Tag: Nuclear weapons
Stevenson’s army, January 27
The big Washington news today is the NYT report that John Bolton’s forthcoming memoir confirms that President Trump specifically linked Ukraine aid to investigations of the Bidens and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Analyzing a leak is like figuring out a murder mystery. First ask cui bono — who benefits? The answer: Bolton himself, since his book was due to be published March 17; also the House Managers of the impeachment trial, though they presumably did not have access to the manuscript; and the administration officials who believe that the president should be removed from office [people like Anonymous, who has always been vaguely cited as a “senior official”]. The Times story identifies who has copies of the manuscript:
drafts of a manuscript he has circulated in recent weeks to close associates. He also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books.
Of course the publisher also has copies. While it could have been someone in the WH, my guess is it’s more likely to be a Bolton friend who supports impeachment. And he didn’t mind that it got reported.
Curiously, the Haberman-Schmidt story has no actual quotes from the manuscript, suggesting that they relied on descriptions or agreed not to use quotes. Another curiosity is that only a second NYT story, by impeachment reporter Noah Weiland, quantifies the sourcing, saying
Multiple people described Mr. Bolton’s account. This suggests that the original recipient of the leak got others to admit that they had seen it and confirmed the account. But what’s important is that many people knew and were willing to talk.
Despite the hype, in fact Bolton merely confirms — though at first hand — what his subordinates have already testified.
This morning, Peter Baker has an analysis.
In other news, SecState Pompeo is being properly chastised for mistreating an NPR reporter — and for poor management of State.
NYT has background on the development of the administration’s Arab-Israeli “peace plan,” which will be discussed with leading Israeli politicians this week.
Fred Kaplan reports on Congress’ truncated effort to understand presidential controls over nuclear weapons.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, January 14
– WSJ has a review of the US-China trade talks, culminating in the agreement due to be signed tomorrow. As a sweetener,Treasury de-listed China as a currency manipulator yesterday.
– WaPo notes how many tariffs will stay in place.
-NYT says Maduro lets rural Venezuela suffer as he protects his urban supporters.
– European powers try to keep JCPOA alive.
– WaPo columnist complains that media let retired 4-stars talk about defense issues without disclosing their financial ties.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
It’s already war, announced or not
The equation looks like a simple one: the US assassinated Quds force commander Soleimani as he left Baghdad airport, and Iran responded with a missile attack on an Iraqi base housing US forces. Now de-escalation is said to have taken hold. Tit-for-tat, yes, but not really war.
It’s not that simple, or that limited. In addition to the drone attack on Soleimani, the US apparently tried the same day to kill another Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander in Yemen, and a couple of days later Iranian forces in eastern Syria were under aerial attack. Washington has also increased sanctions on Iran. Tehran meanwhile has focused on trying to get the Iraqi parliament and government to evict the Americans as well as on unilaterally lifting all the constraints on their nuclear activities under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or nuclear deal).
This is a multi-front contest, complicated further today by the revelation that the IRGC shot down a Ukrainian airliner shortly after it took off from Tehran airport. That has generated explicitly anti-regime protests inside Iran and a brutal crackdown, which is just what the Trump administration would have ordered up if it could. The discomfort of your enemy in moments of crisis is always welcome.
There are lots of things that haven’t happened yet, so far as we know. It is unclear whether the threshold of one thousand battle deaths arbitrarily required by scholars to classify a conflict as a war has been reached. If we went back to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, that number might be breached in total US and Iranian casualties. We could still see more assassinations in both directions, cyber attacks, more attacks on Gulf oil shipping and facilities, protests and crackdowns in Lebanon and Iraq as well as Iran, attacks in Yemen, Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia, and attacks on or by Israel. We might also eventually see more salvos of cruise or ballistic missiles in one direction and the other.
It is already war, declared or not. President Trump knows the American people don’t support war against Iran and he won’t try to convince them otherwise. He intends simply to proceed, announcing only the good news (from the American perspective) and citing non-existent intelligence, like the plans for attacks on four embassies that no one in the intelligence community has confirmed. Maximum pressure, initiated with sanctions, now includes “kinetic” measures ordered by the President with no authorization from Congress to use military force.
Iranian maximum resistance will not be limited either. Iran will use its proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen to pressure America’s friends and allies even as it tries to keep the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese on board the nuclear deal, or what remains of it. Iran can also hit American assets again, not only in Iraq but also elsewhere in the Middle East and even in Latin America as well as inside the US. President Trump wanted to restore deterrence with the Soleimani assassination; there is no reason to believe he has succeeded.
The House Democrats effort to restrain the President will fail. Even if the “concurrent resolution” passes in the Senate, it will be non-binding. The President will veto any binding measure. So we are stuck with a war few Americans or Iranians want conducted by a President who doesn’t care and a Supreme Leader who doesn’t either. Each is concerned with preserving his own hold on power. We need better sense to prevail in both countries, before the de-escalation lull ends and disaster come ever closer.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Iran is winning this round
The big news of the day is that Tehran will maintain its commitment to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections even though it will no longer be bound by the operational limits in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or Iran nuclear deal). Why would it do that?
Because it is smart. There are several benefits:
- It will give the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese reason not to withdraw from the nuclear deal, thus keeping them split from the Americans;
- It will make it clear to the international community how far they are willing to go in preparing the materials needed for nuclear weapons, and at what point they are prepared to stop if given some sanctions relief;
- It will give them the moral high ground while possibly continuing clandestine nuclear weapons design, much of which can be done by computers without nuclear materials.
Washington meanwhile is losing on several fronts. It has had to suspend anti-ISIS operations in Iraq and Syria, its claims of an imminent attack on US targets are less than credible, there are credible claims that Soleimani was carrying in Baghdad a peace overture to Saudi Arabia, and pressure to remove US forces from Iraq, or at least from Arab-controlled Iraq, is growing. The assassination of Soleimani has tamped down the anti-Iranian demonstrations in Iraq and has quieted the demonstrations against the Islamic Republic inside Iran as well. Even Riyadh is asking Washington to tone it down.
The Republican wizkids like Senator Rubio are speculating about US support for Kurdistan’s secession from Iraq, so that the American troops could stay there. But he forgets: Kurdistan has lost control of Kirkuk, without which its oil revenue is nowhere near sufficient to maintain it as an independent state, not to mention Turkey’s, Syria’s, and Iran’s reactions as well as China’s and Russia’s. Does Marco want the US to go to war to restore Kirkuk to Kurdistan’s control?
Donald Trump likes to upset the apple cart and create crisis, then pretend to resolve it, as he has done with the trade wars. This one won’t be an easy pretense. He has made Americans far less safe not only from Iranian attacks but also from ISIS and Al Qaeda, which are no doubt enjoying the relief. The only Iranians endangered so far other than Soleimani are Iranian-Americans, who are reportedly being stopped at our borders in droves and sent to secondary interrogation. I’ve been there and done that–it is not fatal–but it helps our enemies to claim that America only believes in equal rights for non-immigrant white people, which is pretty much the case for this Administration.
Hillary Clinton was correct when she said Donald Trump did not have the temperament to be president. Republicans in the Senate know that as well as anyone else. There is a good chance killing Soleimani will hurt Trump’s chances for re-election as well as Republican hopes of maintaining their majority in the Senate. It is high time they step up and provide the conditions for a serious and fair trial on the impeachment charges. John Bolton’s new-found willingness to testify if subpoened provides a golden opportunity. It would be truly ironic if Bolton and the Iranians were to be the causes of Trump’s undoing.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, January 6
-WaPo says SecState Pompeo has been pushing for months to escalate against Iran and kill Suleimani.
-SecDef Esper drastically limited group involved in Suleimani planning.
– US military has halted counter-ISIS operations.
– Speaker Pelsoi says House will vote on war powers measure on Iran similar to one offered by Sen. Tim Kaine [D-Va].
– Iran has announced end of compliance with Iran nuclear deal but will allow IAEA inspections to continue.
– Maduro seized control of national assembly by blocking entry of pro-Guaido members.
– Yahoo News has long story on intelligence community’s problems protecting its spies in a digital age.
– WaPo’s media columnist, Margaret Sullivan, has suggestions for those not already in the far-right echo chamber to follow what matters there. Among other sites she recommends The RIghting and RightRichter. Surf away.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Marching towards different wars
Both Iran and the United States are signaling escalation in the wake of the assassination of Quds force commander Qasem Soleimani. Tehran said it had identified 35 targets. President Trump responded with a tweet threat against 52:
Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!
Both have the capability, and perhaps the will. It all sounds strikingly symmetrical.
But there the parallel ends. The wars they are contemplating are different. Iran can hit 35 US targets, but only using proxy forces in other countries or cyber attacks. The US can hit 52 sites, but only with stand-off weapons like drones and cruise missiles, in addition to cyber attacks. That I suspect makes cyber attacks less likely: the Americans presumably have the greater capability in that domain, but they also have far more to lose if the Iranians prove even marginally competent. Will Tehran care much if its citizens don’t have internet access?
Neither the US nor Iran wants a traditional ground war. The Iranians because they would lose, should the Americans deploy the kind of force they did in attacking Iraq in 2003. But that isn’t happening. The American electorate is not prepared to support that kind of effort, and the Administration has done nothing to try to mobilize it. President Trump can deploy a few thousand additional troops to the Middle East to protect American embassies and other facilities, but hundreds of thousands are not in the cards.
Trump is hoping his threats of escalation will bring Iran to the negotiating table, where he hopes to get a “better” agreement than President Obama’s nuclear deal. It’s the North Korea gambit: loud threats, some action, then hugs and kisses. If that fails, he will try a stand-off and cyber attack. If he has a game plan beyond that, he has kept it a good secret. He has so far been unwilling to loosen sanctions, which is what the Iranians want.
The Iranians are fighting on different battlefields. They may threaten proxy and cyber attacks, and even indulge in some, but their better bets are forcing the US troops out of Iraq (there is an advisory vote tomorrow on that in the Iraqi parliament) and acquiring all the material and technology they need to build nuclear weapons. Kim Jong-un got respect once he had nukes. Why shouldn’t the Supreme Leader expect the same?
Nothing about American intervention in the Middle East in the past two decades has brought much more than grief to the United States. Trillions of dollars and thousands of American deaths later, we have accomplished little. Iran has gained from the removal of arch-rival Saddam Hussein, protected its ally Bashar al Assad from insurgency, strengthened its position on Israel’s northern borders, and helped the Houthis in Yemen to harass Saudi Arabia.
President Trump had it right when he ran in 2016 on avoiding new Middle East wars and bringing American troops home. But that requires a serious strategy and commitment to diplomacy and alliances that he has been unwilling to make. Now he risks getting the Americans sent home and confronting an Iran that has nuclear capabilities. You tell me who is fighting on the right battlefield.
RSS - Posts
