The Soleimani Affair

For years Qassam Soleimani has been sowing death across the Middle East. His Al Quds Force, a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Army, has been responsible for developing and supplying the explosive devices planted along roadsides that claimed over 600 American lives and hundreds maimed during the Iraq war and its aftermath. He was recognized as perhaps the world's leading terrorist, and had the blood of thousands on his hands.

Much of the world, certainly Middle Eastern governments, are grateful that the American military has taken him out, even though they may for domestic political reasons not feel it safe to publicly say so. The Iranians, meanwhile, are threatening the United States with retaliation despite the fact that killing Soleimani was itself a retaliation for recent rocket attacks on an American base in Iraq that killed one American civilian and injured several military personnel.

The Iranians apparently believe that they should be able to kill Americans with impunity and are outraged if an American president disagrees.

In any case, the Iranians are in a bit of a bind. If they harm American citizens or interests they risk an overwhelming response from the American military, so whatever they do, it would seem, must be done in such a way that they have plausible deniability. But a retaliation which Iran denies perpetrating will not satisfy the hotheads and fanatics in Iran who want their government to strike hard at the Great Satan. But if to appease the fanatics Iran hits back in such a way as to make their responsibility obvious then they're inviting massive punishment from the U.S.

Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online has a piece titled So Far Iran Is Making All the Blunders in which he analyzes the situation as it stands at the moment.

Here are a few excerpts:

For all the current furor over the death of Qasem Soleimani, it is Iran, not the U.S. and the Trump administration, that is in a dilemma. Given the death and destruction wrought by Soleimani, and his agendas to come, he will not be missed.

Tehran has misjudged the U.S. administration’s doctrine of strategic realism rather than vice versa. The theocracy apparently calculated that prior U.S. patience and restraint in the face of its aggression was proof of an unwillingness or inability to respond. More likely, the administration was earlier prepping for a possible more dramatic, deadly, and politically justifiable response when and if Iran soon overreached.

To retain domestic and foreign credibility, Iran would now like to escalate in hopes of creating some sort of U.S. quagmire comparable to Afghanistan, or, more germanely, to a long Serbian-like bombing campaign mess, or the ennui that eventually overtook the endless no-fly zones over Iraq, or the creepy misadventure in Libya, or even something like an enervating 1979-80 hostage situation.

The history of the strategies of our Middle East opponents has always been to lure us into situations that have no strategic endgame, do not play to U.S. strengths in firepower, are costly without a time limit, and create Vietnam War–like tensions at home.

But those wished-for landscapes are not what Iranian has got itself into. Trump, after showing patience and restraint to prior Iranian escalations, can respond to Iranian tit-for-tat without getting near Iran, without commitments to any formal campaign, and without seeming to be a provocateur itching for war, but in theory doing a lot more damage to an already damaged Iranian economy either through drones, missiles, and bombing, or even more sanctions and boycotts to come.

If Iran turns to terrorism and cyber-attacks, it would likely only lose more political support and risk airborne responses to its infrastructure at home.

Iran deeply erred in thinking that Trump’s restraint was permanent, that his impeachment meant he had lost political viability, that he would go dormant in an election year, that the stature of his left-wing opponents would surge in such tensions, and that his base would abandon him if he dared to use military force.

We are now in an election year. Iran yearns for a return of the U.S. foreign policy of John Kerry, Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power, the naïveté that had proved so lucrative and advantageous to Iran prior to 2017.

The Iranians could agree to act like a civilized nation and return to meaningful nuclear disarmament talks, but that would be a humiliation. Alternatively, they could bide their time and wait for a less resolute administration in Washington, but the sanctions are bleeding them, and the longer they go on the more unstable the regime in Tehran will become.

In fact, as Hanson points out, they have no good options. Their miscalculation was to think that they could, through terrorist attacks, make it so uncomfortable for the U.S. to stay in Iraq that we'd just give up and go home. They didn't expect Trump to respond to their fatal rocket attack in any significant way.

Hanson has more on the Iraqi options, none of them good, at the link. He concludes with this:

In sum, a weaker Iran foolishly positioned itself into the role of aggressor, at a time of a shot economy, eroding military strength, waning terrorist appendages abroad, and little political leverage or wider support. China and Russia are confined to hoping the U.S. is somehow, somewhere bogged down. Europe will still lecture on the fallout from canceling the Iran Deal, but quietly welcomes the fact that Iran is weaker than in 2015 and weaker for them is far better. China wants access to Middle East oil. Russia has never objected to a major producer having its oil taken off the world market. Moscow’s Iranian policies are reductionist anti-American more than pro-Iranian.

The current Iranian crisis is complex and dangerous. And by all means retaliation must be designed to prevent more Iranian violence and aggression rather than aimed at a grandiose agenda of regime change or national liberation. But so far the Iranians, not the U.S., are making all the blunders.