Why the Iran-Israel conflict is unlikely to escalate further

Some general observations

While all of this may very well be proven wrong during the days and weeks ahead, there are several important factors that seem to imply that the risk of further escalation is pretty low.

• The conflict is (probably) mainly a diversion from the ongoing Palestinian genocide and Israel’s PR catastrophe

First of all, this sudden and spectacular attack on Iran has much more to do with diverting attention from the situation in Palestine and the PR disaster that’s been building for the Israeli regime over the last weeks and months than any other immediate strategic objectives. Bibi was nearly ousted by his own parliament a few days ago, and Thunberg’s high-profile presence on the Ship to Gaza convoy has actually managed to generate a good bit of bad press for the regime throughout the Western media. Whether this is a rare glimpse of the twitching corpse of press freedom, or rather part of some overarching propaganda scheme, a few decent articles were actually produced by the legacy media over the last week or so.

The presence of Thunberg will lead some to believe this is indeed curated, and part of a broader divide-and-conquer scheme intended to trigger violent conflicts along lines of class and ethnicity of the type we’re now coincidentally seeing reported from the US, complete with a theatrical deployment of the military closely mirroring the 1960s.

So the attack on Iran doesn’t really serve any major (immediate) strategic purpose apart from shifting the focus from Gaza, and, best case for Israel, generating a response violent and spectacular enough for the regime to credibly reclaim the victim card and reproduce a narrative of an imminent anti-semitic genocide.

• Iran and Israel have a limited space for direct military confrontation

There’s a reason Iran and Israel have been in a proxy war (and not an actual one) for 40 years.

These states do not share a border, and neither of them could conceivably enter the other’s territory with their armed forces in any conventional sense. There’s no way that Iran can pass through Iraq and Turkey, and even if they’d have been able to go via Kurdistan, the new regime in Syria (the Sunni Saudi-Al-Qaeda-run government under al-Julani) is not opening the borders (see the Iran-Saudi proxy conflict for more detail).

So what they can do is keep firing a bit of long-range ordnance at each other until the stores of ammunition run low, as well as increase the volume of clandestine activities and promote acts of terror and/or false-flag attacks. Otherwise, there seem to be hard limits to additional direct confrontation.

• The US has neither the political will nor the capacity or international clout to take a direct part in the conflict

Even though Trump says he’s “keeping all options on the table”, there’s no way the US is going to get directly involved here. With the conflagrations back home building towards another summer of riots like back in 2020, the economy hanging by a thread, and the proxy war waged in Ukraine steadily going south in spite of having eaten up much of the military spare capacity of the US, there’s just not room to take immediate part in a war with Iran.

Add to that the fact that Russia would certainly supply Iran with state-of-the-art long-range weaponry, intelligence and surveillance towards making a land invasion an impossible prospect and air superiority inconceivable, I just don’t see it happening. And it’s not like China would idly sit by when its main route of petroleum gets blocked, so there’s absolutely no reason for the US to get directly involved here.

But an escalated proxy conflict and mass-killings of the Iranian hierarchy might be enough for its purposes — in the brewing civilizational conflict between the West and the BRICS, cutting the head off of Iran and leaving the country in chaos would certainly be a big win and an important move towards limiting the mounting Russian and Chinese influence around the crucial energy resources in the Middle East.

Just a few hours ago we could read that Trump so graciously blocked the planned Israeli murder of Khameini, but that’s just washing his hands of an upcoming hit, and also just goes to advertise that Israel both has the intention and capacity to take him out — which likely is intended to provoke further escalation on the part of Iran.

• If Iran gets pushed to the brink, it can block the Strait of Hormuz

Nobody wants this (almost). It’s suicide for Iran’s economy and would send the East and West equally into a deep crisis. Iran will threaten to do this, of course, and we can expect painful spikes in the oil price starting tomorrow, Monday — but nobody on either side is likely to serious risk bringing about this outcome. Iran would basically only do this as a final act of retaliation in the face of certain defeat.

• A caveat?

There’s also a contrarian take possible here that I alluded to in another recent post. It may be that we’re now seeing put into action a comprehensive, long-term strategy of undermining China, Russia and the BRICS, and that such an “unfortunate” diverting of these massively important energy flows mentioned under the last point plays a crucial role in this approach. China imports 45% of its energy (petroleum) through this route, and there’s not really any viable option.

This would certainly be a major blow to the New Silk Road project, not least, and would coincidentally coincide with the US very soon once again becoming a net energy importer.

China’s significant dependence on the Hormuz energy route would, in case it’s strangled, also over the long term serve to impair the relations between Russia and China. Russian oil and gas exports are insufficient to cover much of the shortfall China would face, which in turn, in the mid-term, would push China to intensify the scramble for the pristine and underexplored Arctic oil, potentially placing it in direct competition with Russia.