Gulf Kaleidoscope ─ Reflections on the Iranian Challenge

Gulf Kaleidoscope: Reflections on the Iranian Challenge analyzes potential U.S. strategies toward Iran and how different international actors are likely to respond to the U.S. pursuit of those strategies. Succinct chapters describe three principal approaches toward Iran: engagement, containment, and deterrence. The volume then goes on to analyze how key parties—Israel, Iran's Gulf Arab neighbors, and the rising powers of Turkey, China, India, and Russia, as well as the Iranians themselves—would likely respond to each strategy. As Zbigniew Brzezinski remarks in his foreword, the authors “make a truly original contribution by assessing how different U.S. strategies toward Iran can affect the calculations of a range of international actors.” It is clear that virtually any U.S. strategy contains elements of engagement, containment, and deterrence. The goal of this volume is to dig deeper into how those strategies work and to highlight the subtle interrelationships between the actions and reactions of key parties. Each country's actions affects the others, and each country has its own assessment of what an acceptable outcome would be and what it is willing to do to accomplish it. Importantly, each country is also interested in understanding the second- and third-order effects of its actions. How much do countries worry about an ascendant United States? How much do they worry about an unfettered Iran? The answers differ, and the actions each country is willing to take differ accordingly. Iran has been a central concern of U.S. strategy for more than three decades, and it is hard to foresee a time in the coming decade in which it will cease to be. This collection of essays is intended to help enrich thinking now and in the years to come.

Jon B. Alterman holds the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy and is director of the Middle East Program at CSIS.