Introduction

In his seminal book “The Man, The State, and War” renowned International Relations theorist Kenneth Waltz offered a multi-layered (Waltz called them “Images”) explanation of why nation-states go to war against each other. Waltz’s first image focuses on the vital role that individual leaders usually play in the decision to go to war. In particular, wars often result from three core elements of leadership: (a) a leader’s personality; (b) a leader’s ideological convictions; and (c) a leader’s personal and professional interests.

Waltz argues that wars are driven mainly by “the nature and behavior of man.” In other words, leaders who are egotistic or paranoid, suffer from misdirected aggressive impulses, and/or have limited cognitive capacity or knowledge, often stumble into war through misperception or miscalculation. Such leaders are likely to misperceive an enemy’s intention and miscalculate their own strength and the enemy's military capability and resolve. Leaders who demonstrate strong ideological convictions often tend to be rigid and inflexible in their outlook. Such leaders tend to view the world in binary terms: good (us) versus bad (them). These types of leaders often demonstrate extreme intolerance towards alternative views within their own camps as well as towards the enemy. Within their own camp, advocates of alternative or more moderate views are often termed as “traitors.” Ideologically rigid leaders often frame the war narrative in a way that de-humanizes the enemy and justifies policies that would lead to the total destruction or extermination of the enemy. Finally, from an instrumentalist point of view, leaders often support war based on the calculation that the move will be in their personal and professional interests. A leader wishing to consolidate his position and power and to neutralize challengers and opponents within his camp may regard war against a hated enemy and glorious victory as a surefire way of achieving/safeguarding his personal and professional interests.


The War in West Asia: The Role of Leadership

Applying Waltz’s theory to the ongoing war in West Asia may throw up some interesting results.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is known as a hardnosed and aggressive leader who is also paranoid about the threat posed by radical Islamist groups like the Hamas and the Hezbollah to Israel and the Jewish people. The October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas may have convinced Netanyahu that the only way to neutralize the “existential threat” posed to Israel by these groups would be to defeat and disintegrate them militarily (similar to what the Sri Lankans did to the Tamil Tigers); but to do this, Israel will also have to strategically defeat these groups’ main sponsor, Iran. If one analyses Netanyahu’s public speeches stretching back several years, it seems he regards Israel to be locked in a life-and-death, zero-sum, ideological war with radical Islam. Several developments over the years may have strengthened his ideological conviction and hardline views: (a) several attempts by Arab neighbors to inflict strategic defeat on Israel in the past; (b) repeated refusal by the various Palestinian groups to accept a two-state “final” solution to the Palestinian question; (c) regular chants of “Death to Israel” after Friday prayers in Iran; (d) chants of “River to Sea” by Palestinian groups and public avowal by groups like the Hamas and Hezbollah that they wish to inflict a total strategic defeat on Israel and the Jewish people; (e) regular terror and rocket attacks by groups like Hamas and the Hezbollah on Israel and its people; (f) discovery of Hamas’ cache of weapons and underground tunnel networks in the Gaza, which they have worked on since 2005. All of this may have convinced Netanyahu that good faith negotiations with the enemy is not possible since that the enemy is using every opportunity to strengthen itself with the aim of delivering a final, all-out, and decisive assault on the Jewish state. Netanyahu’s personal and professional interests may also support a hardline approach towards the Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. If he as leader of Israel is able to deliver the decisive victory against the enemy, it will solidify his place in history and serve his long-term political interests. By contrast, if he is perceived by his people as weak and cowardly, this would seal his political fate. Hence, Netanyahu may find it incredibly difficult to back off from his hardline and aggressive approach towards Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

Unlike Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is hardline, paranoic but incredibly knowledgeable and a smart operator, President Trump is a megalomaniac with misplaced arrogance and demonstrated limited cognitive capability with regards to international history and the intricacies of international politics. I would have hoped that he learned some hard lessons in governance during his first term, which he would bring to bear in his second term. But alas, this not happened. Since he ran on the promise that he would bring America’s perpetual wars to an end if elected for a second term, I had hoped he will be careful about who he picked in his core team to deliver the “peace dividend” to both Americans and people around the world. Instead, his core team in his second term is like him in many ways: bombastic, arrogant, and sycophantic. Collectively, they have pushed him towards an extreme neo-conservative position on many issues (Ukraine, NATO, tariffs, Israel’s Gaza operations, Iran etc.) from which he will find it hard to retract himself. President Trump has also showed weak leadership when put under pressure by the powerful Israeli lobby in Washington D.C., sections of his MAGA base who glorify America’s and the West’s imperialist past and yearn for a return to such times, and powerful neo-conservative economic and financial interests in America and Europe who are his main donors and financial benefactors. Consequently, he has floundered in Ukraine (he had boasted that he could bring the war to an end in one day), damaged ties with NATO allies, started a silly trade war with all states that will eventually come to degrade the American economy, and given in to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s argument about attacking Iran without much thought about war objectives, war preparation, and war consequences. As a result, President Trump now finds it hard to: (a) justify the reasons for the war and explain what are the war’s core objectives; (b) say anything definitively about when the hostilities might end; (c) explain why America’s war preparation seems grossly inadequate (for example, failure to defend American bases in the Middle East, the need to move THAAD/Patriot batteries from South Korea to the Middle East, and the lack of any plan to induct ground forces inside Iran without which the stated objective of regime change is impossible); and (d) provide a reasoned argument as to why he has moved away from his election promise to bring America’s perpetual wars to an end.

In Iran, from day one of the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, the leaders have chosen a path of confrontation with Israel and the United States. This confrontation is mainly driven by ideological hatred for the Jewish state and for America. “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” are chanted after Friday prayers in Iran, and Israeli and American leaders are regularly vilified in the regime-controlled press. The regime leaders have financed and armed anti-Israeli and anti-American groups throughout the region, particularly in Israel (Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad), Lebanon (Hezbollah), and Yemen (Houthis). Iran also funded and armed the Assad regime in Syria. Iranian-funded and -armed groups have carried out numerous terror attacks against Israel and the United States over the past forty-six years, in which thousands of Israelis and Americans have died. Although driven by zero-sum ideological hatred towards Israel and America, one can argue that Iranian leaders have been extremely practical and realists in the way they have gone about trying to achieve their main objective of destroying Israel and driving America out of the region. From the recent pronouncements of top Iranian leaders, several things become clear. One, Iran has been quietly preparing for a decisive war with Israel/America for the past forty-six years. What this means is that Iran has been building up its military strength, particularly: large quantities of drones of various types and payloads; large quantities of different types and range of missiles including hypersonic missiles; large number of different types of warheads including cluster munitions; large numbers of mobile launchers that could fire, scoot and hide; sophisticated ballistic missile defense and ISR capability, which is networked to provide real time targeting coordinates to weapons platforms; intelligence gathering capability, particularly in Israel and the Gulf Arab states; and building up of naval warfare platforms that can be used to blockade the Strait of Hormuz if and when required. Two, Iranian leaders copied Pakistan’s playbook when it came to sponsoring terrorist groups and make the enemy “bleed from a thousand cuts.” This led to the funding, arming and training of groups like the Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also created Shia terrorist groups in Pakistan such as the Zainebiyoun Brigade (Liwa Zainabiyoun) and the Lashkar-e-Sarullah. The Zainebiyoun Brigade was even deployed in Syria to provide support to the Bashar al-Assad regime. The main objective of these groups was to carry out attacks against Israel and America. Three, Iran’s top leader, Ali Khamenei, created an elaborate leadership succession plan in the event of decapitation strikes by Israel/America during a decisive war. The plan envisaged splitting the IRGC into thirty-one fully autonomous regional commands in the event of the decapitation of the central leadership. This would allow the IRGC to engage the enemy even in the absence of a central command structure. Four, Iran’s top leadership went to great lengths to hide Iran’s strategic assets from the enemy. This meant creating a vast network of deep underground tunnels under mountains that would withstand conventional aerial bombardment by Israeli and American air force. Finally, Iran’s top leaders sanctioned serious nuclear research, and facilities were constructed deep underground at several locations. Uranium enrichment was being carried out at these facilities (it has been reported that Iran has 450 kilos of 60% enriched Uranium), but it is hard to say whether a conscious decision was taken to weaponize its nuclear capability. Several scholars have suggested that Ali Khamenei regarded nuclear weapons to be against Islam; hence, he may have refused to issue an order to weaponize. It is hard to predict what his son and successor, Mujtaba Khamenei, feels about nuclear weapons.


Is There an Off Ramp?

The current war between Israel/America and Iran is almost at the end of its second week. The destruction on the Iranian side has been enormous with thousands dead and many more injured plus enormous damages to its infrastructure. Iran also suffered the loss of many civilian and military leaders at the top, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, from the massive decapitation missile strikes by the IDF and USAF and the US Navy. Perhaps there was an expectation within the top civilian and military leadership in Israel and America that Iran would be forced to unconditionally surrender once its top leadership is wiped out and the IRGC suffers serious deprivations. This expectation, if it was there, was naive! Nothing like this has happened. In fact, as I have stated before, under the succession plan that had been drawn up by Ali Khamenei, the IRGC has been reorganized into thirty-one independent regional commands (this has happened) and a system was put in place to choose the next supreme leader (this system has now chosen Mujtaba Khamenei as the next Ayatollah). Iran has, therefore, begun to fight back after absorbing the initial shellacking from the IDF and the USAF and US Navy. Iranian leaders have also categorically ruled out any surrender talks or negotiations to end the war quickly. They have publicly stated that while Israel and the United States have started this war, the war will end on Iran’s terms and only when Iran is ready to stop. This war, therefore, at least as of now, promises to become a prolonged affair.

Prolonged wars are dangerous for one good reason: they escalate in scope and intensity. The war escalates in scope when adversaries move away from limited strikes to attacking a wide range of targets. You can see this happening in this war. The war started with decapitation airstrikes by Israel/US on Iran’s top leadership; over the next twelve days, the targets have expended to include weapons depots, nuclear research facilities, IRGC and other security/police buildings and offices, government office buildings and bunkers, military bases, suspected missile launch facilities, etc. Whether by design or by accident, the Americans even hit a school building with Tomahawk cruise missiles killing 170 young schoolgirls. On the Iranian side, too, the attacks have expanded from military bases and industrial targets in Israel to now include attempted decapitation attacks on Israeli leaders’ bunkers and government buildings. Iran has also attacked American military bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE along with American warships. It has expanded the scope of the attacks to target oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Kuwait. Iranian drones have hit luxury hotels in Dubai/UAE. Iran has threatened that it may expand the scope of the attacks to include banks and other economic assets in the Gulf states and Israel. The IRGC has further mined the Strait of Hormuz and threatened to attack any commercial ships that try to go through the Strait. This has brought the shipping of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz to a standstill. While the scope of this war has increased over the past twelve days, its intensity has also increased. Intensity of a war increases when bigger and more lethal weapons are brought out and used by the adversaries. Israel and America have carpet bombed Iran and used cluster munitions. USAF has also dropped the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), nicknamed the “Mother of All Bombs,” near Qom on a suspected nuclear research facility. This was the second time (after it was used on ISKP facility in Afghanistan in 2017) that the USAF has dropped the MOAB on a target. On their part, Iranian leaders have claimed that during the first week of the war, the IRGC deliberately used old drones and missiles that were in their inventory in an effort to exhaust the munitions in the Israeli/American missile defense platforms (for example, Iron Dome, THAAD, Patriot). Now that the Israelis and the Americans have exhausted their defensive munitions, Iran will gradually bring out the big guns – hypersonic missiles (Fattah and Kheibar) that travel over Mach 10 speeds and carry cluster munitions and payloads over one ton. We can already see such missiles hit targets in Israel over the past few days.

If this war gets prolonged, the scope and intensity of the war will increase further. While no side has hit civilian targets deliberately yet (we still do not know definitively if the school hit in Iran was deliberately done by the Americans), this may start to happen on a regular basis. Other targets, such as power grids, gas stations, desalination plants, shopping malls, airports, road and rail transportation networks may come under attack. The economic impact of the war is already crippling the global economy. The price of crude oil has crossed $100 per barrel; it may skyrocket to $200 or more in a few weeks’ time. Passenger and cargo air traffic from the Gulf and wider Middle East has taken a massive hit already. It may stop altogether if major commercial airports become non-functional. The destruction wrought by the war and severe international pressure on the leaders of Iran, Israel, and the United States may tempt them to try and finish this war by deploying much more lethal weapons, including perhaps tactical nuclear weapons. This is the scariest part of this conflict prolonging.

Israel has long been suspected to possess nuclear weapons. If this war prolongs and Israel’s existence as a state comes into question as a result of massive Iranian missile strikes of much greater lethality, will Israel’s leaders consider using nuclear weapons against Iran to force Tehran into an unconditional surrender? If continuous Iranian missile and drone strikes over weeks and months reduces the oil and economic infrastructure of the Gulf states to total ruin, could they put pressure on President Trump to consider using nuclear weapons to force Iran to an unconditional surrender? If this war prolongs and Israel and the United States stare at a complete strategic defeat at the hands of the Iranians, will they accept this outcome and meekly surrender on Iranian terms, or will Netanyahu and Trump be tempted to retrieve the situation by nuking Iran? And no one really knows where the 450 kilos of enriched Uranium (60%) that Iran is supposed to have, are being kept and what use is Tehran making of it? Is Tehran desperately working to further enrich this Uranium with the intention to produce a few nuclear warheads? If Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, could they consider using these nuclear warheads with hypersonic missiles against Israel? I do not pretend to know the answer to these questions. But just thinking about them scares the shit out of me.


Conclusion

So, where do we go from here? My view is that we have come to such a pass mainly because of poor leadership on the part of everyone directly involved – Netanyahu in Israel, Trump in the United States, and the Ayatollahs in Iran. Israel is territorially a small state lacking strategic depth and surrounded by big powerful Muslim states. The Jewish people of Israel also have a tragic history. All this makes Israel incredibly sensitive to perceived threats to its national security and the wellbeing of its people. So, constant chants of “Death to Israel” by Iran and its proxies do not help; terror attacks on the Jewish people such as the one carried out on October 7th also do not help. Rather it makes Israeli leaders extremely nervous, hyper-reactive, and vengeful. As politicians in a democratic polity, Israeli leaders have to react hard to threats to national security, or else they risk becoming politically irrelevant. The Ayatollahs know this but their hatred for Israel overshadows all their common sense and judgement. They keep provoking through their proxies, their words, and their actions. But Netanyahu could have acted much more responsibly and with more restraint after the October 7th attack. Particularly the massive military operations in the Gaza have portrayed Israel in poor light. In spite of all the provocations, Israeli leaders including Netanyahu should have realized that there cannot be a “military solution” to what is essentially a political problem. And the less said about America the better. Under the Biden administration, practically no effort was made to restrain Israel after the October 7 massacre or to offer prudent counsel. Under Trump, the semblance of any independent US foreign policy seems to have disappeared altogether, leading critics to conclude that Trump is completely in the Israeli lobby’s pocket.

Under such circumstances and given the risks of a prolonged war, the only real chance of a climbdown may come if impartial and powerful Global South leaders such as Prime Minister Modi of India, President Lula of Brazil, President Ramaphosa of South Africa, President el-Sisi of Egypt, President Subianto of Indonesia among others, come together to collectively mediate an end to this needless and highly dangerous war. But will that happen? Will the Global South show leadership? Only time will tell.