Revving Up for War with Iran

The State Department ordered several hundred U.S. diplomatic personnel to leave Iraq on Wednesday, citing heightened threats from neighboring Iran amid a buildup of U.S. military forces in the volatile region and growing concerns of a potential conflict with Tehran. 

The uptick in tensions came nearly two weeks after the White House warned of what it described as potential targeting of U.S. forces, allies and interests by Iranian security forces or their proxies. It provided no details and some military allies and senior members of Congress questioned the administration’s assessments. 

So far this month, the Pentagon has sent the Abraham Lincoln carrier task force and Air Force B-52 bombers to the region and dusted off contingency war plans, the Treasury Department has increased sanctions on Iran’s economy, and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo made a sudden trip to Baghdad to consult with U.S. and Iraqi officials. 

Few allies embraced the aggressive U.S. moves and several warned of an accidental clash in Iraq, where U.S. military forces and Iranian-backed militias operate in close proximity, or in the Persian Gulf, where Iranian and U.S. ships sometimes sail at close quarters.

Punishing sanctions on Iran are raising tensions too:

The sanctions imposed late last year by Trump after he withdrew from the landmark nuclear deal aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions are far more draconian than those that helped bring Iran to the negotiating table under the Obama administration, and they are having a profound effect on the Iranian economy, analysts say. 

Trump administration officials claim they have wiped $10 billion from Iranian revenue since November, inflicting widespread misery on the lives of many poor Iranians as well as the government’s own spending. The tensions between Washington and Tehran spiked after further restrictions went into effect on May 2, eliminating waivers from eight countries that had previously been allowed to continue importing Iranian oil with the goal, U.S. officials say, of reducing Iranian oil exports to “zero.” 

Many in the region say the ferocity of the sanctions offers an incentive to Tehran to push back against Washington, crossing a “red line” that will give Iran little choice but to retaliate, according to Kamal Wazne, a Beirut-based political analyst who is sympathetic to the Iranian and Hezbollah point of view. 

“The Iranians are used to sanctions. But this level of sanctions will generate a different response. The Iranians will not be quiet about it,” he said. “They are form of war more detrimental than actual war … It’s the slow death of a country, the government and its people.” 

Though it is too early to confirm that Iran was responsible for the sabotage attack on four oil tankers near the Persian Gulf last week, as U.S. officials claim, “Iran has a major incentive to put the squeeze also on the U.S. economy by making the price of oil jump,” he said. “The pain will be reciprocated.” 

The austerity measures adopted by Hezbollah offer one indication of the breadth of their impact, not only on Iran’s own economy but on its capacity to support its regional proxies.