It’s low-level at worst.

While Israel has indicated there are “red lines” regarding Iran’s nuclear program, the question that should be asked is whether Iran would ever risk a war with the United States or Israel. So far, the evidence indicates that Iran prefers the kind of propaganda stunts the IRGC carried out in the Gulf of Oman — hijacking a tanker, but not fighting the U.S. Fifth Fleet. This is because Iran can’t risk a real, conventional war. Iran hasn’t fought a major war since the 1980s when it fought Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Iran’s government is poor and its regime is relatively weak under sanctions. The only real card that it holds is its nuclear blackmail, which it uses to score points diplomatically. It also arms dangerous proxies around the Middle East, in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

Iran’s real strength, therefore, lies with its proxies, the militias that receive Iranian drones and missiles. Iran has used drones to attack U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria and targeted a tanker off the coast of Oman in July. These types of attacks give Iran plausible deniability. It never says it carried out the drone attacks. The U.S. has shown evidence of Iran’s role in Yemen, but trafficking parts for missiles or gyroscopes for drones isn’t exactly how a country prepares for a major conventional war.

Iran’s navy is small and its ships keep catching fire and sinking. Its infrastructure is beset by problems and its IRGC tends to do the job that the Iranian army should be doing. In short, Iran has outsourced war-making powers to the IRGC and proxies, none of whom are prepared for a major conflict. If Iran can’t afford a major conflict, then the chances that the lack of an Iranian nuclear deal could lead to “war” are reduced. What might happen is that absence of a deal would mean continued tensions in the region.

However, after the previous Iranian deal in 2015, there was increased Iranian involvement in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. The Houthis pushed to take over swaths of Yemen in 2015 and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq set up shop in Syria to transfer weapons in 2017 and 2018.

Deal or no deal, Iran will continue its malign activities. This won’t lead to a large, conventional war, but rather, more of the same proxy conflicts that the Middle East has weathered for decades.