The joint US-Israeli strikes against Iran have sparked a regional conflagration to which no clean resolution looks likely. With US President Donald Trump expressing his desire for regime change, the Iranian government sees itself as engaged in an existential conflict and is striking hard against its neighbors in the Gulf Arab states in a bid to cause as much economic havoc as it can and raise the economic and political cost of the conflict for the US.
The Iranian establishment has spent years preparing itself to survive a war of attrition with Israel and the US and through its support of proxy groups across the region has developed considerable expertise in asymmetric warfare, enabling it to carry out damaging strikes at limited cost. (CONTINUED - 964 WORDS)
