Strategic Upsides in Iran

Dad29 has competing analyses of Iran. This one is negative, and focused as much of the negative commentary on the role of Israel. The US has at least three kinds of things it calls 'allies,' to include client states like Canada, which is one even though it deeply resents it (as until recently was the UK; the influence of Islamism and leftism on the UK elite is pulling us apart, but only a bit so far); true allies like Japan, whose interests are so closely aligned with ours that cooperation makes sense almost all the time; and states like France or Turkey that are allies for strategic reasons, but whose interests come apart from ours so significantly that we are often in serious opposition to one another. Israel occupies something between the second and third position. It has independent interests that differ from ours, and it sometimes pursues those; but most of its interests align with ours, and most of the time we act as genuine allies and partners. 

This Childers analysis of the Iran war, by contrast, is highly positive. It is also broadly correct, though as D29 notes it omits risks -- of which there are several beyond anything to do with Israel, including supply chain disruptions not only of fuel but of downstream goods like aluminum. If aluminum plants run out of fuel and have to shut down, it takes months to restart them.

The strategic upsides, however, are unassailable. Childers only gets at some of them, partly because there are so many they're hard to list in one place. For decades Iran has been situated at the center of the Chinese-Russian efforts in the Middle East: Russia's naval base in Syria was guaranteed by Iran's puppet Assad; when Assad fell Russia was pushed out of the Middle East (though still very active in Africa). 

China's oil supply is underwritten by Iran, which has provided cut-rate oil in return for China ignoring sanctions on Iran's oil. If the US military takes Karg and a friendly government is established that endorses that (as the US was allowed to occupy part of Okinawa by Japan after WWII), it puts the US in charge of that oil supply. That gives the US a powerful lever on Chinese actions anywhere. It isn't quite a veto -- Russia can still provide oil to China -- but it is a brake because Chinese actions against US interests are subject to new tradeoffs and pressures.

Also, China's Belt-and-Road project to Europe ran through Iran and Russia. The Russian arm is already cut off because of the war Putin started with Ukraine; the loss of the Iranian arm will cause China to have lost billions in investments and all of its expected returns in terms of regional influence in the Middle East and Europe. 

The Iranian response also has upsides for the US, strategically. Childers gets to several of them; but another one is that the Ukraine anti-drone lessons-learned have become newly important to all the Gulf States. That means that Ukraine will receive investment buoying it up greater than it was hoping to receive in aid. This will further exhaust the Russian capacity for aggression, or for actions abroad in places like Africa. 

The war isn't without costs, and the end-game will doubtless incur more. The strategic upside to pursuing it to victory is very clear, however.