Conflict Spreads Across the Gulf

It didn’t take long for the conflict in Iran to spill beyond its borders. Over the past few days, Iran has hit five-star hotels in Dubai, an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia and a whole range of other targets across the Persian Gulf. At least one drone made it all the way to Cyprus. One of Iran’s proxies hit targets in Iraq. And Israel began striking Lebanon on Monday, after Hezbollah launched attacks.

Is there a method behind all of this? Diplomats I’ve spoken to say there is. Today I’m writing about why chaos is the best, and maybe only, card Tehran has to play.

The spiraling Middle East conflict

A few weeks ago, when President Trump first began making comparisons between the Venezuela operation that took out Nicolás Maduro in January and what he might do in Iran, I wrote about how the two countries were very different targets.

Iran had ways of defending itself that Venezuela did not, our Iraq-Iran bureau chief, Erika Solomon, told me at the time. And it was preparing to use them.

Should the U.S. strike, Erika said, the Iranians “will do what they can to make this an all-out war in the region.”

We’re now getting a sense of what that looks like.

Iran cannot win militarily against the U.S. But it can create pressure on the Trump administration at home and abroad by throwing the region into a tailspin.

The war in the Gulf

The scope of the fighting has expanded rapidly since Israel and the U.S. first conducted airstrikes against Iran on Saturday. More than 550 people have been killed in Iran since then, the Iranian Red Crescent emergency service said Monday.

Iran responded as expected: with missile and drone strikes on Israel that have killed at least 10 people, and with attacks on U.S. military facilities in the Gulf region. At least four American troops have been killed.

But it has also struck civilian facilities like hotels and airports in the Gulf, killing at least six. Footage on social media over the weekend included images of five-star luxury hotels in Dubai on fire. Trump’s allies in the Gulf are spooked.

In the past day or so, Iran has also stepped up its targeting of energy installations. It struck a oil refinery in Saudi Arabia and an energy facility in Qatar, shutting down liquid natural gas production. Iran hit an oil tanker off the Omani coast, killing one crew member, an Indian national.

The war in Lebanon and Iraq

One asset Iran has at its disposal that Venezuela didn’t is its proxy actors in the region.

It didn’t take long for Hezbollah to jump into the fray. The group said it launched rockets into Israel early Monday morning to avenge the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In response, the Israeli military began launching strikes at Hezbollah targets on the outskirts of Beirut and in southern Lebanon, bringing a definitive end to a shaky cease-fire. At least 31 people have been killed so far in Lebanon, and more than 3,000 have fled their homes.

Another Iranian proxy, a pro-Iran militia based in Iraq, claimed responsibility for a drone attack against a U.S. military base at Baghdad International Airport, as well as an earlier attack on U.S. forces stationed in northern Iraq.

The war everywhere else

Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, a vital maritime artery on its southern border. Commercial ship traffic there has slowed to a trickle since Saturday.

It hasn’t blockaded the strait yet — a move that would hurt Iran’s own revenues — but oil prices rose nearly 10 percent on Monday, setting off concerns in countries as far as China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India.

China imports a little over half of its seaborne crude oil from the Middle East, and around a quarter of that from Iran. Japan imports more than 90 percent of its oil through the strait; South Korea depends on the Middle East for about 70 percent of its crude imports.

These countries have stockpiles of oil and gas. Whether they run out depends on how long the conflict lasts. And how long the conflict lasts may depend on how widespread it becomes.

Chaos as strategy

So how is this helping Iran?

Analysts and senior diplomats I spoke to have argued that Iran is pursuing a deliberate strategy of trying to expand the conflict, in order to create pressure on the Trump administration abroad and at home.

In the Middle East, Trump’s closest allies aside from Israel are in the Gulf, and they see the war as a disaster. As my colleague Vivian Nereim reports, attacks on airports and hotels shatter their carefully curated image as a safe haven in a troubled region.

One senior Western official traveling in the region put it this way: Pressure on the Gulf countries is the best avenue to pressure the White House.

Another vulnerability, analysts say, is that if the war leads to higher gas prices and lower stock market returns for Americans, it could hurt Trump in the run-up to the midterm elections.

The surviving leaders of the Islamic republic are playing for leverage. This approach comes with risks — Iran had worked hard to rebuild ties with its neighbors. But it’s the strategy being pursued by a regime that sees itself as having nothing left to lose.

MORE TOP NEWS

The latest on Iran

Trump said the U.S. would continue attacking Iran for as long as it took to render it incapable of posing a threat. “Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that,” he said.

Trump, who said on Saturday that toppling Iran’s theocratic regime was a goal, did not cite it yesterday as one of his aims. The administration has struggled to explain its rationale for starting the conflict. Follow our live coverage here.

Iran’s leaders remained defiant. The country’s top security official, Ali Larijani, denied news reports that Tehran was seeking to negotiate with Washington, denouncing Trump for “delusional fantasies.”

Cyprus, an E.U. member state, said a drone had hit a British air base.
Trump’s path to war was encouraged by Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and by Trump’s own confidence after toppling Maduro.
Spain refused to let the U.S. military use its bases for airstrikes against Iran.

OTHER NEWS

Afghanistan said Pakistan carried out airstrikes on Bagram Air Base and the capital, Kabul, on Sunday.
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada focused on business ties when he met his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, setting aside India’s suspected role in the shooting of a Sikh activist in Canada.
President Emmanuel Macron said France would expand its nuclear arsenal and deepen cooperation with European neighbors to deter attacks.

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