As the world arms up, there’s plenty of room for new foes amid old rivalries

(Originally published Jan. 10 in “What in the World“) Iran is using Washington’s undeclared wars against China and Russia to gain regional leverage and elude economic sanctions.

That’s the bottom line of a trenchant analysis by two of The New York Times’ most seasoned diplomatic correspondents, David Sanger and Steven Erlanger. Their analysis reinforces the observation made in this space last week: “Tehran has used the war in Ukraine to nuzzle more closely to Russia and gain leverage against the U.S.”

But it offers some important new insights. First, that Tehran’s supply to Russia of kamikaze Shahed drones for use against Ukraine has picked up dramatically. Also, Tehran has developed enough enriched plutonium that it could produce enough for a nuclear bomb within a couple of weeks and a working bomb within a year.

The analysis also offers some interesting details about Iran’s strategy with the militias around Israel that it funds and trains. Iran uses Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, for instance, as an insurance policy against an Israeli attack against Iran itself. But Tehran may have less direct control over Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthi rebels than one might assume. Indeed, despite reporting by The Wall Street Journal to the contrary, Tehran may not have known about Hamas’ plans to attack Israel Oct. 7.

Recent attacks against Israel by Hezbollah in retaliation for Israel’s invasion of Gaza (and Israel’s assassination of a senior Hamas official in Beirut) may be the last thing Iran wants, since open war between Israel and Hezbollah removes the leverage that the threat of war gives it. It thereby exposes Iran to direct attack. Tehran won’t be happy, thus, that tit-for-tat barrages between Hezbollah and Israel have escalated into full-scale strikes, with Israel on Tuesday launching an airstrike into southern Lebanon that killed a senior Hezbollah commander.

Perhaps no event illustrates the complexity of Iran’s relationship in the region, and Washington’s, than the terrorist attack by ISIS last week in Iran that killed 100 people. Tehran has vowed revenge, which would put it on the same side as U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria trying to mop up ISIS. But the same U.S. forces have been attacked at least 100 times by Iran-backed militias in the area since Israel’s invasion of Gaza. On Monday, a U.S. airstrike destroyed a truck-mounted rocket launcher preparing to attack the Ain al-Asad airbase in Iraq.

Now both have been reminded of their common foe. Don’t, however, expect rapprochement. Washington and its allies—and their rivals—are gearing up for Armageddon. According to the Financial Times, the big defense contractors are basking in orders that rose 10% in 2022 to record highs. Global arms spending climbed to a record $2.2 trillion in 2022 as the U.S. and Europe re-stock after handing over much of their own arsenals to Ukraine. And even as private equity and venture capital funds rush to fund new weapons technologies, the war in Ukraine has dispelled the myth that modern armies would no longer need old-fashioned, front-line armaments like artillery and tanks.