“You Can’t Do Anything”

“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

It was a series of ignorant miscalculations, uniformed assumptions, and people attempting to justify their mistakes by doubling down long before Donald “the mistake King” Trump made that a mainstay of his presidency. Ever since 1979, the year of the Iranian revolution that installed an American-hating theocracy, American politicians have sworn that that malevolent government would soon collapse, unsustainable and inept. We’ve tried sanctions, planting malware in the nuclear enriching centrifuges, and containment… but despite the occasional local protests (always brutally repressed), Tehran is as strong as ever. Iran is well over 90% Shiite Muslim, an interpretation of Islam distasteful to Sunni Muslims, the latter who are far and away the global majority of that faith.

A ray of hope, during the Obama administration, facing the reality that the Ayatollah, reinforced by the Revolutionary Guard, was going to remain Iran’s political leader well into the future: a negotiated treaty. The result was the 2015 six party UN-sponsored nuclear accord (the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” – JCPOA), to which the United States was a major signatory. While the JCPOA was less than perfect and did not deal with Iran’s proclivity to support regional religious insurrection and destabilization (mostly through military and financial aid, often through its Hezbollah surrogates), it did in fact freeze Tehran’s nuclear weapons development and did provide for the necessary on-site verification. In short, even in 2018 our intelligence agencies confirmed that the accord did what it was supposed to do. The above map, from the BBC, points out where Iran’s nuclear program was/is focused.

“However, in May 2018, US President Donald Trump abandoned the landmark deal and in November that year, he reinstated sanctions targeting both Iran and states that trade with it. They led to a downturn in Iran's economy, pushing the value of its currency to record lows, quadrupling its annual inflation rate, driving away foreign investors, and triggering protests… The UK, Germany and France, which all opposed the sanctions, have set up an alternative payment mechanism aimed at helping international companies trade with Iran without facing US penalties. But in May 2019 Iran suspended commitments under the agreement and gave the other signatories a 60 day deadline to protect it from US sanctions, otherwise it said it would resume production of highly enriched uranium.” BBC.com, June 11th.

In short, the Ayatollah doubled down against Trump. Even as the Iranian people suffered from the sanctions, even as there were occasional protests, a wave of patriotism swept Iran. The theocracy held firm, electing not only to resume nuclear enrichment but to expand its support of regional Shiite militants. A series of explosions crippled tankers in and around the Strait of Hormuz. Blasts in Saudi oil fields. The Saudi efforts to support the incumbent government in Yemen was more than adequately countered by Iran-back Houthis rebels. Hezbollah forces were raising their activities throughout the region. Tehran viewed Trump as a bumbling and impotent leader, a bully unable to make good on his own threats.

Especially in Iraq, a military/political debacle since the 2003 US-led invasion toppled the 20% Sunni-minority government under dictator Saddam Hussein. Despite an earlier war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, much of Iraq’s 60% Shiite population found sympathy with mostly Shiite Iran. Effectively, the United States installed a powerfully anti-Sunni “majority rules” democracy in Baghdad. While having to maintain ties with the United States for military and economic support, the Shiite dominated government in Baghdad, and more importantly many local political leaders (some with their own militia), grew increasingly aligned with Tehran. Iran wasted no time in asserting its hegemony over the Shiite world in the Middle East.

Trump administration’s hard line stance against Iran, combined with the President’s withdrawal of US forces from that theater of conflict, have produced one the greatest diplomatic failures in American history. One so terrible that it just might draw us back into another never-ending Middle Eastern conflict. The New York Times editorial board began the New Year with this piece:

Iran-backed Shiite militias have been firing missiles at American troops and military contractors in Iraq for six months now, and last week they finally killed one of the Americans. On Sunday [12/29], the United States retaliated against the militia responsible with five airstrikes in Syria and Iraq that left 24 people dead and dozens wounded.

Militia commanders vowed vengeance, and thousands of protesters chanting “Death to America” marched through Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone on Tuesday [12/31] and broke into the compound of the American Embassy. A new spiral of violence between the United States and Iran seemed in the making, although demonstrators ended their siege of the embassy on Wednesday.

This could hardly be what President Trump wants, if he has been sincere in saying he wishes to avoid wars in the Middle East. In June he aborted a retaliatory airstrike after Iran shot down an American drone. This time the administration decided to send a message that killing Americans serving or working in Iraq will not be tolerated.

Whether the airstrikes will serve as a deterrent, however, is doubtful, since it’s likely that the militias were trying to provoke just such a response. Kataib Hezbollah, the militia targeted by American fighter bombers, is regarded as the most potent of the dozens of militias, mostly Shiite and backed by Iran, that were assembled into an umbrella organization, the Popular Mobilization Forces, to fight ISIS under the auspices of — and with salaries paid by — the Iraqi Army. But Kataib Hezbollah, whose commander once fought against American troops and now ranks among the most powerful men in Iraq, is also a sworn enemy of the United States, which has 5,000 or so troops and an unclear number of civilian contractors in Iraq to train security forces and prevent a jihadist resurgence. The militia would like to see the Americans driven out and Iran’s influence in Iraq unchallenged.

 

Another part of the equation is that Iraq has been weakened by months of violent demonstrations, which have forced the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, setting off a power struggle. One target of the demonstrations has been the power wielded by Iran-backed militias in Iraq, and Kataib Hezbollah may have correctly gambled that provoking the United States into airstrikes inside Iraq would divert popular passions toward anti-American actions.

Iraq, lacking a functioning government, now finds itself trapped in a fray over which it has little control, compelled by public indignation to denounce the American airstrikes on its territory but loath to lose the American counterbalance to Iran and its proxies. Iran, apart from its political calculations in Iraq, is also struggling under American economic sanctions and would no doubt like to make America’s hostility as costly as possible for the Trump administration.

After Mr. Trump loudly pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and imposed tough sanctions on Iran, it is hard to see what incentives he could dangle to prevent Iran and its proxies from further complicating the task of American forces in Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East. The president could conceivably lessen tensions by opening some form of dialogue with Iran, whether about a possible renegotiation of the nuclear deal or resolving conflicts in Yemen or Syria.

But by withdrawing from the nuclear deal and painting Iran as the premier evildoer in the Middle East, Mr. Trump and his lieutenants have left little room for dialogue. Far more likely is another provocation by Iran and more intractable entanglement for the United States.

Having made their point, the protesters dispersed on New Year’s Day. Having excoriated our FBI as having mounted a failed coup against his administration and eviscerated the professional diplomats at the US Department of State – even going so far as to empower his rather unstable personal attorney, Ruddy Giuliani, to circumvent our Foreign Service professions in Ukraine – Donald Trump has too often made being a loyal government employee an unnecessarily high-risk calling.

Laura King, writing for the January 2nd, Los Angeles Times, explains: “This week’s breach [end of December] of the sprawling U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad by supporters of a pro-Iranian militia ended on New Year’s Day when the militia called off the siege. The episode lasted less than 48 hours; core areas were not penetrated; no injuries were reported among diplomatic personnel or U.S. forces guarding the facility.

“Yet for many, the attack in the Iraqi capital evoked a visceral reaction, a swirl of sentiments reminiscent of far more serious strikes against U.S. diplomatic personnel and facilities — ones that resulted in death, destruction or prolonged sieges. And for those who have lived through such an episode, the memory lingers long after an angry mob’s shouted chants have faded away.

“‘It’s pretty frightening if you don’t know someone’s going to come and help you — in our case, we were afraid they’d just burn it all down,’ said Christopher R. Hill, who was the U.S. ambassador in Macedonia when the embassy was surrounded and outbuildings set aflame in March 1999.

“For most Americans, still or moving images of U.S. embassies or consulates in distress — a volatile crowd scaling the embassy wall, the charred aftermath of a devastating explosion — have a certain dreamlike familiarity. The sight of American hostages being paraded by student captors in Tehran, or of U.S. helicopters taking off from the roof of the Saigon embassy carrying desperate Vietnamese and American evacuees — seven years after the embassy was attacked during the Tet Offensive of 1968 — becomes part of a deep database of shared experience.

“Such scenes also summon up other disquieting themes: the sense of a great power’s momentary vulnerability, the jarring realization that serious political miscalculations might have been made, and a creeping awareness of just how dangerous, in the long run, even a passing blow to American prestige can be.

“Because a diplomatic installation is a physical embodiment of the homeland it represents, an attack against one reverberates like a clap of distant thunder. And with social media as an amplifier, actors the world over — protesters, militias, government-sanctioned thugs — are keenly aware of the propaganda value of an attack on a symbol of U.S. might.” All this from a President who pardoned and then reinstated a murderer, a Navy SEAL who openly disgusted fellow Team members, because FOX News said he was a good guy. This is the arbiter of our international policy. Seriously.  

And as Trump orders thousands of additional US troops back to Iraq, I wonder if he realizes that the Ayatollah is intentionally baiting the United States into another military conflict in the Middle East. To make matters worse, much worse, Iran lost several top military leaders in those retaliatory US strikes against Iranian forces in Iraq. According to CNBC.com (January 2nd): “Iraqi TV and three Iraqi officials said Friday [1/3] that Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, has been killed in an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport… The officials said the strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.” It’s hard to overstate Soleimani’s stature in Tehran, but experts are saying this represents an exceptionally serious escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran… bordering on war. Time will tell…

Iraq, a 60% Shiite nation with deep affinity with Iran, has walked a fine line between supporting US interests and accepting US aid against the natural proclivity to align with Baghdad. Trump’s attack, on Iraqi soil, may have pushed Baghdad over the edge. “The crowd thronged around the two coffins, one draped in the Iraqi tricolor and the other wrapped in the red, white and green of the Iranian flag. Behind them, thousands trudged alongside a procession of trucks, chanting, ‘There is no god but God, and America is the enemy of God.’

“Among those at the fore in Baghdad’s Hurriya Square on Saturday [1/4] morning were Iraqi government officials once considered friends of the U.S.: Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraq’s caretaker prime minister; Nouri Maliki, a former longtime prime minister pushed into power by Washington; and Faleh Fayyad, who met with U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper in October. They and other Iraqi politicians were in attendance to mourn those killed Friday in a targeted U.S. drone strike near Baghdad’s international airport…

“Iran is Iraq’s next-door neighbor, with a 900-mile border between the two. And though it once fought an almost eight-year war against Hussein, Iran became one of Iraq’s top trading partners after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq… The kinship is more than economic. Every year, more than 10 million Iranian Shiites stream into Iraq for the annual Arbaeen pilgrimage…

“The attack Friday leaves the U.S., or those with mildly pro-U.S. views, with even less room to maneuver… ‘Politicians who wanted a neutral approach are in a difficult position, because the U.S. has carried out assassinations on Iraq’s territory without approval, without authority, said Sajad Jiyad, director of the Baghdad-based Bayan Center think tank, in a phone interview Saturday.

“Though [although the other major assassination target, Abu Mahdi] Muhandis was a longtime U.S. adversary, Jiyad said, the killing, in the eyes of many politicians, was an attack on one of the arms of Iraq’s security forces — a point Abdul Mahdi, the prime minister, emphasized in a statement Friday [1/3]…. ‘Assassinating an Iraqi military leader with an official position is an aggression on Iraq,’ said Jiyad, adding that the two slain leaders — Abdul Mahdi dubbed them ‘martyrs’— were important ‘symbols in achieving victory’ over Islamic State… “If Iraq is forced to choose between the two sides, more logically it’s the Iranians that would be the choice: They’ll always be there; the Americans won’t,’ Jiyad said. ‘The problem is no one wanted to make that choice.’” Los Angeles Times, January 5th. Instead of deterring Iran – bully style – Trump is falling for their trap of luring the US into direct engagement… and giving Iran full justification.

There are at least five immediate consequences generated by this targeted assassination we can be sure of: 1. Soleimani will be martyred. 2. Remember this is a military hierarchy. Soleimani’s replacement has already taken his place (Soleimani hand-picked and trained him). 3. Tehran’s overall strategy and tactics are unlikely to change much, except… 4. Iran will be forced, as they have now pledged, to retaliate with harsh military force. and 5. This killing did not save one single American life but may have seriously endangered many more. Read Donald Trump’s words again… the ones under the above title!

              I’m Peter Dekom, and while I apologize for the length of today’s blog, I felt a longer analysis was necessary.