Dangerous phase: On the crisis in West Asia

The crisis in West Asia is escalating on two fronts. On Tuesday, the U.S. said that its forces had struck five Iranian oil tankers in the Gulf waters after what it claimed were Tehran’s attacks on U.S. warships in the region. Iran retaliated with a massive ballistic missile attack on the Muwaffaq Salti U.S. air base in Jordan and vowed to respond with greater force to every U.S. attack from now on. It has also announced a new restricted zone in the Strait of Hormuz, warning commercial ships against crossing it under American naval escort. Separately, Yemen’s Houthis, who are closely aligned with Tehran, launched an attack on Saudi Arabia, wounding dozens. Riyadh has vowed a response. The Houthis, who control northern Yemen and parts of its Red Sea coast, have already enforced a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia’s western ports and launched an offensive against the forces of Yemen’s Saudi-backed government in Taiz and Mocha. With both the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, and the Red Sea, a critical trade channel between Europe and Asia, remaining flashpoints, a horizontally escalating conflict from Tehran to Jordan and Riyadh to Bab-el Mandeb threatens to plunge the entire region into an economic and security abyss.

The current phase of the conflict could prove to be deadlier for several reasons. The U.S., which in the recent past has used intense military strikes and economic strangulation as separate policy tools in an attempt to force Iran to surrender, is now using both simultaneously to exert maximum pressure on Tehran. The U.S. naval blockade has largely prevented Iran from exporting its oil, while the American naval escort to a limited number of ships out of the Strait of Hormuz has helped Washington blunt the impact of Iran’s chokehold on the waterway on global energy prices. But President Donald Trump was wrong if he thought his maximum economic and military pressure would force Iran to make concessions. Iran, instead, decided to escalate the conflict by attacking American warships outside the Persian Gulf, fully aware that this would invite a stronger U.S. military response. Iran appears to believe that it has a window of opportunity with the U.S. heading into its midterm elections within weeks and Mr. Trump remaining politically weak at home. If Iran’s strikes on U.S. military vessels signal a clear decision at the top to escalate the conflict, its missile attack on U.S. bases in Jordan suggests that Tehran has been rebuilding its strike capabilities — capabilities that Mr. Trump had claimed were destroyed. As neither Washington nor Iran seems ready to step back from the precipice, the war is set to enter a more dangerous phase with global economic implications.