Over the weekend, the Iranian military launched hundreds of drones and missiles toward Israel. Israeli, American, and Jordanian air defenses reportedly intercepted and shot down almost everything Iran fired. One child from a Bedouin village in southern Israel was hurt by shrapnel falling from an intercepted missile, and an Israeli air base in the Negev Desert—also in southern Israel—sustained some structural damage.
This attack was the widely expected response to an April 1 Israeli airstrike that destroyed the Iranian consulate in Syria. The Iranian government made it clear that it would seek revenge for the strike, which killed thirteen people, including two senior Iranian generals. In the weeks since that attack, many have worried that the Iranian response would spark an even larger Israeli reaction, escalating to the level of regional war and threatening to draw the United States in. That worry remains after Iran’s weekend attack.
Many parallels can be drawn to the escalatory cycle between the US and Iranian governments back in late 2019 and early 2020. And as we face another cycle of escalation, it’s worth looking back to see why things didn’t escalate to the point of war to help us understand how war can be avoided once again.
First, some important context. When the US invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, it removed the Iranian regime’s chief rival in the region. The Shia government that Washington then built up in Iraq was friendly with the Shia government of Iran.
In 2014, the Islamic State—which was then flourishing in eastern Syria thanks largely to US-provided money and weapons—moved into western Iraq and declared the area to be part of their new caliphate. Both the US and Iranian governments decided to directly join the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The US sent five thousand
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