Global Issues 2021 Edition. Группа авторов

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      An Iraqi woman protests corruption in the Iran-supported government in Baghdad in November 2019. Militias backed by Iran have joined Iraqi government forces in attempting to suppress such demonstrations.

      HUSSEIN FALEH/AFP via Getty Images

      Analysts say that after U.S. forces toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein—a Sunni and Iran’s arch enemy—in 2003, the election of a pro-Iranian, Shiite-led Iraqi government ended Baghdad’s role as a regional check on Iran and swung the region’s balance of power toward Iran.

      The Trump administration says U.S. sanctions have constrained Tehran’s ability to fund its proxies in the region. “We can’t overstate the significance of this development,” says the State Department’s Hook, citing a Hezbollah appeal for donations in March and reports of financial shortages affecting pro-Iranian groups in Syria, Iraq and the Gaza Strip. “We’re making a lot of progress in that direction.”

      But Middle East experts say Hezbollah routinely seeks donations and was doing so before Trump imposed his sanctions. And Tehran’s support for its proxies remains a top strategic priority, they say. “We haven’t seen any evidence that Iran has stopped supporting these groups,” so Trump’s sanctions are not achieving one of his key strategic goals, says the RAND Corp.’s Tabatabai.

      Moreover, these experts say, such support is relatively cheap compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars Saudi Arabia has spent on weapons and the estimated $200 million a day it is spending to pursue its war in Yemen.¹⁷ A 2018 U.S. State Department report estimated that since 2012 Iran spent some $16 billion supporting its proxies in Iraq, Syria and Yemen and provides $800 million a year to Hezbollah and Palestinian groups.¹⁸

      Meanwhile, recent anti-government protests in Lebanon and Iraq against government corruption and the lack of economic reforms are challenging Iran’s standing among the Shiite communities in those countries. In Iraq, Iran-supported militias and predominantly Shiite government forces have fired on the protesters in recent weeks, killing at least 319, according to an Iraqi parliamentary committee.¹⁹ And in Lebanon, Iran-aligned Hezbollah has sided with the government against the demonstrators, even though many of the protesters are Shiites.

      The result, analysts say, is an unprecedented confrontation with the same Shiite communities that had looked to Iran for arms and training but are now rising up against their pro-Iran leaders, who did not translate Tehran’s military and political successes into economic gains.

      “Simply puts, Iran’s resistance narrative did not put food on the table,” said Hanin Ghaddar, an expert on the Shiites at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank.²⁰ Ghaddar and other Middle East analysts say it is unclear whether Iran’s proxies can restore order and Tehran’s standing in Lebanon and Iraq.

      Israel poses the biggest challenge to Iran’s regional dominance, regularly bombing proxy-controlled Iranian missile stores in Syria and Iraq. And Israeli military intelligence closely tracks Iranian convoys moving arms overland to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and pre-emptively strikes any looming threat.

      “If someone rises up to kill you, rise earlier and kill him first,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, quoting an ancient dictum from the Talmud.²¹

      Is war inevitable between the United States and Iran?

      It is impossible to predict whether war will break out between the United States and Iran. But growing fears on the part of world leaders, regional experts and oil industry analysts demonstrate that they see such a conflict as likely unless something dramatic changes the course of events.

      As tensions mount over Trump’s crippling sanctions and Iran’s escalating belligerency, desperate diplomatic efforts have been initiated to halt an apparently inexorable march toward a major conflict in the Persian Gulf, where nearly a quarter of global oil supplies originate.

      First, European leaders last year created a barter mechanism to allow businesses to sell Iran food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies without going through the dollar-dominated global financial system. But companies, fearing U.S. sanctions nonetheless, have backed away. Then French President Emmanuel Macron tried unsuccessfully to arrange a meeting between Trump and Iranian President Rouhani on the sidelines of the recent United Nations General Assembly in New York.

      Experienced former diplomats and Iran experts say a dangerous escalatory spiral is now in motion. Trump insists he wants to avoid a military clash, fearful that it would sink his 2020 re-election chances. So he has responded to Iran’s provocations with more sanctions and nonlethal cyberattacks.

      But the sanctions pose what former IMF senior executive and diplomatic troubleshooter Hossein Askari calls an “existential threat” to thousands of impoverished Iranians. Among the Iranian leadership and ordinary citizens, experts say, that threat has stirred the country’s centuries-old Shiite code of resistance and martyrdom, all but guaranteeing more provocative Iranian behavior and growing chances of a war.

      “The idea that you can conduct economic warfare against Iran without that leading to military confrontation and costs to the United States is unrealistic,” says Iran expert Parsi, noting that Secretary of State Pompeo last year advised Tehran to bow to U.S. demands “if your people want to eat.”²²

      “You can’t conduct that degree of economic warfare and expect nothing will happen,” Parsi says.

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