“All is Well”

 

“Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate.

He's weak and he's ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to get reelected

— and as sure as you're sitting there — is to start a war with Iran.”

Donald J Trump, November 16, 2011, on Barack Obama

On Tuesday, January 7^th, the night after the Iranian missile launches against US military targets in Iraq, President Donald Trump tweeted that “All is well!” and "so far, so good."

On Wednesday morning, January 8^th, standing in the White House’s Grand Foyer and surrounded by some of his national security advisors, Trump said: “The American people should be extremely grateful and happy no Americans were harmed…. Only minimal damage was sustained… Iran appears to be standing down which is a very good thing.” Trump added that if things stayed the same, he would resort to additional economic sanctions but no further military action.

Meanwhile, Iran’s response was not quite as accommodating. “Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said overnight missile strikes on military bases housing American forces in Iraq were a ‘slap in the face’ to the U.S. and not sufficient retaliation for the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani last week.

“Speaking before a large crowd in the holy city of Qom on Wednesday [1/8], Khamenei gave a lengthy tribute to Soleimani in a speech that was interrupted with chants of ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel.’

“Khamenei reiterated his government's longstanding demand that Washington withdraw its forces from the Middle East. Ending U.S. influence and interventions remained the country's ultimate goal, he said, stopping short of calling for further immediate attacks on U.S. targets.

“Iran fired a more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two Iraqi air bases housing U.S. forces overnight, according to U.S. officials. There are no reports of casualties so far. Iran has claimed it was acting in self-defense.

“‘Military operations do not suffice. What is important in addition to retaliation is to end the U.S.’s corrupting presence in the region,’ Khamenei said in the televised speech. ‘The discussion about revenge is something else, this was just a slap in the face last night.’” NBCNews.com, January 8^th. 

Indeed, in the eyes of world opinion, Iran’s measured response looks a whole lot better than our airport attack. Trump’s weak attempt to suggest a good result for the United States simply rings false.

What American policymakers seem to miss is the impact of religious fever in this nasty mix. The Prophet Mohammad’s Arab forces, in the Islamic conquest of Persia (Iran today) beginning in 631 AD and culminating in a total defeat of the Persian Sasanian Empire in 651 AD, were able to destroy a much more organized, trained mega-military with their religious zeal and passion. Islam was then forced on a nation of Zoroastrians, a faith that has all but perished from the face of the earth. Today, that religious fervor is deeply entrenched in the vast majority of Iranian Shiites, zealous followers of the Ayatollah.

When God mandates a result, death towards accomplishing that end in the Islamic world is called “martyrdom,” in which the sacrificing individual is granted immediate admission to heaven. All other deceased Muslim practitioners, truly pious and faithful, are required to wait, en mass, until “judgment day,” an eternity away. Deeply religious Shiites are as committed to their vision of God as are the most dedicated Christian evangelicals to their Biblical vision. Economic sanctions, threats of all-out war, even nuclear annihilation, fall on deaf ears in the minds of millions and millions of Iranian “true believers.” Even those less-religious, anti-theocracy-driven, educated Iranians seem to rally patriotically to their country, ready to accept whatever sacrifices are required of them even without that zealous religious belief, against a global bully. Attacks from an extrinsic force tend to unify the incumbency.

This is not to say that General Soleimani was a good guy and that the Islamic rulers of Iran are kind and just. Theirs is a harsh, repressive regime, and Soleimani was a brutal murderer. There are Quds, traditional military, religious police and Revolutionary Guards willing to torture and kill in the name of God inside Iran, and their surrogates, like Hezbollah, foment destabilization in the region. They despise the United States, a nation that enabled the Shah and has spent the last 40 plus years trying to undermine their religious leadership. They have harassed shipping, attacking Saudi oil fields and funding rebellion well beyond their borders.

In 2015, the United States reversed decades of escalating hostility towards Iran by entering into the six party UN-sponsored nuclear containment accord. Even as Donald Trump withdrew the US from that accord in 2018, his intelligence agencies were telling him that the negotiated containment of Iran’s development of weapons-grade nuclear materials was holding. It was the first progress the United States had made with Tehran since the 1979 Iranian revolution that installed the theocracy.

Although and to his credit, Trump’s statement that the US no longer championed regime change in Tehran was a positive step, his tangible efforts towards Iran – withdrawing from the above accord, escalating sanctions against Iran and drone-striking Iranian military leaders within Iraq – have resulted in precisely the opposite of Trump’s intentions. Iran simply doubled down and dug in. Even our Western allies tried to undermine US sanctions against Iran with complex workarounds, and until Iran withdrew from the nuclear accord after the above air strike, attempted to make that treaty work to contain further nuclearization in the region. Iraq is moving steadily into total subservience to Tehran.

There is no excusing Iran’s efforts leadership. They are neither trustworthy nor remotely capable of entente. They threaten our ally Israel as well. But 40 years of confrontation have not accomplished much of anything, and recent escalations in US anti-Iranian efforts have only further destabilized the region. The conundrum, having swatted at a wasp’s nest, has disincented Iran’s leadership’s willingness to negotiate with us. 

But focusing on getting them to the negotiating table is probably the only way to defuse an exceptionally dangerous deterioration of peace efforts in the Middle East. Unfortunately, as Mr. Trump’s experience with China, Russia and North Korea have confirmed, he is a terrible negotiator, and his double-down bully tactics have failed where it matters. The opening quote above, also set out in my January 5^th blog, says it all. Trump, struggling under impeachment (although unlikely to be removed from office), actually knows better, which I am sure comes as a shock to his critics. Ignoring his own words, however, has serious consequences.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and our inability to appreciate stiff resistance based on religious and patriotic zeal in Iran does not augur well for long-term stabilization of Middle Eastern conflicts.