Iran’s downing of an American fighter plane and the dramatic U.S. mission that followed to rescue a stranded airman provides both countries with fodder to claim a victory, but this chapter could end up propelling them toward further escalation.
Iranian state media on Sunday published photographs of a charred American aircraft and declared that the downing of three American aircraft in three days was a triumph of “divine grace.” Reposting the picture, Iran’s hard-line speaker of Parliament, Mohammad Ghalibaf, said: “If the United States gets three more victories like this, it will be utterly ruined.”
From the U.S. perspective, President Trump also emerged emboldened, boasting on Sunday about how American forces were able to pull off a risky ground operation and issuing a crudely worded threat that he would begin striking infrastructure targets.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” he wrote. Calling Iran’s leaders “crazy bastards” and using an expletive, he demanded they open the Strait of Hormuz shipping route, “or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
Iran is now one day away from Mr. Trump’s ultimatum to strike critical Iranian infrastructure if Tehran does not make a deal with Washington, or open the strategic strait. Attacking bridges or power plants, which could plunge Iran’s population of more than 90 million into darkness, would constitute a war crime.
Washington’s ally in the war, Israel, has already launched strikes on critical infrastructure, including a major pharmaceutical plant and its largest petrochemical complex.
Iran has warned it will retaliate by bombarding similar strategic assets in neighboring Gulf countries. Such escalation could be devastating for millions of civilians in the region, and wreak further havoc on the global economy and the already volatile markets.
“Iran’s approach is not to yield to these threats. Because if so, Trump will only continue,” said Sasan Karimi, a political scientist at the University of Tehran and the former deputy vice president for strategy in Iran’s previous government. “So Iran will use its maximum capability to retaliate — and not necessarily proportionally, because Iran’s infrastructure is vital, and hitting it is a violation of international law. A war crime, actually.”
With both sides perceiving themselves as at an advantage, there is currently little hope of making progress on a diplomatic solution to end the crisis, said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director of the International Crisis Group, a research organization. “From this point on, this war will become even more dangerous than it was before,” he said.
“This is exactly the kind of escalation trap that results in mission creep — which is if you constantly think that with more targeting and more pressure, you could eventually be able to force the Iranians to capitulate.”
Another question is whether the successful rescue operation inside Iran will encourage Mr. Trump to try riskier things, such as sending limited ground troops onto islands in the Strait of Hormuz or mounting a special operation to seize Iran’s enriched uranium in an effort to to cripple its nuclear program.
“It might give the U.S. more confidence that they can do it,” said Farzan Sabet, an analyst of Iran and weapons systems at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland.
While the successful Iranian strikes have raised doubts about U.S. and Israeli claims of having established “air dominance” over Iranian territory, Mr. Sabet said, U.S. forces may instead conclude they were simply too lax by allowing nonstealth aircraft to fly at low altitudes in a region where they may not have expected Iran to have air defenses.
Yet observers say Iran has now repeatedly shown itself able to strike at U.S. aircraft in ways that should give Washington pause ahead of any further escalation of the war.
Iranian forces have hit a base in Saudi Arabia, striking two U.S. KC-135 aerial refueling planes and destroyed an American E-3 early warning detection system. Iran has also been successfully shooting down Israeli and U.S. drones, some military analysts say.
And in retaliation for attacks on its water, energy, and other infrastructure, it has been launching strikes on similar targets across the Gulf.
“In terms of Iran being able to conduct those offensive operations, what they’ve shown us is that when they — so far, more than a month into the war — when they need to hit a target, they can hit,” Mr. Sabet said.
If U.S. forces were to move forward with the kind of major attacks Mr. Trump has threatened, Iran could respond, depending on what was targeted, by hitting desalination facilities that could endanger Gulf citizens’ access to fresh water — or by hitting gas and oil installations, which would plunge markets further into turmoil.
Mr. Karimi, the former Iranian official, urged Arab countries in the Gulf to pressure Washington to back down from such a confrontation.
“Whether it is justified or not from their point of view,” he said, “the whole region will be unsafe while Iran is unsafe.”
Sanam Mahoozi contributed reporting from London.
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