Zero-sum game or conflict escalation?

It is a concept studied by microeconomics, which has its application in games of chance, lotteries, commercial strategies such as the stock market and also, increasingly widespread, in commercial relations of all kinds and in those of international politics, in which the total destruction of the adversary is not sought beyond the point or red line that each one marks as a final or turning point or because it is not intended to exceed in any way to avoid an equal retaliation in the event that things go wrong.

This concept seems to be the one used by Iran every time, even against its will, it gets involved in any international conflict that implies a political and military response on its part. A response that responds to diminish the effects of its national pride, as a way to calm internal tensions and also to make it clear that any action or military incursion on its territory or people of high prestige or national interest, will always have an adequate response, balanced and, for the moment, with all possible security guarantees since it warns in time and almost marks in the networks its military responses to avoid massive casualties on the opposite side even if it proclaims them, the disproportionate escalation of the conflict or the total destruction of both.

Early last morning, the whole world - after a few days of maximum expectation and no less speculation - has witnessed the many times announced Iranian reaction against Israeli territory as a consequence of the attack perpetrated last April 1st by Israel on an Iranian headquarters next to its Embassy in Baghdad (Syria) in which, among thirteen casualties, one of the main generals of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Mohamed Reza Zahed, currently considered as the high commander of the Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, was killed. This force is the foreign operations arm of the Revolutionary Guard.

That attack was carried out because, according to Israeli intelligence statements, the bombed building is neither a consulate nor an embassy, but a military annex building of the Quds forces disguised as a civilian building in Damascus" where important operations against Israel were being planned by related forces and terrorists in both countries.

Well, as it turned out, in spite of being a massive Iranian response, thanks to their constant warnings and to the American and British support, mainly, the effects achieved on the Israeli territory and population are practically null or of very little entity.

This attack and its prolegomena in excessive warnings and threats are very reminiscent in substance and form of the attack on two US bases in Iraqi territory in 2020, in which 17 missiles hit the Ain Al Asad area base (although two fell without exploding) and another 5 hit the headquarters of the international coalition in Erbil (one of them ended up in Bardarash, 50 kilometers away) in retaliation for the Israeli attack, 50 kilometers away) in retaliation for the attack with a US drone that days before, took the life of the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, also of the Revolutionary Guard.

In short, and unless the opponents are very important and have significant nuclear weapons, everything points to the fact that Iran will not dare to carry out a massive and prolonged attack on its own, not even a continuous and unannounced retaliation, even if its country or relevant members of its armed forces suffer attacks and even lose their lives.

It will always look for a way to try to wash its prestige both nationally and internationally and to satisfy its population with threats or outbursts of the highest level, it will raise the tone of these threats, it will hinder international relations and cooperation with those it is interested in at any given moment and it will measure its reactions so that it ends up in a zero-sum game.

In Iran, its leaders and military leadership are aware of their limitations derived from the international isolation in which they currently live, which would provoke an excessive reaction and also of the consequences for a very fragile economy that depends on exports in a country in which its youth is far from high education, mostly involved in drugs and accustomed to the subsidy to survive badly.

Israel, which this afternoon is bringing together those most responsible for its security, must also bear in mind, by itself, or through the wise advice of its cousins and supporters (USA and UK), that an escalation in its response to this lukewarm Iranian reaction, would bring great and serious consequences due to the direct and disproportionate rise in oil prices as a reaction to the conflict caused; of the incalculable increase in instability in the economy and in commercial relations of all kinds in the whole world and, especially, in its close environment; that if he were to engage in a war with capital letters against Iran, it would mean that neither of his two main objectives pursued with zeal since January, the destruction or total defeat of Hamas and the recovery of all the hostages in their hands, would have to be put aside for another more propitious moment with the political consequences that this implies for the already quite battered Netanyahu; that the aforementioned cousins and supporters are not in a favorable position to create and participate in a conflict of great gravity and intensity; that Putin, the parsley of all contemporary sauces, is already licking his lips because he is deployed in the area (mainly in Syria) and any major conflict would give him grounds to intervene with all its consequences even if no one asks him to do so, and that the political and economic situation of Israel itself is not going through the most brilliant and calm moments, let's say.

As I have been announcing in many of my recent works, the world is orphaned of leaders with specific weight and sufficient capacity to set and maintain the necessary course; the UN is non-existent and totally ineffective in the hands of the UNSC which, as always, but now with greater profusion, uses this garden as a plot where to play rope-a-dope with the (selected) neighbors and to laugh at the whole world; that the USA is in an electoral process between two long-lived, outdated and unorthodox characters who are little or unreliable, since they have proven to be able to say and preach one thing and the opposite on the same day; that Europe has lost the North since the United Kingdom played the game of losing its chair, France is dedicated to abortion and to sell its armament, Germany and Italy to save some furniture of their battered economies and Spain to sell creepers, pretty words or outdated recipes, with a president that only and exclusively looks for the permanence in the "power" at any price, while we are all about to change many chairs after the imminent European elections, where a foreign and defense policy is maintained and defended in the hands of a man who, for his age and reasoning, should have been years ago taking his grandchildren to school or on a family trip on a cruise.

Likewise, the growing NATO, at present and after much ado about nothing, is only superior in the number of allies of little or no military entity and in the number of kilometers of common border with Russia. Its real capabilities are the same (we continue to tout and ask almost everyone since 2014, defense expenditures of 2 percent of GDP) and now we are beginning to doubt about the desirability of reestablishing compulsory military service again, but the responsibilities and obligations increase as the number of allies that form it is greater, they are very weak militarily and more susceptible to attack.

To all this, and no less important, it must be added that Putin, for whom nobody gave a penny this Christmas and who was considered to be amortized, has soon proved not to be true and has managed to stay in office, improve his military capacity and recover part of the territory requested by testing and increasing the power of his armament used in Ukraine or wherever necessary, while the European and American reserves that had been feeding the battle on the other side are beginning to resist being handed over so happily for free, or they are really running out and there is nowhere to get more.

In short, the oven is not ready for buns, nothing can be expected from anyone, except good advice and I think it would be more than convenient for both countries to be paid, their citizens happy and praying all together to the "Virgencita" so that we stay where and how we are, because it would be fatal an escalation of a conflict of incalculable dire consequences and in which I am absolutely sure that there would be more than one loser.