U.S.-Iran: Here’s How The Escalation Could Spiral Out Of Control

-Analysis-

PARIS — For the past three months, everyone has been repeating that neither Iran nor the U.S. wants to enter into a confrontation. And yet, step by step, the conflict continues to escalate in a zone of great danger, in northern Syria and Iraq, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.

Take the announcements of the past 24 hours:

• the Revolutionary Guards, the armed wing of the mullahs’ regime in Iran, fired ballistic missiles at Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and northern Syria, causing several civilian casualties;

• then, a missile from the Yemeni Houthis, allies of Iran, hit an American commercial vessel bound for the Suez Canal;

• Navy Seals, America’s elite commandos, boarded a dhow off the coast of Somalia. On board they found ballistic missile components, presumably of Iranian origin. Two Navy Seals were killed in the operation, the first American casualties since October 7.

• finally, Iran launched an airstrike on Pakistan aimed at a Sunni militant group, killing two children, according to Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry.

That’s a lot, especially if you add to it the American and British bombardment of Houthi positions in Yemen in the preceding days.

If this isn’t war, it sure looks like it. We must try to understand what’s at stake here, in this dangerous escalation that could spiral out of control at any moment.

“Careful” solidarity with Hamas

Since the Hamas attack on October 7 and the Israeli war in Gaza, the forces of the so-called “Axis of Resistance“, i.e. the Shia militias allied with Iran, have been in action in a very calculated way, from Yemen to Lebanon.

It’s not a matter of all-out war, as we saw between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, for instance; rather a way of showing solidarity with Hamas, without risking being drawn into a wider conflict. Informed observers of Lebanon assure us that Hezbollah, which is armed and financed by Iran, does not want an all-out war.

The Houthis know how to survive war.

As for Yemen’s Houthis, a religious minority with links to Iran, they have shown themselves to be more warlike than Hezbollah, seriously compromising maritime traffic in the Red Sea with repeated missile attacks. They have succeeded in drawing the U.S. into a vicious circle of provocation and retaliation.

But here again, it’s not total confrontation. The Houthis have been in conflict for decades, first in a civil war, then with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for five years. They know how to survive war.

Will Tehran cross the line?

They have succeeded, at little cost, in mobilizing the U.S. fleet, and now the Europeans have decided to mount an operation to protect commercial vessels; an unexpected political success for the Houthis, which serves them internally.

This game of controlled escalation is perilous. It could devolve at any moment.

The real question is that of Iran, which has just entered the fray with the shots fired by the Revolutionary Guards. But initial analysis that Tehran will not cross the Rubicon into war remains the most probable.

Iran has too much to lose to go beyond these demonstrations of solidarity with its allies. But this game of controlled escalation is perilous: as long as the war in Gaza lasts, it could devolve at any moment, even if it’s no one’s real choice.