Iran's Three-Front Threat | Dr. Pietro Shakarian

## Iran on the brink: why this moment matters The conversation makes plain that a confrontation with Iran is not a narrow military incident but a geopolitical fulcrum capable of reshaping entire regions. What began as a series of tit‑for‑tat strikes and naval maneuvers risks escalating into sustained conflict because the actors involved now see stakes beyond immediate battlefield gains: prestige, deterrence, economic coercion, and the reordering of regional security architectures. The exchange underscores an uncomfortable truth — when a superpower readies forces off a rival’s coast and rhetoric hardens into ultimatum, the space for prudent diplomacy collapses and the consequences cascade across the Middle East, the Caucasus, and into the heart of Eurasian strategic competition. Observers in neighboring states are not indifferent spectators. The conversation reflects palpable anxiety in places like Armenia, where proximity to Iran and historical ties create acute sensitivity to instability on their borders. The fear is not abstract: a destabilized Iran could generate refugee flows, open proxies’ arenas, disrupt energy markets, and invite external powers to carve out spheres of influence. Whether or not immediate strikes occur, the current posture leaves little room for predictable outcomes. ## Three fronts of confrontation: U.S. pressure, Iranian resolve, and Russia–China backing A crucial contribution of the discussion is its framing of the crisis as multidimensional. On one side is the United States, projecting military might and demanding concessions that would fundamentally dismantle Iranian defensive capacity. On the other side stands Iran, rhetorically and operationally prepared to retaliate — not merely for symbolism but to preserve regime survival and national pride. Above and around them, Russia and China act as strategic buffers: both are actively signaling that they will not permit a unilateral knockout of Tehran without cost. Dr. Pietro Shakarian articulates this tripartite danger succinctly. He notes naval exercises and logistical movements — such as heavy transport aircraft deliveries — as indicators that Moscow and Beijing are prepared to provide at least material and diplomatic cushions for Iran. Importantly, he stresses that neither Russia nor China seeks a wider war; rather, their involvement is calibrated to prevent Tehran’s collapse and preserve corridors of influence. That dynamic transforms what might have been a limited punitive strike into a potential proxy for larger great‑power competition. The presence of major non‑Western patrons changes calculations. Washington can no longer assume local hegemony would be easy or cheap to enforce. Any kinetic campaign risks triggering reciprocal measures, escalation ladders that extend far beyond the Iranian coastline. ## The fallacy of “surgical” strikes and the absence of a clean pretext One recurring theme in the exchange is the hollowing out of classical pretexts for intervention. Past campaigns have been couched in narrowly tailored casus belli — weapons of mass destruction, humanitarian intervention, or the protection of civilians — narratives that can be manufactured or amplified to rally domestic and allied support. In the present moment, as the conversation emphasizes, such clean justifications are scarce. That absence matters because the political logic of war often requires a plausible narrative to sustain both legal and public backing. Dr. Shakarian’s point that the current demands — to fully dismantle Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities — amount more to an ultimatum than to a negotiated settlement strikes at the heart of the problem. Requests to disarm an adversary’s fundamental defenses after it has been attacked not only violate basic reciprocity in diplomacy; they negate the bargaining premise that makes compromise possible. The conversation argues that surgical options are largely illusionary here. Iran’s size, population, and integrated state structures render “decapitation” fantasies unrealistic. A campaign meant to be limited would almost certainly metastasize into protracted conflict, with uncertain end states and severe humanitarian costs. That reality undercuts not only the legal and moral justifications for preemptive hostilities but also the strategic confidence of those proposing them. Without a plausible exit strategy or credible mechanism to enforce a durable settlement, the likelihood of unforeseen repercussions rises rapidly. ## Economic coercion and the Strait of Hormuz as a strategic lever The conversation also illuminates how Iran’s most potent non‑military instrument — control over the Strait of Hormuz — becomes both a bargaining chip and a global vulnerability. Iran has signaled the capacity to selectively disrupt maritime traffic, a move that would instantly jolt global energy markets and impose economic pain on countries dependent on Gulf oil. Yet this is not a blunt tool intended to punish indiscriminately. As the speakers point out, Iran is likely to calibrate such measures to spare partners it values, particularly China, whose support has been politically instrumental in recent months. Even a temporary, targeted closure would have asymmetric impacts: Western and Israeli economies would feel pressure quickly, while Iran would seek to minimize damage to long‑term patrons. Such use of chokepoint leverage shifts the conflict from kinetic battlefields to global economic corridors, raising the potential for cascading financial shocks, insurance spikes for shipping, and a scramble for alternative energy routes. The financial dimension thus becomes another arena where escalation can have outsized, transnational effects. The conversation makes clear that economic coercion is neither purely symbolic nor purely tactical; it is a strategic equalizer. For Iran, leveraging the strait is both deterrence and signaling. For external planners, it is a sobering reminder that military superiority does not nullify the capacity of smaller states to inflict systemic damage. ## Regional ripple effects: Caucasus, Ukraine, and the limits of coalition politics A broader analytical thread runs through the discussion: crises do not exist in isolation. The looming Iran conflict interacts with other theaters — notably the war in Ukraine and the unresolved tensions in the Caucasus — creating interconnected risks. One insight emerging from the exchange is how the fatigue and setbacks in one conflict can prompt strategic transference to another. As attention, resources, and political capital are diverted, decision‑makers may seek more attainable or politically profitable theaters to demonstrate resolve. The conversation suggests that European reluctance to be fully entangled in a prospective U.S. campaign against Iran reflects fatigue, domestic political fragility, and the complexity of alliance politics. Several European capitals are wary of being drawn into a direct confrontation that would carry broad geopolitical costs. Meanwhile, the Ukraine war demonstrates how commitment can erode under sustained attrition; any proposal that looks like reopening a second major front risks encountering similar limits of will. Closer to the Caucasus, the prospect of a wider conflict raises real anxieties for small states whose borders and economies are intertwined with neighboring powers. The discussion points to Armenia as illustrative: proximity to Iran creates a vantage point of vulnerability, where instability across the border could translate into immediate humanitarian and security challenges. The risk is compounded when great powers treat regional conflicts as levers in their larger strategic contests. ## Off‑ramps and the politics of restraint If the present posture is perilous, the conversation also implicitly points toward what averted escalation would require: credible off‑ramps, international mediation, and a reintroduction of negotiated bargains that respec

Iran's Three-Front Threat | Dr. Pietro Shakarian Support us on Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Our shop: https://neutralitystudies-shop. fourthwall.com Dr. Pietro Shakarian Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pietro-shakarian- 7a792563/?originalSubdomain=am Homepage: https://people.aua.am/team_member/dr-pietro-a- shakarian/ #Pascal Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Neutrality Studies. My name is Pascal Lottaz. I'm an associate professor at Kyoto University, and with me today is Pietro Chakarian. For the fourth or fifth time, a good friend of the show, Pietro is a lecturer in history at the American University in Yerevan, Armenia. Pietro, welcome back. #Pietro Shakarian Pascal, it's great to be on your show again. Thank you so much for having me. #Pascal Thank you very much for saying yes. I mean, you’re very close to one of the centers of international attention. Armenia is very close to Iran, and right now the United States has a second carrier group that just arrived there. We’ve had talks in Geneva that apparently failed between the Americans and the Iranians, although I must say the U.S. made impossible demands, in my view. What’s the situation like where you are, and how are you looking at this very, very large U.S.-manufactured crisis? #Pietro Shakarian Well, a lot of people here in Yerevan, in Armenia, are actually quite nervous about the situation because, again, this has clear ramifications for the South Caucasus, for Armenia. A destabilized Iran would be an enormous disaster, as I've said numerous times on this podcast, for the whole region, right? First and foremost, as we know, the Near East, the Middle East, but also the Caucasus, Central Asia, and so on and so forth. So there is quite a bit of concern in society. I can't speak to how the government might feel about it, but in Armenian society there is great concern about the situation with Iran, between Iran and the United States. And so, yeah, I mean, it is rather, rather alarming. -- 1 of 18 -- #Pascal And we are talking today on Friday, February 20th. I mean, the strikes on Iran could come as early as tonight. A lot of people are saying that if the United States strikes, it’ll do so after the markets close, to give a kind of two-day window for things to maybe calm down, in case they’re planning a surprise, sneak, kind of decapitation attack. How do you see it? How high do you think the danger is of the U.S. actually striking Iran now? #Pietro Shakarian Well, unfortunately, Pascal, I have to tell you, it's very high. I don't want to say that—I mean, it's not that I want to, but unfortunately, this is where we are. We’re at a moment where we could be going to war as early as tonight, maybe even in U.S. time. It's really, really concerning. And the thing is, where are the brakes? Where’s the off-ramp here? Because, again, like I stressed, war with Iran is alarming. People here are rather concerned about that—about the implications of it. Maybe even that would spill over the border—something like that—it could lead to the ethnic fragmentation of Iran, the “Syrianization” of Iran, you know. Um, although I have to say, the state is rather strong. And I think that even though the U.S. thinks it can—under Trump, I mean—win this war rather handily, if that’s the calculation, I can’t say. But I think they have another thing coming, because the government in Iran is quite strong, and I think it will be able to withstand this. That being said, once you open the Pandora’s box of war, the outcomes are very unpredictable and very concerning. #Pascal There's a lot of talk about the Chinese and the Russians now giving substantial support to Iran and actually propping them up. Have you seen, heard, or observed anything that makes you think this time it's going to be different from, what was it, the 12-day war about six or seven months ago? #Pietro Shakarian I think it’s definitely going to be different, because this particular crisis over Iran has enormous potential to become a major regional—if not international—war. The fact is, we have, like I said, well, actually, as you were kind of alluding to, these exercises involving the Chinese and the Russians—the naval exercises with the Iranians in the Gulf of Oman, right? We even had a temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz just the other day by the IRGC. So it’s something that I think, and actually this time, as you correctly noted, Russia and China will not let Iran go down. The stakes are much too high for both countries. We’ve also been getting reports about IL-76s—these are large, for our viewers to understand, large military transport planes—flying from Russia to Iran. -- 2 of 18 -- Also, China has made many moves to bolster Iran at this moment. So Russia and China are not going to let this go. Now, what's incredibly dangerous about this is that the U.S., under Trump, keeps on building up, building up, building up. And also, by the way, I should say that the Russians and Chinese do not want a confrontation. They don't want to see a war between the U.S. and Iran. And neither do most of the states in the Middle East, Pascal Lottaz. Certainly, with the exception of Israel—possibly the UAE, which is Israel's closest ally in the region—but nobody wants this war. Turkey doesn't want this war. Egypt doesn't want this war. Iraq doesn't want this war. Saudi Arabia doesn't want this war. #Pascal Uh, Qatar doesn’t want this war. #Pietro Shakarian And yet we seem to be continuously, you know, moving toward that moment. I mean, President Trump has indicated that the only thing that would stop him—like I said, going back to what he famously told The New York Times earlier—is his own morality. So I don’t know how this is going to end up, you know? I mean, yeah, we’ll see, we’ll see where the chips lie on that. #Pascal One thing that even the New York Times is reporting on today—and, you know, for the New York Times to pick up on this is already quite a big thing—is how come this time we don't even have a pretext? I mean, in the Iraq war, we had the WMD pretext. In Syria, we had the “let’s save the children from gas” pretext. In Lebanon, in Libya, we had the “let’s save the children from the regime” pretext. This time, we’re completely out of pretexts. I mean, there’s nothing. #Pietro Shakarian I think, actually, Pascal, the way you phrase it is very interesting, because you're saying we're out of pretexts, right? So Trump was trying to kind of find one, where maybe Netanyahu was persuading him to do so. One pretext they were potentially going to use was that, well, Iran—it's the missiles, right? The missiles that clobbered Israel in the 12-day war, so now we have to get rid of them. Then it became the protests, the riots in Tehran—that we have to help, you know, bring democracy to Iran, right? Which is really fascinating, coming from President Trump, who said that, you know, “I’m going to be the America First candidate. I’m going to be the anti-war candidate.” Right? That’s how he was going into this election. And yet you saw him tweeting himself that he was basically going to pursue the exact same policy as Joe Biden—to keep pushing this kind of aggressive policy, American -- 3 of 18 -- imperial interests under the cover of democracy and freedom and human rights and all that. So that’ s what we’re actually seeing, as a matter of fact, that he’s moving toward. I mean, Trump is—like I told the hosts of another podcast—Trump is morphing into George W. Bush. What we're seeing is really kind of Iraq 2.0, and with the stress on the 2.0, because Iran is an enormous country. And if it's destabilized—I mean, I understand that Israel thinks, well, we can just knock them out, turn it into another Syria, and then bomb it at will and all this and that—but the enormous, enormous implications of a country this size, over 90 million people, and with an area about the same size as Western Europe, are huge. Actually, also, I mean, it's about the same size as Mongolia, you could say. I mean, it's a huge country—an enormous country by area, to say nothing of population. And so to start a war here— and it looks like if there is a war, it's not just going to be limited strikes, it's going to be a full-on war—which really concerns me, because they can't do something surgical, Pascal, like go in and take out the leadership or kidnap, I don't know, the Ayatollah. Or, excuse me, they can't just take out the Supreme Leader like they did with Maduro. They can't do that. They can't just sweep in like that. It's going to be much more complicated, and it's going to leave us with a disaster scenario, really. So, yeah. #Pascal And, you know, Iran made it very clear. They said, if you shoot, it’s not going to be a 12-day war—it’ s going to be a long, drawn-out thing. We’re going to immediately start shooting at your positions, which are all within range of our missiles, and we’re going to start shooting at Israel as well. And this time we won’t stop, because remember, last time it was the Iranians who agreed after 12 days to stop, when Israel was basically in a really dire moment, right? They said, no, not this time—we’re going to go full-blown after you. Last time the Iranians didn’t go after U.S. military installations, and this time they’ve already said, if you attack, we will. #Pietro Shakarian It's going to be a long war. Let me tell you, these people are going to fight. Because, I mean, the Iranians, like I said, between both the—how do you say this—the kind of passionate devotion to Shia Islam, right? That's number one. And number two, the nationalism—the sense that we're a great civilization, we were a great empire going back to the times of Cyrus the Great and so on and so forth. These people will fight. They will fight. And like I said, there’s this belief that, well, we can fragment it along ethnic lines, but even many of those ethnic groups, like the Iranian Azerbaijanis in the north, are very integrated into Iranian society. They’re extraordinarily integrated into Iranian society. Just look again at the Supreme Leader. And really, at the end of the day, even though there’s this effort to promote Reza Pahlavi as the leader of Iran, that doesn’t resonate with the majority of Iranians. So I think if Trump goes down -- 4 of 18 -- this route, it’s not going to end well. But I think we might—if Iran does something, like if the Iranians decide to do a limited closure of the Strait of Hormuz—then that would actually reduce the chances of a long, drawn-out war, because the economic impact would be felt immediately. And, you know, that’s where I think we might be heading, frankly. They were actually sending a warning the other day—the IRGC was sending a warning when they did the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz. They were showing the world, “This is what we can do, so don’t mess with us.” #Pascal Yeah, the one thing I don't really understand is that closing the Strait of Hormuz would basically punish everybody for this. #Pietro Shakarian No, that’s why I’m saying it would be a selective closure. They wouldn’t do it against—well, they’re very cognizant of not wanting to, for example, harm the Chinese, because, again, look at how much support China has been giving Iran. They’re not going to do that. This is going to be a selective closure that disproportionately affects the West and the United States in particular—and also, inevitably, Israel. So this is what we’re seeing: this is a nuclear option. It’s not something they would want to do; they’d prefer to negotiate. But again, when you go into negotiations, you can’t negotiate like this, where one side is putting enormous military pressure on the other. It’s just not going to work, unfortunately. I mean, for the sake of negotiations, this kind of approach is really disastrous and extraordinarily reckless. #Pascal It's also an impossible ask. It was an impossible ask to tell Iran that not only does it have to completely abando