{"id":204055,"date":"2026-03-14T11:43:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T11:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-escalation-trap-how-the-iran-war-could-become-more-costly-and-complex-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T11:43:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T11:43:27","slug":"the-escalation-trap-how-the-iran-war-could-become-more-costly-and-complex-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/the-escalation-trap-how-the-iran-war-could-become-more-costly-and-complex-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"The escalation trap: how the Iran war could become more costly and complex – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran is trying to create wedges between Gulf states and the US, but Trump is very comfortable on the \u2018escalatory ladder\u2019
<\/span> Middle East crisis \u2013 live updates<\/a>
In its current phase, the Israeli-US war against Iran and its proxies has become a proving ground for two competing concepts of military escalation, each of which threatens to become a trap.
On one side, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have failed thus far in their ill-defined and shifting strategic aims. Despite killing Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other key leaders in the opening salvo of the campaign, the clerical regime remains and Iran\u2019s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is unsecured. Airstrikes are intensifying and hitting a greater number of targets.
Tehran\u2019s counter is a \u201chorizontal escalation\u201d, one long prepared by the regime, that is intended to widen the conflict geographically, with strikes on the Gulf states, and also in terms of the costs to Washington and the global economy, not least in energy supplies.
The coming days and weeks are likely to reveal important lessons, <\/strong>not least about the potency of US military<\/a> power in an increasingly fragile and multipolar world.
Experts point in particular to the risks of an escalation trap \u2013 whereby the attacker is drawn into an ever more complex, protracted and costly conflict than envisaged at the outset \u2013 from a widening disparity in the US-Israeli campaign between the tactical and strategic level. Put simply, the tactical level involves specific military tasks \u2013 such as airstrikes hitting their intended targets \u2013 where the campaign has been successful. The strategic level defines whether the political and national security aims of the war are being achieved and at what cost.
\u201cThe are several stages to the escalation trap,\u201d said Robert Pape, a US historian who has studied the limitation of air power and has advised a number of US administrations.
\u201cWhat we saw with the initial attack was tactically almost 100% success,\u201d he said. \u201cThe problem is that when that doesn\u2019t lead to strategic success \u2026 you get to second stage of the trap.
\u201cThe attacker still has escalation dominance, so there is a doubling down, which then moves up the escalation ladder and that still does not lead to strategic success. Then you reach stage three, which is the real crisis, where you are contemplating far riskier options. I would say we are stage two, and on on the cusp of stage three.\u201d
He said the Trump administration had become mesmerised by the initial attack and had an \u201cillusion of control\u201d based on the accuracy of its weapons. All of this has pushed Tehran towards its own model of escalation, one with a far wider global economic and political impact, Pape and other critics say.
By targeting the Gulf states and shipping in the strait of Hormuz, Iran has demonstrated it can escalate the costs of the war for Washington far beyond its military capabilities to meaningfully counter the US-Israeli attack directly.
Iran\u2019s strikes \u201care designed to create wedges between the US and the Gulf states by in turn creating wedges between the Gulf states and their societies,\u201d Pape said.
\u201cThey are forcing the publics in the Gulf to ask: \u2018Why are we paying the price of a war that appears driven by expansionist Israeli policies?\u2019\u201d
Israel has signalled another escalation. Its defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Thursday that he had ordered the military to prepare for expanding operations in Lebanon, where it is fighting the Iran-backed Hezbollah<\/a>, and that it would \u201ctake territory\u201d if Hezbollah rocket fire did not stop.
Robert Malley, a former US envoy to Iran and lead negotiator in the nuclear talks with Tehran, said how the US proceeded in the conflict \u2013 and what level of escalation or de-escalation was adopted \u2013 was likely to be defined less by clearly delineated strategic considerations than by Trump\u2019s psychology.
\u201cA some point, I assume there will be an exit ramp, but I could imagine the escalation reaching levels we really wouldn\u2019t have contemplated even a month ago \u2026 troops on the ground, going after basic infrastructure, taking over parts of Iran, working with Kurdish or other ethnic groups. All of that is escalatory in a different way.
\u201cBut that could trigger reactions on the Iranian side, and then who knows what happens. I wouldn\u2019t be shocked if we saw terrorist attacks against soft targets, soft, quote-unquote, American targets. If that were to happen, whether it was directed by Iran or not, who knows how the president then reacts?
\u201cBut at this point, what we should fear is that the escalatory ladder is the one that Trump is most comfortable on, because I don\u2019t think the Iranians are going make life any easier for him. I don\u2019t think they\u2019re going to offer him the victory on a platter that he wants and say: \u2018Okay, we stop shooting.\u2019\u201d
Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute argues that the trajectory of the conflict is being driven by a series of debates: between US defence policy professionals and Trump\u2019s inner circles; between the US and Israel; and between political and military echelons in Iran, not least the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps seeking revenge.
\u201cThere is a view in the US strategic community, if not in Trump circles, that sees a risk of state-on-state conflict with China in the near future,\u201d he said. From that point of view there has been a desire in the US to avoid the risk of other simultaneous threats and conflicts \u2013 involving Russia, Venezuela and Iran \u2013 and this has led to a split between those who envisaged the war as a narrow set of achievable objectives to degrade Iran, and Trump\u2019s desire for \u201ccoercive control\u201d over the country\u2019s future.
For Iran, he said, the pattern of retaliation in the Gulf was not simply about reciprocal strikes but also re-establishing deterrence in the region. He cautioned that if Iran struggled to maintain its current intensity of missile and drone strikes, it would not necessarily mark the end of Tehran\u2019s horizontal escalation if it transitioned to a longer-term threat against shipping through the strait of Hormuz.
The US author and foreign affairs specialist Robert D Kaplan pointed to another risk, which, while not immediately escalatory, could lead to the same end point \u2013 \u201cthe slippery slope of incrementalism\u201d.
\u201cIf a civil war, or something akin to it, breaks out in Iran, the [Trump] administration may feel compelled to send special forces and advisers to aid one side,\u201d he wrote in Foreign Affairs.
\u201cAnd the risks of escalation spiral from there. The war in Vietnam took years to evolve into a middle-sized war \u2026 The situation in Iran might follow a similar trajectory.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iran is trying to create wedges between Gulf states and the US, but Trump is very comfortable on the \u2018escalatory ladder\u2019 Middle East crisis \u2013 live updatesIn its current phase, the Israeli-US war against Iran and its proxies has become a proving ground for two competing concepts of military escalation, each of which threatens to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":204056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-204055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}