Why are Iran and its proxies unlikely to be deterred by US strikes?

Iranian pro-government media attempted to ignore the US airstrikes on pro-Iran militias that took place over the weekend. Even though the US struck half a dozen sites with dozens of munitions, the regime in Tehran appears to be downplaying them.

This is likely because very few Iran-affiliated operatives were killed in the attacks. Also, Iran had a week to wait and plan what to do after its Iraq-based militias killed three Americans in Jordan.

At the same time, pro-Iran media in the region, such as the Al-Mayadeen TV channel, have claimed that the sites that were struck had been evacuated, and they say that pro-Iran groups have already begun targeting the US again.

Iran and its militias have also made it clear that countries in the region should not assist the US. Jordan, for instance, had downplayed the attack on its territory after it took place on January 27. In essence, the region feels that this kind of tit-for-tat conflict, in which Iran uses proxies to attack the US and the Americans strike warehouses and other sites linked to the proxies, might as well be happening on another continent.

This is because in the last year, the region has sought to put the era of these kinds of conflicts behind it. For instance, China brokered a Saudi-Iran normalization deal. There is a “ceasefire” in Yemen with the Houthis. Yet the Houthis have carried out dozens of attacks on ships in the Red Sea, destabilizing the region.

Key US partners in the region, such as Egypt and Jordan, want to downplay the tensions. Egypt, for instance, is not interested in discussing the Red Sea, while Jordan put out a statement making it clear that it was not involved in the US strikes in Iraq and Syria.

“The Royal Jordanian Air Force did not participate in the air strikes carried out by the US Air Force inside Iraqi territory,” the Jordanian military said. “There is no truth to the press reports about the participation of Jordanian aircraft in the operations carried out by US forces inside Iraq. The Jordanian Armed Forces-Arab Army respects the sovereignty of Iraq. The statement underscores the depth of relations that unite Jordan with all Arab countries,” the statement read.

In the UAE, Al-Ain media likely reflects Gulf thinking when it reports that the US strikes were part of the “rules of engagement” and that there was a lot of “noise” in the strikes, but no major escalation is likely to result.

Iran believes the US is withdrawing from the region

Iran’s statements about the strikes portray the US as ultimately on the losing end of this encounter. Iran believes that, in the long term, the US is slowly withdrawing from the region. It has been read as the policy goal of the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.

This likely emboldened Iran and its proxies to go for broke when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. The degree of Iran’s involvement in planning that massacre is still unclear, but within days, Iran had mobilized Hezbollah, the Houthis, and militias in Iraq and Syria to carry out attacks.

Therefore, it’s clear that Iran believed that the October 7 attack was a turning point. This was a “crossover” point for Iran, beyond which it believes it will increasingly achieve victory in numerous arenas in the region.

Al-Mayadeen media, which is pro-Iran, quotes the Al-Nujaba militia in Iraq as saying they will respond to the US attacks. Hezbollah slammed the US strikes, claiming Washington was escalating the wars in the region. This is ironic, since it is Iran’s proxies, including Hezbollah and Nujaba, that are responsible for most of the problems in the region. Pro-Iran groups have already claimed to target US forces since the attacks, illustrating they are not deterred.

Iran has shown over the last several years that it can operationalize its militias to carry out hundreds of attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria and that those militias generally emerge unscathed. In general, the Iranian militias continue to be strengthened, and Iran believes it holds a winning hand.

Iran wants to get political parties in Iraq to demand that the US leave. As such, Iran gets militias in Iraq to target US forces, even in Jordan, and then, when the Americans respond, Iraq claims this is a violation of its “sovereignty.”

This is a lose-lose situation for the US. If the US responds more strongly, it will be accused of “escalating” the situation. Iran will then use the “escalation” as an excuse for more attacks. Iran also uses militias, so it has plausible deniability. Any attacks on Iran itself would be an “escalation” as well.

The US response to the January 27 attack, like the responses to the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, has not yet deterred the Iranian-backed groups.

Seth Frantzman is the author of Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machine, Artificial Intelligence and the Battle for the Future (Bombardier 2021) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.