Rejecting Peace, Choosing Fire: Iran’s Defiance Forces the U.S. and Israel Toward Total War -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka

The newest round of the Iran war exposes a harsh fact about the modern concept of geopolitics: when neither side trusts the other enough to lay down its arms peace proposals are just empty words. President Donald Trump says talks are under way. Tehran says the United States is “talking to itself.” Missiles are still flying. Airstrikes still continue. And the Middle East moves all the nearer to a war that neither diplomacy nor deterrence can prevent.

Iran’s rejection of the most recent U.S. peace proposal is more than just a diplomatic setback, it’s a strategic signal. For Tehran evidently believes that accepting such terms now would look like surrender after weeks of U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iranian military targets, doing damage to the country’s leadership and infrastructure. From Iran’s standpoint, survival calls for defiance. To a Washington view this confirms that pressure should be increased.

This logic transforms limited wars into total ones. According to reports, the Trump administration has presented a plan to end hostilities with Iran. The plan includes a number of conditions relating to that country’s nuclear program and regional activities. The Iranians, in response, put forth some conditions of their own, including elimination of the U.S. presence in the Gulf and compensation for damage caused by the attacks, things Washington considers unthinkable. This is no longer negotiation. This is bargaining under fire. Since the escalation of the conflict in late February, U.S. and Israeli strikes have been carried out against Iranian military sites.

Meanwhile Iran has responded with missile attacks across the region, including Israeli territory and targets linked to the United States. But each step in the escalation also narrows the political space for compromise. National leaders who have promised victory themselves quite suddenly cannot suddenly adopt half measures without keeping face privately and publicly disappointing their followers at home.

Therefore it comes as no surprise that Iran continues to ignore such sentiments.Leading up to a war, the feeling of establishing strength is not only a matter of military strength; pride matters greatly as well. Up to now, doctrinal considerations have been no more than that: differences in doctrines, a continuation of the same problem solving mechanism (internal and external), dressed up. Faced with outcry over civilian casualties, the Bush administration made four revisions in targeting guidelines for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan last week, two already adopted and two soon to be made.You several dangers, which many of my Chinese colleagues brought to my attention, were of a kind that suited my taste greatly. You can never bestow great blessing upon those characters pitiful existence alone just as you either have to handle joy from someone else or else despair with another. When allies have differing endgames, wars become more difficult to end. This is the moment when diplomacy goes grand opera and war becomes policy.

History shows that wars seldom stumble into them. They become total only when both sides prefer risk, sharing the benefits will require not just generous terms of settlement but also a long period in which people on either side of this divide learn from each other.The Middle East is now less so than it has been for many of years. The Manichean confrontation between Iran and Israel that made up off season entertainment on television screens has gone into hiatus, with last winter’s peace talks between Arabs and Israelis producing an unprecedented breakthrough. The end of an era! Like it or not, however, any reasonable plan for peace in the Middle East must be tested first of all on the battlefield. Drifting south in a tug of war between Iran and the United States, the conflict could spread far beyond Israel and Iran with the blockage of major shipping routes, involvement from multiple countries and the threat of wider proxy attacks. Already markets seem to be responding both to increasing instability and to discussion by war strategists about needing more troops and increased defence production. Once a war reaches this point, it often escalates not because leaders will it to but because they do not see how they can stop.Comments by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton were triggered shortly before an official from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the international community doesn’t want to weaken Iran and didn’t ask it to abandon its nuclear program. Iran’s defiance may be intended to force respect.American pressure may be intended to force compliance.

Israel’s strategy might be just about engineering a collapse. Together, however, they are close to forcing anything but: a war that nobody really planned but that none of them any longer can avoid. In negotiations, rejecting peace is sometimes a means of bargaining. In this war, it may represent the point at which diplomacy endsand total conflict begins.

Fransiscus Nanga Roka

Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya Indonesia