RT Gregg Carlstrom Seeing some tweets about how Iran has imposed a new deterrence equation on Israel and the region. That seems like a whole lot of motivated reasoning. First, let's be clear about how much of a reversal this represents for Iran's strategic doctrine: instead of its Arab proxies protecting Iran from attack, Iran is now trying to bail them out—and inviting attacks on its own territory as a result. Second, in four past rounds of fighting (going back to April 2024), Iran was unable to deter Israel because its missile barrages failed to cause strategic damage. It could not impose costs significant enough to change Israeli behavior. Indeed, as @NicoleGrajewski and others have written, those attacks arguably invited further conflict rather than deterred it. The salvos overnight do not seem any different. Iran's act of "deterrence" wound up causing more damage to Iran than to the country it sought to deter. The tools that have been more successful over the past few months—at compellence, rather than deterrence—have been the ones aimed at Gulf states and global energy markets. But to use those tools now (or in the future) risks collapsing the entire ceasefire. The "equation" here relies on Donald Trump to restrain Israel. It doesn't seem viable at all in the long term, unless Iran is prepared to risk endless escalatory cycles that would ultimately be very damaging for Iran itself.