Analysis: Iran faces hard choices as it calibrates next move against US and Israel

Egypt Independent

4 hours ago

US President Donald Trump's decision to strike Iran's nuclear facilities puts the Middle East in a volatile position, analysts say, with all eyes now on Tehran's next move.
In a region already on edge, Trump's airstrikes puts several options on the table for Iran, analysts say. All carry inherent risks for Iran and the future survival of the country's leaders.
Diplomacy: The first is that Iran could return to the negotiating table.
'It's (a) huge incentive to end the war and save the regime,' Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli Military Intelligence, told CNN.
Iran could 'declare that they are coming to negotiate and asking to end the war. Negotiating on the base of zero (uranium) enrichment,' Yadlin said.
Yadlin said Iran might also leave the United Nations' Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), under which it has pledged not to develop a bomb. However, Iran's 'capabilities to (build a bomb) do not exist in the coming year or two,' he added.
But would Iran's conservative hardliners tolerate a purely diplomatic response to an attack by US forces on Iranian soil?
Counterstrike: Another option is for Iran to retaliate, potentially dragging the US and the wider Middle East into a complicated and drawn-out conflict.
Iran has said 'several times' that if the US 'joins this war and attacks their nuclear facilities, they will retaliate against US forces in the region, against US interests, and there are a lot of those,' CNN political and global affairs analyst Barak Ravid said.
Iran could also choose to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping oil route, giving it the power to influence the 'entire commercial shipping in the Gulf,' Ravid said.
'This will get energy prices up. This will influence the entire world's economy,' he added.
A prominent adviser to Iran's supreme leader has already called for missile strikes and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
'Following America's attack on the Fordow nuclear installation, it is now our turn,' warned Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, a well-known conservative voice who has previously identified himself as Khamenei 'representative.'
Geographic leverage over global shipping gives Iran the 'capacity to cause a shock in oil markets, drive up oil prices, drive inflation, collapse Trump's economic agenda,' Middle East scholar Mohammad Ali Shabani told CNN.
No easy option: Khamenei 'has got a decision to make' and is likely to respond, said CNN analyst Aaron David Miller, adding it is 'almost impossible' to imagine 'that this 86-year-old leader, whose goal essentially is to preserve the revolution and pass it on to one of his successors, can simply do nothing.'
'He may have to calibrate his response, but I suspect we're not done with this.'