Chats on the Charles

Ferdowsi is Iran’s national poet. His epic Shahnameh (The Book of Kings) is one of the Islamic world’s longest poems and central to the ancient civilizational identity of Iran. Many couplets of the poem chronicle the Persian love for, and mastery of, the game of chess. Today, with the United States withdrawing from the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) and threatening severe sanctions, the Iranians have embarked on the latest round of high stakes chess with America. What is Iran’s strategy and how might it play out?

Iran rightly believes that the United States is in the process of a long-term retreat from the Middle East. The unresolved conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan, the indifferent engagement in Syria, the self-reliance of energy supplies, and the ascendancy of isolationist politics all point in that direction. Therefore, Iran’s core strategic response to the sanctions will be to outlast the Trump administration and avoid any major escalation that invites American military action in the next two to six years. Tehran is calculating that a pragmatic future U.S. administration would not want to start another Middle Eastern conflict.

This strategic patience is evidenced by Iran’s continued engagement with Europe, China and Russia, its muted response to Israeli attacks in Syria, and its carefully calibrated restart of its nuclear program. Within this overall posture, Iran will likely create more freedom to maneuver by harming American interests in the Gulf.  It will accomplish this through the support of regional militias, and incitement of discriminated Shia minorities in the Sunni monarchies. In addition to tying down America’s allies, these low grade regional conflicts will provide opportunities for Iran to evade American sanctions, and tighten the hold of a brutal revolutionary regime on the long suffering Iranian people.

The wildcard in this strategy is Israel. Israel wants to take this moment of unalloyed U.S. support to lock in a permanent U.S. military commitment to the region. An America withdrawing from the Middle East is a challenging planning scenario for Israeli strategists. Israel’s increasingly aggressive direct strikes against Iran are meant to gain maximum leverage over Iran in a period of unquestioned U.S. backing for its policies. Israel fully understands that Iran would prefer not to respond proportionately at this time for fear of catalyzing an American military reaction. Israel will keep ramping up the pressure to see how much the Iranians bend before they break.  A simple miscalculation on either side could lead to war.

Iran is caught between two conflicting impulses, the desire to avoid engaging the United States militarily versus the desire to preserve its recent gains against Israeli pressure. I believe that Iran will make a strategic retreat as long as its vital interests are not threatened. Countries like Cuba and North Korea have shown that no matter how harsh, U.S. sanctions can be avoided for decades. And unlike those two countries, Iran has many friends in Europe and Asia. The sanctions will also allow the regime to roll back the recent freedoms won by the Iranian people and strengthen its hold on power. Ultimately, they will be counterproductive to the only non-military solution to the Iranian problem – a change in the regime initiated by an increasingly frustrated and impoverished Iranian youth.

Chess is a game of guile and deception. Iranian regimes have long played this game with considerable skill and on timescales measured in decades not months or years. Their goal right now is to defend the board in front of them for the next few years by sacrificing some pawns and without exposing their key pieces. All games of chess end with the words Checkmate.  This phrase traces its origins to the Farsi (Persian) word Shah Mat, or literally, “the King is helpless.”  In the current chess game between the United States and Iran, we are a long way from Shah Mat!!