CGSR | Deterring Iran in the Gray Zone: Insights from Forty Years of Conflict

Talk Abstract

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has emerged as one of the world's foremost gray zone actors, and for more than four decades, the United States has struggled to understand the rather unique requirements of gray zone deterrence. As the United States reduces its military presence in the Middle East in order to meet the challenge of an era of renewed Great Power competition, it is more important than ever before to draw the right lessons from this experience, so that it might more effectively deter Iran—as well as other gray zone actors like China and Russia.

Speaker Biography

Michael Eisenstadt is Kahn Fellow, and director of the Military and Security Studies Program at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A specialist in Arab-Israeli and Persian Gulf security affairs, he has published widely on irregular and conventional warfare and nuclear weapons proliferation in the Middle East. Mr. Eisenstadt served for twenty-six years as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve before retiring in 2010. He has also served in a civilian capacity on the Multinational Force-Iraq/U.S. Embassy Baghdad Joint Campaign Plan Assessment Team (2009) and as a consultant to the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group (2006) and the State Department's Future of Iraq defense policy working group (2002-2003). In 1992, he took a leave of absence from the Institute to work on the U.S. Air Force Gulf War Air Power Survey.

His publications include Beyond Forever Wars and Great Power Competition: Rethinking the US Military Role in the Middle East (forthcoming), Deterring Iran in the Gray Zone: Insights from Four Decades of Conflict (The Washington Institute, 2021), and Operating in the Gray Zone: Countering Iran’s Asymmetric Way of War (The Washington Institute, 2020).

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[chrisjohn]

I like he he dances around out America's support for Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war in the early part of his talk 😆😆😆