A UAE air force F-16 fighter jet on display at an air show on October 16, 2021. Iran’s attacks on the Gulf States are alienating its neighbors. (Shutterstock/Shoaib Ahmed Jan)

Why Iran’s Gulf Pressure Strategy Won’t Work

Share this link on Facebook

Share this page on X (Twitter)

Share this link on LinkedIn

Share this page on Reddit

Email a link to this page

Iran’s reckless strikes on the Gulf States are consolidating regional opposition to the Islamic Republic.

Iran’s decision to launch missile and drone attacks across the Middle East in the wake of the US and Israeli strikes illustrates Iran’s retaliation strategy. Tehran believes that if it can increase the price of this war throughout the Gulf states and in other countries, those countries may pressure the United States to end the war. However, Iran’s strategy could backfire, leaving it even more isolated. It could also lead many countries that previously said they were opposed to escalation to be more amenable to seeing the regime in Tehran fall from power.

Iran’s wartime decisions resemble how Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein also misjudged the region and the world 35 years ago. In August of 1990, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait. Like Iran’s attack on the Gulf states, Iraq appeared to believe that its invasion would provoke little resistance and gather massive rewards in the form of increased oil wealth. Iraq had fought an eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s, and its army had come off relatively strong and flooded with Soviet-supplied weapons.

Iraq believed it could annex Kuwait and repay........

© The National Interest