what is at stake, or whether it is the result of a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’. Whatever the truth, the model cited explains the unexpected moves or lack thereof on each side, which amount to the US telegraphing its escalation intentions and Russia never seriously escalating in the same direction.”
There is no equivalent balance of nuclear power between the US and Iran, and the most Iran can do is launch saturation strikes against US bases in the region, not existentially threaten them as Russia can. If Iran's potential retaliation to Israel's expected strike harms or kills some of the nearly 100 members of the team operating the US THAAD in the self-proclaimed Jewish State, then the US could take the attack, retaliate against Iran-aligned Resistance groups in the region, or attack the Islamic Republic.
Whatever happens, a non-nuclear Iran is incapable of posing an existential threat to the United States, as nuclear-armed Russia could do if it retaliated against intercepting its missiles hitting targets inside NATO, which could easily catalyze a potentially apocalyptic escalation sequence. There are, to be sure, some American hawks who are willing to risk this scenario and the comparatively less consequential one mentioned above in West Asia, but their more pragmatic rivals are, for now, still capable of preventing them.
*Andrew Korybko holds a master's degree in International Relations from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Book author Hybrid Wars: From Color Revolutions to Coups (popular expression). [https://amzn.to/46lAD1d]
Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.
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