The United States is evacuating diplomats across the Middle East as the war with Iran intensifies. President Donald Trump said Monday that the war could last four to five weeks, then later said that the U.S. had ‘the capability to go far longer’ than that.
David Silbey, a professor of history at Cornell University who specializes in military history and defense policy, says Iran’s retaliation may be swift, but the longer-term risks lie in how prolonged fighting could strain U.S. defenses and tempt rivals like China.
Silbey says: “China and Russia will likely respond with condemnation and not much else. Russia may send weaponry (they recently agreed to send surface to air missiles to Iran) but that’s about it. The only faint possibility is China taking the moment to invade Taiwan but given the level of purges inside the Chinese officer corps recently I don’t think they’re ready for that.
“Having said that, the U.S. is burning through its stock of missiles (in particular the SM-6 surface to air missile) both to attack Iran and defend against Iran’s attacks. If the U.S. runs out of SM-6s, which are crucial for defending against Chinese anti-ship missiles, then the situation gets very tempting for Xi. I still don’t think they’ll do it because the Taiwanese government would likely blow up the TSMC chip factories and that’s a fairly big deterrent.”
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