The U.S. military campaign against Iran has produced a dangerous paradox: while Iranian capabilities have been significantly degraded, the country's motivation to strike back has intensified, two Columbia University professors have argued. Richard Betts and Stephen Biddle describe a situation where reduced but still existing military power meets an inflamed impulse to use it.
In their Foreign Affairs analysis, as "Hvylya" reports, the scholars argue the war "has not achieved the administration's purpose at acceptable cost." The Iranian threat "has been reduced in intensity, the weight of large-scale violence that Tehran can bring to bear, but has likely increased in probability" - meaning Iran is now more likely to actually deploy its weakened but still dangerous forces for revenge.
The assault "did the reverse" of producing a friendly government, Betts and Biddle observe, creating "an Iranian government even more zealously hostile than the one that was decapitated." Iran now sees its incentives as existential, especially given the stated ambition for regime change and the targeted killings of its leaders.
In the short term, an embittered Iranian regime "could attempt to repay in kind the Israeli and American decimation of its top leadership" by targeting mid- to high-level U.S. government personnel, the authors warn. Such retaliation would likely provoke Washington to escalate further, feeding a cycle with no clear endpoint.
"A combination of diminished but still existing capabilities and an inflamed impulse to use them is hardly a success for American strategy," the scholars conclude. The war reduced what Iran can do but sharpened what it wants to do - and the latter may prove more consequential.
Also read: "Hvylya" analyzed how Iran's energy leverage opens a new phase in great-power competition.