Strategic nonsense

Dimitri Trenin has it partly right in a tweet this morning:

If Iran retaliates against #SoleimaniKilled strategically, rather than emotionally, its targets will not be individual US diplomats and various assets in the Middle East, but the very US presence in Iraq & Syria. US vs Iran is a highly asymmetric conflict.

The American government has already urged all Americans to leave Iraq, because of the security risk. That will end most private sector and other civilian US efforts there.

The military presence is also at risk, more for political rather than security reasons. The politics will be overwhelmingly against the US, not only because Soleimani was killed but also because his agent in Iraq, Popular Mobilization Forces leader and Kataib Hizbollah commander al-Muhandis, was also killed, apparently without the permission of or warning to the Iraqi government. An Iraqi government already in turmoil–the prime minister is waiting to be replaced–will now face parliamentary demands to kick the American troops out. That would be a big win for Iran.

The Americans are already mostly out of Syria, which is under Iranian and Russian tutelage. Rather than limiting Iran’s regional power projection, the assassination of Soleimani has opened an opportunity to consolidate its Iraqi link.

But Trenin misses another strategic point: Iran now has an opportunity to ditch the nuclear deal completely and restart its effort to gain all the technology needed for nuclear weapons. The logic is compelling: the Americans feel free to assassinate Iranians because they do not fear Iran’s paltry conventional military capabilities. Hardliners in Tehran don’t even have to be very hardline to argue that getting nuclear weapons would make Washington treat Iran with the respect and deference President Trump accords Kim Jong-un. The Europeans, Russians, and Chinese will be much less likely to come to America’s side on the nuclear issue in the wake of this assassination.

The Trump Administration is arguing that it killed Soleimani because he was plotting to kill more Americans, which is likely correct since he has spent much of the past several decades doing just that. But will this assassination protect Americans? Soleimani will be replaced. Muhandis will be too. Their replacements will be people who can be relied upon to target the United States, one way or another.

It is also being argued (General Keane did it on NPR this morning) that the Americans, having failed to respond to several Iranian provocations in the Gulf, needed to do something to restore deterrence. That makes President Trump’s relatively small mistakes an excuse for a great big one. It was indeed astounding that the Americans did nothing in the aftermath of attacks on Gulf shipping and Saudi oil production facilities. Proportional responses would have been appropriate.

A disproportionate one suggests the Americans think they can break the Iranians. That is doubtful. Iran is in big economic trouble and its people have been protesting against Tehran’s regional adventures. Iraqis have also been protesting the Islamic Republic’s overweening influence in their country. Now those dissenting voices are likely to be muted if not silenced. Iran and Iraq, which in the 1980s fought a ferocious war with each other, are now going to be largely united against the Americans.

These assassinations look to me like precisely what you would expect of a President under siege domestically and looking for a quick win internationally. Tactical success. Strategic nonsense.