Illustration by João Fazenda

Shortly after 4 A.M. on Thursday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fired a missile at a U.S. drone flying near the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic gateway for world oil supplies. The unmanned spy plane, which cost more than a hundred million dollars, and had a wingspan of a hundred and thirty feet, exploded in a fireball. Tehran tweeted the drone’s purported coördinates in its airspace. The Trump Administration countered that the attack occurred over international waters and was “unprovoked.” Several hours later, President Trump ordered a retaliatory strike on three targets, then cancelled it at the last minute, because, he said in a tweet on Friday, the potential death toll was “not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.” But tensions between the two countries remain higher than at any point in three decades.

The missile strike intersects with two other flash points. The Administration blames Tehran for attacks on international shipping—six foreign oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman since May 12th—and for aggressive acts by proxies in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. Iran is also threatening to breach the landmark 2015 nuclear deal in July, unless major powers, notably in Europe, provide the economic benefits that it promised. Trump unilaterally—and recklessly—abandoned the deal a year ago, then reimposed punitive sanctions. Iran’s oil exports have plummeted—from 3.2 million barrels a day to some half a million. Now, in response, Tehran says that it will exceed the limits that the deal placed on its nuclear program, starting with the enrichment of a higher grade of uranium. The threat may be brinkmanship, but, in theory, that uranium could also be used to fuel a bomb within a year.

“The United States does not seek conflict with Iran,” Patrick Shanahan, the Acting Secretary of Defense, said on June 17th, just hours before he resigned. Yet, since May, the Pentagon has committed thousands of new troops to the region, along with B-52 bombers, Patriot air-defense missiles, and a carrier strike group led by the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. Trump now has four options to rectify a crisis of his own making. One is to steadily increase his “maximum pressure” campaign to cut off Tehran’s oil exports, while pushing to negotiate a broader accord that would address terrorism, ballistic missiles, regional meddling, and human rights. The prospects of success are small. “There’s zero incentive for Iran to talk to us,” John Kirby, a retired admiral and a former spokesman at the State Department and at the Pentagon, said. “We’ve damaged Iran’s economy, but not enough to bring it to the table.” Nor does the Islamic Republic want to reward Trump for scrapping the nuclear accord.

Another proposal is to flaunt even more troops, ships, and aircraft around Iran’s borders—or even to deploy the U.S. Navy to escort tankers through the Persian Gulf. It’s been tried before: in 1987, during the Iran-Iraq War, Operation Earnest Will, the largest U.S. convoy since the Second World War, had thirty ships in the Gulf to escort reflagged Kuwaiti tankers ferrying Iraqi oil. The first tanker struck an Iranian mine. Iran blamed “invisible hands,” but heralded the incident as “an irreparable blow to America’s political and military prestige.’’ In 1988, the U.S.S. Samuel B. Roberts hit a mine and almost sank; in retaliation, the U.S. destroyed two Iranian oil platforms and four ships. The United States was not an innocent party: the U.S.S. Vincennes mistakenly downed an Iran Air passenger plane, killing two hundred and ninety people. Earnest Will lasted for fourteen months, ending only after Iran and Iraq agreed to a ceasefire.

A third option is a tit-for-tat military response to any provocation. That is what the White House was considering on Thursday night—the equivalent of its “precision strikes” on Syrian sites in 2018. The targets were reportedly Iranian missile batteries and radar sites. But Iran is not Syria, the shell of a former state; it has the world’s eighth-largest military, with more than half a million forces. Punitive action would send a strong signal, but it could also trigger a potentially catastrophic escalatory cycle.

The worst option is the one that both countries say they don’t want: a full-on war. Trump’s initial response to the drone attack was that it was likely unintentional—a “bad mistake.” In a televised address, Major General Hossein Salami, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, said, “We do not have any intention for war with any country, but we are fully ready.” A U.S. military campaign would probably not replicate the interventions in Iraq or Afghanistan. “We’re not doing regime-change operations,” Ilan Goldenberg, a former Pentagon and State Department specialist who is now at the Center for a New American Security, said. Nevertheless, “the instructions would be to take out as much as possible—the Quds Force, the nuclear program, maritime forces, and conventional capabilities.” To preëmpt conflict, six U.S. senators have introduced a bipartisan proposal to block funds for military operations against the Islamic Republic. “Congress has not authorized war with Iran, and we need to make sure that saber rattling and miscalculation don’t spark a catastrophic conflict,” Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, said.

Whatever course the Administration pursues, it will need partners. Belgium, Britain, France, Holland, and Italy all joined Operation Earnest Will. But mobilizing allies—for international sanctions, maritime operations, or military support—won’t be easy for Trump. “I’m not sure why anyone would sign up to operate with us, in harm’s way, because of the way we’ve treated them,” Douglas Lute, a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, said. “This Administration has proven itself unreliable.”

In the past month, Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, Iraq, and Oman have quietly conveyed messages between Washington and Tehran in an effort to defuse tensions. Neither side seems ready to accept the other’s terms to talk; there’s no dénouement in sight. The current crisis might have been avoided if Trump had stuck to the nuclear deal and built on it, tapping the heft of Europe, Russia, and China, which together with the United States had elicited the Iranian concessions. Instead, the Administration is scrambling alone militarily in the waters through which thirty per cent of the world’s seaborne energy flows. The irony is that the United States no longer needs much oil from the Gulf. The hypocrisy is that Trump vowed to bring American forces home from the Middle East, after eighteen years of multiple wars. The tragedy is that another one may be on the horizon. ♦