‘Boil the Frog’; Iran’s New Policy Against US and Israel [Part One]

While the world expects a quick response from Iran to Israel’s Monday attack, Tehran is cleverly playing its own game with both Washington and Tel Aviv.

With the increasing tensions between Iran and Israel, especially after the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate building in Syria this Monday, the world is now waiting to see how Iran responds to this aggression.

Many believe that the Islamic Republic’s failure to respond to Israel in this special case of aggression or its resorting to indirect attacks on Israel through proxy forces will somehow be a sign of Tehran’s weakness. But this is simply not true.

In its confrontation with Israel and the US, Iran is now using an asymmetric war strategy called “boiling frog”. This scientific experiment explains that when a frog is placed in a pan full of water and the water is heated gradually, the frog cannot notice the gradual increase in temperature until its muscles gradually become weak due to the increasing heat. This makes the poor frog to feel disabled to jump out of the water when it reaches boiling point, which finally leads to its death.

This experiment is now invoked by military and geopolitical experts to describe the “long game” of achieving strategic goals. Today, it is Iran and its regional allies who are using a calculated approach to gradually raise the temperature in West Asia until the water boils to a fatal degree and the frogs (the United States and Israel) are dead.

1- The American frog

After the Hamas-led Al-Aqsa operation began on October 7 last year, US President Joe Biden deployed US naval assets to the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea to “defend” Israel.

On November 26, 2023, the USS Eisenhower and its escorts passed through the Strait of Hormuz and anchored in the Persian Gulf on the Saudi Arabian side. Naval forces affiliated with Yemen’s Ansarullah first targeted Israeli ships and the port of Eilat with their first shot on October 19. But on November 29, their attacks intensified, targeting any ship regardless of flag or ownership.

Subsequently, Eisenhower and its naval escorts had to move from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to continue “defending” Israel.

This strategy made US Navy assets to go away from the Iranian waters and move to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden while still exposed to possible attacks by Yemen’s Ansarullah.

The move also created a sense of frustration among US troops. In other words, many sailors and marines of the American army are now asking themselves how long they have to stay on such dangerous water to defend Israel and take the risk of missile and drone attacks.

It was in mid-March that Captain Chris Hill, the commanding officer of the USS Eisenhower, said, referring to the fatigue of the American forces on board, that “my men need rest, they need to go home.”

A lose-lose game for Washington!

Iran has indeed put the US in a complex trap, and what Washington ultimately gets in this war game with Tehran is a defeat. The US has shown that it is unable to defeat the Houthis, and is doomed to failure even if it decides to withdraw its naval assets from the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, a defeat of the same humiliation as in 2021 with the withdrawal of the US military from Afghanistan.

Now America will either jump out of the boiling pot that Iran has provided for it and run away in humiliation to question the credibility of its armed forces, or it will remain in this boiling pot until the US ships and troops are attacked by the Houthis.