First things first.
Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a US air strike Friday, was the embodiment of evil as we understand it.
Thousands of people in the Middle East have been causalities of his 30-year effort to advance Iranian influence throughout the Middle East, through engagement with terrorist organizations and proxy wars, from Afghanistan to Lebanon. If you see an American Veteran of the Iraq War with missing limbs, Soleimani was is likely the ultimate responsible party. Hundreds of other American soldiers in Iraq were killed by the weapons he provided Iraqi Shiite militias.
No one in the West, and particularly in the US, should mourn his passing.
But the question before us is not whether Soleimani was an implacable enemy of America whose death was richly deserved, but rather why President Trump, thought now was the right time to take him out, and critically, what strategy this escalation serves.
Soleimani was not just any Iranian military commander.
The general rose up in the IRG, a military force which is a separate organization from the traditional Iranian military, noted for it ideological zeal and loyalty. He took command of the Quds Force, an elite, 20,000 man strong, paramilitary organization, made up of the best fighters in the IRG, in 1998, and has used it to expand and solidify Iranian influence in the region. To understand the importance of the Quds Force to the Iranian state, consider that it reports directly, not to the President of Iran, but to the Ayatollah Khamenei. Over his 20 years of service in the Quds, Soleimani became a close, personal adviser to the Ayatollah, and enjoyed a strong popular following among Iranian nationalists.
There is no exact American equivalent to Quds and Soleimani. To construct something similiar, imagine that the clandestine division of the CIA, was its own self-contained organization, which was merged with the US Special Forces Command. Further, for the sake of an example, that this organization was headed by Rudy Giuliani, and reported directly and only to Trump, and that its activities were unaccountable to anyone else. Now imagine the US reaction if the Iranians killed Giuliani in a drone strike in Mexico City.
The constructed example is imperfect – Soleimani is actually an official of the Iranian government, where Giuliani is not – but it is nonetheless telling. What would be the American reaction if the Iranians put a hit on one of President Trump’s closest and most loyal advisers? Would we see it as powerful warning to curb our anti-Iranian policies in the Middle East? Or would we be enraged and dedicated to hitting back even harder? Continuing a cycle of escalation absent the limitations of previous thresholds.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, domestic opinion divided predictably. Trump supporters, and Republicans in general, bellowed their unqualified endorsement, seeing in the targeted killing the kind of strength, conviction, and decisiveness that they believe the President embodies, and that America sorely needs after eight years of Obama “puny-lateralism,” and “Establishment foreign policy hand-wringing.”
Democrats and their supporters were mostly appalled, driving “WWIII” to trend on Twitter. Additionally, in the ongoing one-upsmanship by Democrat presidential candidates to completely disqualify themselves as rationale managers of domestic policy, in the hours after the attack, there was a fevered anxiety to issue statements that all but disqualify these officials as rational stewards of national security as well.
The binary choices that emerge from these parallel political universes are sterile, abstract, and one-dimensional, driven by passion and not facts. Importantly, they don’t answer the pressing questions of why now, and what national interest is served?
Certainly there is nothing in Trump’s political views during the 2016 campaign, and his policies as President, that indicate he wanted greater military involvement in the Middle East. But that is the objective result of the Soleimani attack., with thousands of US troops pouring in the Persian Gulf.
Recall that President Trump has so focused on the complete withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, that he thought it was smart to invite the Taliban leadership to Camp David on the anniversary of 9-11, in order to ink a withdrawal agreement.
In addition, echoing his 2016 campaign this past fall, Trump used the “No more endless wars” theme to justify his impulsive decision to withdraw 1,000 American troops in Syria. The action cleared the way for Turkey to invade Syria and slaughter the Kurds, who had loyally spent the last five years as the ground troops in our war to destroy ISIS.
Not only was the hasty withdrawal an American betrayal of the Kurds, it opened the door to the Russians and the Iranians, both of whom support the regime of Bashir Assad.
It is not without irony today that it was Soleimani’s Quds Force that benefited the most from Trump’s “cut and run” in Syria, deploying it’s fighters to Syria to solidify Iranian influence, and secure the linkage between Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon; an Iranian strategic goal since the Revolution in 1979.
At the same time, Trump has been remarkably passive to direct Iranian provocations. The President ordered and then called off an American military strike on Iran last June, after Iran shot down a US drone in international air space in the Persian Gulf.
In addition, POTUS took no action after conclusive proof established the fact that Iran was responsible for limpet mine attacks on commercial shipping in the Gulf, and later, in a much more consequential action, when Iran directly attacked a Saudi oil refinery.
Any of these actions were ripe for retaliation, yet Trump did nothing. So again, why now?
While the attack by an Iranian back militia on a US outpost near Kirkuk, Iraq was serious (an American contractor was killed) , and the Iranian-backed demonstrations and violence at the US Embassy in Baghdad was noteworthy, the US had a plethora of potent options to strike back that did not include killing Iranian government officials. What justified the escalation?
The President and the Administration have said that the killing of Soleimani was necessary as Quds chief was actively planning an imminent attack on the US personnel and interests in the region. The Administration has not released the details of the planned attack, but even if there was a credible terrorist attack in planning, there remains a very big question about whether killing Soleimani was the correct response to it.
Killing Soleimani doesn’t disrupt the terror cells that were going to carry out the attack. And as we have seen, the Ayatollah has already replaced Soleimani with the general’s former deputy. There has been no tangible operational disruption to Iranian terror designs due to of Soleimani’s death. And there were other, effective but less dramatic options on the table.
Stepping back from the bravado, jingoism and hyperbole of the moment, how does the killing of Soleimani advance US interests in the Middle East?
Ending “Endless Wars”:
The President has said he wants to bring US troops home from “endless” wars in the Middle East. Indeed, he sacrificed the Kurds, to move a mere 1,000 troops, and has been steadily easing US negotiating conditions to get a deal with the Taliban to exit from Afghanistan.
But the opposite is happening in the Persian Gulf. After the attack on Soleimani, the Pentagon ordered roughly 4,000 additional troops to the Middle East, from the 82nd Airborne division, joining up to 14,000 troops that were moved in the last 90 days. This is greater military engagement in the Middle East, not less.
Iraq:
There is absolutely nothing about the attack on Soleimani that supports US interests in Iraq.
Before Friday, Iraq was in the midst of a domestic political upheaval, with mass rallies protesting government corruption, the lack of adequate services, and the influence of Iran in the Iraq’s Shiite dominated government. The otherwise paralyzed Iraqi government was working to meet the protesters half way to end the demonstrations, with Shiite leaders in the south openly calling for a reassessment of Iran’s role in the country. Any action taken by the Iraqis to limit Iranian influence is a net positive for US interests in the region.
Now, the calculus has completely changed. Trump didn’t just kill Soleimani – he did so on the jet way of Baghdad International Airport.
The attack demonstrated to average Iraqis that their government is impotent to protect their national sovereignty, and exposed the true threat of Iraq serving as a battlefield for a proxy war between the US and Iran.
So it should come as no surprise that today, the Iraqi Prime Minister called for the complete withdrawal of American forces (6,000 troops) in Iraq. These forces are vital to counter-terrorism operations against ISIS and Al Qaeda remnants. Worse, the attack has reunited the Shiites in Iraq against the US at the very time where the nation was making incremental progress away from Iran. If anything, the attack has moved Iraq closer to Iran, not further away, and may rob the US of a key ally.
Saudi Arabia:
The attack does nothing to improve our relations with or security of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis continue to fight an unwinnable war in Yemen, while the de facto ruling Crown Prince is under international pressure for his purported role in the killing of a Saudi born Washington Post journalist. The Iranian attack on the Saudi oil refinery in September demonstrated the Iranian capacity to inflict significant economic damage on the Saudi economy, virtually at will.
The Soleimani attack adds a new dimension to the Iran-Saudi relationship, lowing the threshold for direct Iranian action against Saudi Arabia., with bigger repercussions for the the Saudis.
Syria:
The President washed his hands of Syria in October, and essentially turned the country over to the Iranians and Russians. That conduit to Lebanon, which US forces previously blocked, is now an avenue for Iran to support terror groups who can carry out attacks all the way the the Mediterranean Sea. The Soleimani attack on makes worse the the original Trump decision to withdraw from Syria.
Israel:
Israel, America’s steadfast ally and Iran’s first-choice enemy, is in the middle of a political crisis, without a functioning government, and with PM Netanyahu under felony indictment. March elections are supposed to break the deadlock. The attack on Soleimani increases the threat to Israel, either from Iran directly, or through Iranian proxies; something that the Israelis did nothing to provoke.
Iran:
Safely away from the international spotlight, the Mullahs in Tehran have been systematically killing protesters across Iran, hundreds of them, in what are the largest mass demonstrations against the regime since 2009. With the Trump-imposed economic sanctions biting ordinary Iranians hard, and acting as a catalyst for the protests, the Iranian leadership has been increasingly fractured over the proper path to contain and end the demonstrations.
The death of Soleimani, who enjoyed broad public approval, can serve as a united event for the Iranians, both in the government and in the street, in a way that does not serve US interests.
In sum, it is very hard to find any evidence that the killing of Soleimani served any strategic interest for the US.. We’ve destabilized Iraq, added stress to our regional allies, compounded bad decisions from last autumn, and eased pressure on the Iranian regime, all without truly damaging the Iranian terror network. Soleimani will be mourned and missed by Iranians and regional Shiites, but his absence doesn’t change the calculus on the ground for Terror, Inc. Indeed, it only serves to redouble Iranian resolve.
So what does make sense?
A decapitation strike as a prelude to a general war.
President Bush famously did this in 2003 when he ordered American cruise missiles to attack a location where Saddam Hussein was thought to be located. The difference, at the time, was that Bush had a congressional authorization to go to war, a list of UN resolutions for Iraq to comply with, and a timetable.
There is no evidence at all that President Trump is seeking a general war with Iran. Even the deployment of additional troops to the region – while extensive and counter to the President’s stated intentions – is only a fraction of what would be necessary should the US truly anticipated active hostilities with Tehran. Thus POTUS ordered an act of war without any intention of going to war; a truly dangerous dichotomy.
Indeed, it appears that the US strategy here is just checkers – that if the Iranians hit us, we will hit them back harder – without any real thought to the long-term implications of what we have started, and how it could erode our strategic position, and that of our allies.
We haven’t even considered how additional escalation will play out with Russia and China.
So, killing Soleimani is good politics. Trump looks “strong” – the gold standard of the Trump era. Supporters get to brag about bold action. Democrats form up in circular firing squads, further destroying tattered credibility. Moreover, this is going to be the stuff of terrific ads for the Trump campaign, while the entire episode has knocked impeachment off the front pages, consigning it to 2019 left-overs.
But it will not be cost free. Trump has crossed a big, fat, red line here . A key talking point for the Administration, that killing Soleimani will serve as a deterrent to further Iranian adventurism is seriously misguided for anyone who knows anything about Persian history. There will be serious implications.
Bravado and photo ops are no substitute for clearly thought out strategy, no matter how much the Administration believes otherwise.