Alastair Crooke on Yemen's Red Sea siege and the widening regional conflict around Iran
Glenn Diesen interviews former British diplomat Alastair Crooke on the escalating Middle East crisis.
Summary
Glenn Diesen interviews Alastair Crooke, former British diplomat and founder of Conflicts Forum, about the rapidly expanding regional conflict following the US attack on Iran. Crooke argues that what began as a binary US-Iran negotiation has become an unmanageable matrix of interconnected conflicts spanning Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza. He details how Yemen's closure of the Red Sea to Saudi shipping, combined with a major strike on the Jazan refinery, has removed a significant portion of world oil supply from markets — a development he says is being almost entirely suppressed in European media. Crooke contends that the military campaign against Iran has effectively failed: weapons stockpiles are depleted, no credible path to victory exists, and the Iranian population — particularly its youth — has hardened against any negotiation with the United States. He also highlights Israeli military and security commentators who are openly stating in the Hebrew press that Netanyahu fabricated the nuclear threat and that the June strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities caused only superficial damage.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and overview of the widening regional conflict
Glenn Diesen: Welcome back. We are joined again by Alastair Crooke, a former British diplomat and expert on the Middle East. I would highly advise reading his Substack, Conflicts Forum. What I want to discuss with you is some of the articles you've been writing, because I really want to unpack what is happening now in the Middle East. The war on Iran appears to be a real powder keg — the war is widening, it's expanding, with many of the conflicts being quite interconnected. We see, of course, the Iran-Israel-Saudi-Yemen component. We see now attacks on Saudi oil from Iraq, a possible conflict between Iraq and Kuwait, a crisis in Lebanon and Syria, possibly regime change in Bahrain. One looks and it could even be a possible Iran-Ukraine component now, as Iran might even start to strike EU energy projects across the Middle East because they see Zelensky as being managed by the West. So in short, the US appears to have started something that will be very difficult to put back together. I was just wondering how you are reading this situation in terms of this spiraling out of control.
Alastair Crooke: You've hit the nail on the head. It's mildly on flame at the moment, but it is on flame throughout the region. Trump and his attack on Iran is responsible for this upsurge in conflicts and destabilization. They are, as you say, all interlinked, but they also all have separate agendas. This is what makes it impossible now, in my view, for the United States to get an agreement with Iran. There are other reasons too, but it's become a really complex matrix of interests and agendas. Before, it was a binary negotiation between Iran and the US. Now, even Trump is saying — and it wasn't so long ago — "We've got to have Hezbollah join in the talks. Hezbollah called me up and I said you have to join in." I mean, that's a joke of course, but it underlines the complexity.
Yemen's Red Sea siege and the Saudi oil crisis
So if you start with the most complicated one from the US perspective, it will be Yemen. To give a little background: there has been a ceasefire underway with Saudi Arabia, and also a siege by Saudi Arabia of the Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen for more than ten years — sealing ports and airports. The Houthis strongly resent and object to this.
What triggered the current escalation was that they had prepared a delegation to attend the funeral commemorations for the assassinated Supreme Leader in Iran. They were invited, and the Iranians sent a civil airliner to Sana'a airport to collect the delegation. Saudi Arabia said this was against their siege, so they bombed Sana'a International Airport to prevent the plane landing. In fact, the plane did land, the delegation went to Iran and returned, and as a consequence Yemen and Saudi Arabia came very close to war.
Yemen then declared — along Iranian lines — "Okay, siege for siege. You've imposed a siege on us for ten years; we impose a siege on Saudi Arabia." That meant effectively the closure of the Red Sea to Saudi ports. Please note, because I think it's important: it does not mean the closure of the Red Sea to all shipping. It means the closure of the Red Sea to Saudi shipping.
Now there are a few wrinkles in it. The Saudis have tried to slip a couple of tankers through towards the Suez. Two tankers have been struck that were heading towards Bab-el-Mandeb by the Yemenis. But what the Yemenis are now doing is effectively warning empty tankers coming to the Yanbu port facility, saying: go back, don't come here, because you will be stopped. This is a major affair. The total oil passage through that Yanbu facility was something between six and seven million barrels a day, and that will certainly no longer be flowing into the western market.
That has been much exacerbated by the attack on the Jazan refinery — the Aramco refinery close to the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. Now, this is not just any refinery attack. I'm saying that because we're so used to, in the Russian context, reports of another attack on a Russian refinery, lots of black smoke, and then when we look more closely we find the damage was repaired in a few hours. With the Jazan refinery, first of all, it's not just a refinery. It is an all-singing, all-dancing hybrid — apparently the most modern refinery in the world. It doesn't just distill oil products; it does a lot more. And it is burning. It is still burning. It is really burning.
So when you take it all together, the Saudi oil loss is probably getting on for maybe 20% of the oil that was passing through the Red Sea. And the total through the Strait of Hormuz — which is much more — varies from day to day but is probably about another 22% of world oil supply. You're talking about a big hit to world oil supply. A really big hit.
And what is so strange is the Saudis have said nothing. If you read the European press, a reference to this is rare indeed. It's almost as if it's been pushed off the news agenda. A few pictures of something burning, but no context given to it, no sense of the scale. The whole of Europe is in this strange psychological environment where there's very little mention of it. Europeans have not been prepared or briefed that a crisis could come. For the first time today there were a few comments saying, well, clearly this winter there is going to be a gas crisis. But in terms of diesel, gasoline, and other things that come from the Middle East, almost nothing.
This is obviously a strategy not to frighten people — fingers crossed that enough can be drained from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in America just to get through this awkward period. But even there, unpleasant things are coming out. The strategic minimum for drawing on the reserve — the absolute minimum set by the military authorities — is 250 million barrels. They are well below that and still drawing down on it. They are now trying to manipulate the markets by saying, "Look, it's all right, we can go down perhaps even as much as 70 million barrels further." And the experts are saying it's not just one single supply of oil reserves — it's lots of caverns and structures with different grades of oil in different tanks, and it's much more complex. Many of these caverns are likely to collapse if the oil is taken out, because the oil was stabilizing the structure. The pressure will push in the sides inevitably, and many of these caverns are in danger of collapse.
Anyway, all this has been ignored in the interests of keeping markets content and keeping the price of oil down. That's a major element in this picture.
Iraq, Iran's regional operations, and the Shia political dimension
Then another one which is rarely noticed is what's happening in Iraq, where the prime minister went to see Trump. It seems he gave Trump some indications that American oil companies would be favored in Iraq against existing competition — something of that sort — but also said he was going to disarm the Shia militias, the Hashd, by the 30th of September. And they said, "No way." So there are a lot of problems there.
Iranian special forces are fighting in Iraq across the border. They are fighting against the Kurds regularly. Iranian special forces have gone in and assassinated seven or eight leaders of the Kurdish militias there, bombed them, and attacked their suppliers and supply lines. So Iraq is in a state of some disruption, and it may yet get worse.
The funeral showed very clearly the strength of — I don't call it Iranian power, because it's not really Iranian power — the civilizational force of Iran. Millions turned out, of course, at Khamenei's funeral, but also at even broader Islamic gatherings. We had something like 15 million or so turn out for these funeral arrangements. Many of them walked there. It was extraordinary.
Iraq is a Shia country, and the Supreme Leader in Iran was the marja — the guide, the source of emulation — for many, if not most, of the Shia. So it was their religious leader that was killed, as well as Iran's religious leader, killed by the Americans. So it's not in a very stable situation if they try to force disarmament.
America is trying to force the disarmament in Iraq, trying to force the disarmament of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and thinking to use Syria somehow to this end — that Syrian militias will come down and attack some of the Shia villages on the borders between Lebanon and Syria. I don't know whether that will happen. I have rather strong doubts about it.
Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza
Turkey too is a source of uncertainty. Turkey says it supports — or at least doesn't oppose — the idea, though I think Turkey once said it doesn't oppose it in a rather negative way. Turkey is clearly introducing Uyghur fighters and other elements into Syria, into Damascus, and the Israelis are threatening Turkey with war, saying they won't allow that.
The other thing which is again barely covered in the European press is what's happening in the West Bank. There is a clear attempt by Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and the messianic component — the national religious and others, not the Haredi but the other messianic element of the government — to create a crisis for the elections in October. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich seem to believe that this crisis will allow them to get rid of the Arabs from the West Bank, take it, and introduce more settlements both there and in Gaza. So the West Bank is poised for a really difficult period. It's already happening — almost a civil war is taking place in parts of the West Bank, and it could get a lot worse.
And Gaza: they are about to put the Gaza population into controlled, dense areas — concentration camps effectively — in Gaza. So everything is boiling as Netanyahu heads to meet Trump in Washington.
Trump's options: escalation or de-escalation against Iran
Glenn Diesen: Thanks for unpacking that, because it is getting not just boiling over but awfully complicated as well. Trump is making comments — because he has to respond somehow to the lack of progress on Iran — about opening the gates of hell, which suggests a dramatic escalation. You do see some movement of refueling tankers, and the US isn't pulling back. So either it's going for escalation and preparing for a major strike, or it's looking to walk this back, as some of Trump's advisers have apparently recommended given that weapons are becoming depleted and there's no convincing path to victory. But if the US decides to go for a huge strike against Iran, what is the chance of Israel joining in? Because Israel appears again to have sat this new round of the war on Iran out. To what extent do you think Netanyahu wants to bring Israel back into this war?
Alastair Crooke: Netanyahu desperately wants to bring Israel back into the war and to persuade Trump to attack Iran's infrastructure. I suspect he's going to say, "We have new intelligence to suggest they've proceeded with their nuclear program." I mean, it happens regularly all the time. I'm just amazed Washington falls for it. But anyway, he's probably going to say that, and he wants the infrastructure targeted.
It seems like what brought the current phase to an end was that General Kurilla, who is the commander of CENTCOM, was pretty adamant in saying, "Look, just going on bombing around the Hormuz is not going to change the Iranian position on negotiations or anything else. It's actually only wasting very rapidly depleting weapons supplies." And then if you take that off the table, what have you got left? What you've got left is Fordow — which Israel says, though I'm not sure if they have any real intelligence on this, or if anyone has any idea where the 430-odd kilograms of 60%-enriched uranium is. It was at Fordow, it seems, on the 12th of June when Trump bombed Fordow and other Iranian nuclear facilities. I think it's unlikely it's still at Fordow. Fordow could be where it is because Fordow is deeper and more structurally stronger than any of the other sites. But no one, I think, knows, and I don't really believe they have solid intelligence on this.
These things are not inviting targets. To bomb Fordow — it's a solid granite mountain, very steep slope, a thousand meters down to the working level. The experts say, well, to bomb this we'd have to sort of drill down two to three meter vertical shafts by bombing, bombing, bombing to get down a thousand meters, and then drop a nuclear weapon down it and blow the whole thing up. I mean, this is science fiction, not serious. Imagine trying to shape a little vertical hole into a steeply sloping granite mountain. The bombs will just burn off. I don't think it's serious.
And if they put troops on the ground — in Isfahan or somewhere, to go and seize the tunnels — I think that would be a huge gift for Iran. The troops would be captured or the casualties would be enormous. So there's no good option. This is why I've written that the military back of this campaign has been broken. America is running out of the wherewithal for a major operation. It's run out of the wherewithal, and it hasn't achieved any change. The opposite has happened: the Iranians have become more resilient and tougher in their position.
The Iranian public's hardening stance and the failure of the "evil enemy" framing
I argue, and have argued, that the Americans have the Iranian situation completely wrong in practice. They keep arguing that there's a very hard-line leadership and the ordinary people are just desperate for some sort of solution — they want to get out of this. Actually, it's the reverse. The leadership are pragmatic. They may not retail that they're pragmatic, but it's the people on the ground, particularly the young, who are saying, "Why are we talking to the Americans at all?" The negotiators were not popular. They were given quite a hard time. So I don't think there's going to be a change in the Iranian posture. The Iranians have already said they're not negotiating with the United States and will not negotiate with them as things stand.
So we wait and see what Netanyahu comes and says. As I say, I think what he is going to say is: you need to restart the war, and you need to attack infrastructure — infrastructure that would end the ability of the state to provide services to its citizens. In other words, they're calling for the complete destruction of the state. That must be the definition of a state that is unable to provide any services to speak of. That's what I think he'll say.
I'm not one of those who thinks this is going to be a slam dunk and Trump will agree with it. I think Trump has an inkling — if it penetrates through to his mind — that this hasn't been going well, and it is not going well in terms of the polls. The latest polls show a catastrophic drop in the standing of Israel amongst Americans. We've never seen anything like it. The drop-off in support across the board is stunning, and even Fox puts it. So I think there is a new vibe in Washington. I only call it that — it's not a strategic thing — but there's a vibe which says, you know, and I think even the Wall Street Journal said there wasn't anyone at the meeting the other day who thought continuing the war was a good idea.
So I don't think Trump — we don't know what hold Netanyahu has over Trump exactly — but I don't know that it's an open-and-shut case that he will do what Netanyahu wants.
What will happen? I imagine Trump thinks he can just go back to the status quo ante and take up negotiations from there. I don't believe that's possible. He discredited the JCPOA so completely, and he lied about it and continued to lie about it and walked back every provision in it. Why would the Iranians simply go back to this? Why would they agree to a halt in the war simply for America perhaps to rearm and reprepare and come back in September and decide the weather is cooler and they should do some military operation? I don't think the Iranians would accept that so easily.
And the whole question of language — I mean, I'm shocked when I hear what they're saying on Fox News about how they're all evil, they're all just a gang of thugs, they're not really human beings. This dehumanization is so powerful, and I've always remembered it from earlier. Think back to Kissinger and Leo Strauss. They always said the meaning was to blacken your enemies so completely and so thoroughly that no one could negotiate. It was not possible to negotiate with them because they're evil. How do you sit down with evil? How do you allow evil to emerge in a stronger position? You don't. And that was their purpose. And of course Israel plays that tune all the time: Iranians are evil. They have to be defeated totally and completely. But it does stop your ability to negotiate anything, particularly with a sophisticated country like Iran, by just saying they're so evil.
And that, taken with the widening of the regional war, means that I don't think — unless Trump did one thing, which would be to provide real, major, frontloaded transactions on Lebanon and all of these other areas and offer them in advance — because no one believes him when he says, "Whether things work out, you get all your money," and so on. No one believes that anymore — in Russia, China, or Iran. The American ability to negotiate in the old-fashioned diplomatic sense, I think, is gone. We're in a new era. Everyone knows he doesn't pay any attention to laws, international law, norms, or Congress. He does what he wants, and he's made clear his animosity towards Iran and everything Iran stands for. So why would you negotiate?
Glenn Diesen: I often cite the work of Walter Lippmann on propaganda because he tended to focus a lot on this framing of good versus evil. He made the point that it was a great way of mobilizing the public and resources for war. But once it was time to embrace a workable peace, it essentially made it impossible — because once you portray your opponent as pure evil, how can you possibly make compromise? How can you see things from their position? You can't put yourself in the shoes of evil. This was his main concern looking back at World War I, the Bolshevik revolution, the Russian civil war. The conclusion in most of these wars was the danger of portraying your opponent as pure evil. Unfortunately, we've done this with Iran, with the Russians, and I think this kind of propaganda is coming back to harm us when it's time to make peace.
The origins of the good-versus-evil political framework in American foreign policy
Alastair Crooke: I would just quickly add — I think this is a really important question. Michael Lind has looked at it, but my question is: when did this occur? After all, America was founded as — I won't say messianic, although it was partly messianic — a millenarian society, the redeemer nation bringing liberty and democracy and all these benefits to the world. And at some point it turned radically Manichean, black and white. The most obvious manifestation of this was not with Trump but with Biden. I don't know if you remember when he was in Prague, and then certainly afterwards at Liberty Hall when he was speaking — the whole thing was in somber red light, a really sinister-looking aesthetic — and he spoke in front of this symbolic place to say that Putin was evil, Russia was evil, and we were the light and the good, protecting civilization. When did this actually happen? It seems to me that America slipped into this. Was it with 9/11 or something else that changed? I don't know, but it's an important question.
And what you said before about the consequences of it — because it's not just Iraq. It's the same with Russia, and obviously China too, but in a different way. The West is just isolating itself into this little bubble, this sealed report of virtue: we are virtuous, we are the good, and everywhere outside of us there seems to be evil and bad, and we can't deal with them and we won't deal with them.
Glenn Diesen: I suspect the post-Cold War order contributed to some extent, because if you form a world order based on hegemony and you essentially make the argument that the hegemon is benign — that it will serve the benefit of all — you essentially make liberal democracy a hegemonic norm. This probably contributed, at least to some extent, because you usually have two ways of understanding the world. One is to see the international distribution of power creating power competition, but then you would recognize that peace means putting yourself in the shoes of the opponent to figure out where you can have compromise. But if you see the world as being about the eternal character of states — determining whether or not they're peaceful — well, that was the entire ideology after the Cold War. That is the democratic peace theory: because we're liberal democracies, we're more peaceful.
So I think initially there was a well-intentioned argument — that we're going to pursue security in a positive-sum game, we're just going to promote democracy and human rights, and then the world will become more peaceful. This was a very persuasive ideology for the hegemon. But what you essentially do, if you say it's the internal character of states that creates peace or war, is you will always see the weakness in others. You will attribute goodness to yourself and evil to others. So if it's internal character of states that creates peace or war, then all other states either have to be converted, contained, or defeated — because the era of mutual understanding and compromise is essentially appeasement. Why would good values seek to compromise with bad values? I think this is at least part of what made the hegemonic peace too ideological.
Conflict resolution and the necessity of recognizing the opponent's position
Alastair Crooke: I gave, when I did the first talks with the IRA long, long ago — we sat them both in a room together arguing both sides — and we thought that could lead to some sort of solution. Getting them together actually did the opposite. It was a disaster. It just confirmed in each their prejudice about the other. So we started again and looked very much at the whole question of: why don't you sit down and say what your history is, how you understand your history, what you see to be the future? And they said, "Don't be so naive — you'll never accept our history." That was the one side. But after long persuasion, they did it.
And so you have two completely incompatible versions of history and incompatible visions for the future. That wasn't the point. The point was — and this is what's relevant to the situation today — that at that point you got to the place where you could say: look, I don't accept this man's version of history. I don't accept their vision for the future. But I do accept that this is a valid exposition of his people's interests. And if both sides could accept that the other had a point — we don't agree with it, we think it's totally wrong — only then does politics become possible. The acceptance that the other person has a position makes it possible. If you don't accept that the other person has a position — that they're just evil — then politics doesn't become possible.
Glenn Diesen: I just think back to the 1990s, when at least you would be able to say things which are common sense. For example, with the Russians, you could say: what are the strategic interests and security concerns of Russia? And you would have military, intelligence, and political leaders arguing: well, their main concern will be NATO expansion, and they might react quite negatively to this if this is what we do. This was common sense. Many people would say this. If you repeated that today, there would be huge consequences, because you can't recognize that the opponent has security concerns — at least not ones triggered by us. The idea that they would respond to this would be dismissed quite quickly as some form of attempt to legitimize their policy. If you look through the work of Kissinger, a lot of the things he would have argued wouldn't be possible to say in the open anymore.
The Kharg Island scenario and the real advisers around Trump
But I wanted to circle back to what you spoke about before — the Israelis wanting the US to go after Iranian infrastructure. I see Trump has taken again to social media, making AI-generated images about bombing Kharg Island. This is apparently what state leaders do these days — put out AI pictures on social media about bombing infrastructure. But I was wondering what the possible risks are here. The strike by Yemen on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure — it's not just the disruption to the markets. It could be the Gulf States retreating from the US-led alliance system. The petrodollar could be at stake. I'm trying to assess whether or not the concerns from Trump are genuine. What is at stake if Trump decides to go down this path — not just posting AI pictures, but actually carpet bombing Kharg Island, which is critical for Iran's oil exports?
Alastair Crooke: It is partly — it is certainly a terminal. That's not where the oil fields originate. Often people think they are at Kharg; they're not. So it's just a terminal, and I don't think it would be impossible to adapt to that. I think the main thing is the stupidity of the idea. How would you get your troops there? You're going to sail them down — it's at the far end of the Strait of Hormuz, about 400 to 500 kilometers down. How are you going to get them there? Fly them in? Is there a landing? Where would you land them? Kharg Island comes under complete fire control of Iran from the cliffs. I've actually been to Kharg Island. The island is full of tunnels, full of artillery. You'll come under full artillery control. Same with the Strait of Hormuz itself — the strength of the defenses there, the temperatures. I think the Americans would melt in them if they tried it. We're melting in Italy, but it's far worse in Iran at the moment. The humidity is incredible. You need eight liters of water a day to survive. Where is the supply going to come from? How are you going to get them back?
I don't think this has ever really been thought through, except by the people in the establishment who know these things. But I don't think it's been thought through by Trump or even probably most of his team. The people who really advise him on Iran — according to Maggie Haberman, who was asked in an interview who the real advisers are — she thought about it and said: well, I think Susie Wiles has a lot of influence because he really trusts her. She's the keeper of the gate, former chief of staff of Netanyahu. And then she said: and then I would say it's Jared Kushner. And then she was asked about Hegseth. She said what happens with Hegseth is he usually comes to those meetings with General Caine, the Chief of the Joint Chiefs. They come together, so Hegseth sort of stands back and doesn't engage in the real question of whether this is a good policy or a bad policy for the United States. He just brings in Caine, who then swarms Trump with technical things. And we all know Trump gets bored with that in about one nanosecond.
So it looks like the burden of advice comes from Kushner, who has a direct line back to Tel Aviv. What's being fed to him? "Oh yeah, it's easy, we have control of the airspace, we dominate the airspace." This makes it very clear.
Israeli experts openly contradicting Netanyahu's nuclear claims
Now the other thing your viewers should know — and I've written a long piece about it — is the nuclear issue as discussed in the Hebrew press by military and security commentators in Israel. It is stunning. There are many of them — Bergman and all of these people — and they are obviously communicating with each other because they're very similar in the line they're taking. They're all just saying: this whole nuclear thing was a lie. There never was a threat. There is no threat. Iran hasn't got a weapon. And they are adamant that Fordow and all of these sites were never obliterated — surface damage, panels shut, but not destroyed. It's extraordinary to read the vehemence with which they say Netanyahu has just lied and lied and lied about this, and they give examples.
When he wanted to support Trump's position that they'd obliterated the infrastructure — Fordow and so on — in June, no one would sign up. The experts are saying this explicitly in the Israeli Hebrew press. No one would sign up. And finally, Netanyahu was trying to find someone — the only people he could find were the Atomic Energy Commission — and saying, "Will you sign up to this being obliterated?" And they said no. And then there was finally a sort of compromised, ambiguous last sentence put in, and they used this to support the claim that yes, this was a productive raid and it set their facility back. But the uniform language from the experts — I really think this body of material that's been put together is so important and should be seen and read by the people in Washington who are giving advice on these things, because these are the experts on it in Israel. This is what they are saying.
I'm sure that if Avril Haines were still in office — she was the former National Intelligence Coordinator — it would have been of great interest to her to see this. I don't think it's been picked up in Washington. Netanyahu is on his own making these comments, and I'm sure he's going to repeat them tomorrow in Washington: "Oh yes, it's moving towards a new phase, they're restarting the program, we've got new intelligence that shows that." And all uniformly the experts in Israel are saying this is not true. Have a look at it — it's on the web, it's on the Substack about the nuclear issue. You can read all of it, who's saying what and the overall conclusion. It's pretty devastating that this whole thing is clearly a setup, and we're just waiting now for the next chapter of the setup to be unfolded in Washington.
Glenn Diesen: The threat of nuclear proliferation or humanitarian issues — it's always a good way of selling a war. The problem is, once you start the war, it becomes difficult to walk back. It just seems like the United States — well, at least Trump has painted himself into a corner here. Going after the infrastructure is going to be problematic. A ground invasion, as you said, you can't do supply and support. I don't see any good story here for what a victory could actually look like. On the other hand, diplomacy is also going to become increasingly difficult, because as you said before, why would Iran even talk to the United States anymore? At least if I were Iranian, I would demand a buy-in — something immediate they have to hand over, for example unfreezing some money — just so there's some cost to keep abandoning the diplomacy all the time. Because handing over escalation control to the Americans, allowing them to decide when to start bombing and when it should stop — this is very dangerous for the Iranians. If the US thinks it can just turn off the war whenever it wants, it's going to go into war with much greater ease. So I think the US has put itself in a very difficult spot. Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?
Iran's escalatory control and the cards still in reserve
Alastair Crooke: You are absolutely right about this. Iran has escalatory control now and they're not going to give it up and allow the United States to say, "Okay, now is a period of ceasefire where we all rearm. Now we'll go back to war. Now we'll have a ceasefire. Now we'll go back to war." I don't think they will. They have understood very clearly this is wholly an adversarial court — adverse court for Iran — and so I think they will keep their escalatory governance. They may even extend the war. They are keeping cards in reserve. It's not that Israel is exempt — it's just that its time hasn't come yet, before that card might need to be played. So there's a lot still to go if Israel really wants to get involved. I think Iran is ready for that. It's not a threat to them. Actually, it is something that has been in the plan from the beginning.