"The Peril of Diplomacy Without Deterrence: How the Battlefield Loses Its Leverage"

By Parisa Nasr-Abadi

The two terrorist states, the United States and Israel, are seeking to transform "Southern Iran" into another "Southern Lebanon." This means they want to turn Iran’s southern provinces and the Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf into permanent targets within the region, ensuring that alternating attacks on them do not cause any disruption or violation of the ongoing ceasefire status.

This behavior amounts to the "globalization and gradual normalization of aggression" against Iran's territorial sovereignty—the exact same phenomenon that has been taking place in Lebanon for a long time.

Although Iran has responded to repeated US-Israeli aggressions, evidence indicates that the Iranian responses lacked the required effectiveness and failed to establish a state of "deterrence" against the aggressor. This implies an absence of proportionality between Iranian responses and the actions of the hostile enemy. The "equation of pain" has not tilted in Iran’s favor, nor have Iran’s retaliatory strikes inflicted severe or irreversible damage that would compel the opposing side to reconsider its decision before initiating any provocation against Iran.

The United States' objective through these attacks is to formulate a new equation in the region. Since America recognizes that interfering with Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz will not yield the desired outcomes, it seeks—through continuous violations of Iranian territorial sovereignty over Iranian islands and the country's southern regions—to establish a "Southern Iran equation" to counter the "Strait of Hormuz equation" as a means of pressuring Iran.

It has been stated previously that the sum of Iran's considerations regarding not escalating tension abruptly and massively, the absence of effective and deterrent preemptive actions, and the failure to respond at higher levels that decisively redefine the "equation of pain" and the "balance of terror" in Iran's favor—all of this inflicts serious blows to Iran’s strategic superiority in the current battle. Consequently, it allows for a qualitative upgrade in the enemies' tactical gains, making their exit from the strategic bottleneck much easier and smoother.

Prioritizing negotiation tracks (at any stage of advancement) over battlefield necessities carries the inherent risk of weakening the very battlefield achievements that formed the foundation of the balance of power in negotiations.

In confronting enemies who know no limits or boundaries in creating leverage and tipping the scale in their favor across all arenas, any situation that leads in one way or another to weakening the battlefield is a situation that must be changed without hesitation or delay.