The death of Qassem Soleimani is a sobering blow for the Iranian regime. Soleimani embodied everything the regime wanted to project about itself—influence, ruthlessness, agility, confidence. He kept Iran’s enemies awake at night, and his theocratic masters sleeping soundly in a world of real and imagined threats at home and abroad.
For years, Tehran’s leadership talked fatalistically about Soleimani as a “living martyr,” but they surely did not anticipate President Trump’s audacious targeted killing. Now the Iranians will seek vengeance—methodical, cold-blooded, and nasty. They will look to avoid an all-out war with the United States they cannot win. But they will also look to turn a tactical blow into a strategic boon.
Unlike the Trump administration, which cannot reconcile its desire to get tough on Iran with its desire to leave the region altogether, the Iranian regime has a strategy, tethered to the realities, dysfunctions, and limits of the Middle East. Its tactics are often ugly, its capacity for misreading the terrain is sometimes self-defeating, and the pain and stupidities it inflicts on so many across the region, let alone its own people, can be horrific. But it does connect its means to its desired ends: keeping the clerics in power, keeping its imperial project in the region alive, and keeping sworn enemies, including America, off balance and out of its neighborhood.
No one really knows what comes next, not even the protagonists themselves. But as the dust settles, the collateral damage from the strike on Qassem Soleimani will likely be greater than the Trump administration bargained for. Indeed, the strike already appears to be feeding the gnarled ambitions of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, by producing a more unified regime with a tighter grip at home; an even more precarious American military position in Iraq and Syria, with the Iraqi parliament now calling for U.S. withdrawal; and the death of the Iranian nuclear deal and the whole notion of diplomacy with the Great Satan. All of this would cost the United States far more than Soleimani’s assassination cost Iran. In his death, Soleimani may exact his own final act of revenge against the United States.
One of the iron laws of foreign policy is that just because you can do something, or just because it’s morally defensible, doesn’t make it a smart thing to do. Both of President Trump’s predecessors adhered to that law when it came to the question of whether to go after Qassem Soleimani. Trump, however, is enamored with actions that his predecessors avoided, and stubbornly convinced that he can get his way with the unilateral application of American power.
For Iran’s supreme leader, Soleimani’s assassination was both a personal wound and an affirmation of his darkly suspicious world view. Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal last year had already reconfirmed his deep skepticism about the wisdom of negotiating with the Americans. The elimination of Soleimani may give pause to Khamenei and the hard men around him about the wisdom of frontal assaults on U.S. personnel, but in other ways it returns them to a world in which they’re far more comfortable. It’s a world with a clear enemy at the gate, a mortal threat that makes it easier to control domestic pressures for reform and dismiss international pressure for diplomacy. And it’s a world in which Iran has a wide array of lethal tools and loyal proxies, and a well-practiced ability to manipulate a neighborhood it knows far better than Americans do.
Strategically, the Iranian leadership will see no shortage of opportunities.
At home, it will use the action against Soleimani to change the channel, seeking to divert the popular frustrations which only a short time ago deeply unnerved the regime. Reformism was already a spent force in Iranian politics. Parliamentary elections next month will bury it—hardening the grip of reactionaries, and all but ensuring the rise of their choices for the next president and eventually the next supreme leader.
Already tiptoeing away from compliance with the nuclear agreement, the regime will now feel obliged to take significant leaps, including the resumption of higher levels of uranium enrichment. Other signatories can no longer make a credible case that they can get Trump back to the negotiating table or deliver Iran the promised economic benefits. The only question about the nuclear deal now is the manner and pace of its expiration. With the treacherous genie of Iran’s nuclear program heading out of the bottle, a whole series of dilemmas will reemerge, from the dangers of military preemption to the risks of a regional nuclear arms race.
The wider regional consequences could be equally negative for American interests—particularly in Iraq. For Tehran, ironically, the U.S. assassination of Soleimani offers a convenient escape from the anti-Iranian anger that Soleimani’s own policies had stirred up. Barely a month ago, the Iranian consulate in Najaf was torched by an Iraqi Shia mob accusing Iran of violating Iraqi sovereignty; now the Americans are a more urgent target for that same charge. Tehran will do everything in its power to make America’s military presence in Iraq operationally and politically unsustainable. It will stoke Iraqi emotions and push a very fragile Iraqi government to demand our withdrawal, and an angered Shia clerical establishment to do the same—tempting an American president who doesn’t really want to be there in the first place. In the meantime, Iranian proxies will continue to try to humiliate Americans in Iraq, and look for opportunities to threaten U.S. facilities.
Even short of a withdrawal, pressure to constrain the U.S. military in Iraq will have serious effects on a campaign against ISIS that is far from over. Trump has made no secret of his inclination to pull remaining American forces out of Syria, and the Iranians will turn up the heat to try to encourage that instinct. Mounting protests in Lebanon against Iran and Hezbollah will at least temporarily recede, deferring the hopes of Lebanese whose non-violent, cross-sectarian demonstrations held the promise of a new political era in that embattled country.
In the Gulf, our partners are losing their enthusiasm for an American confrontation with Iran. They are spooked by Trump’s oscillation between non-reaction and extreme reaction and the Iranians’ demonstrated will and capacity to hit them where it hurts most. The Iranians could eventually stage further attacks on Saudi oil facilities or Gulf shipping, as a reminder that neither the Gulf Arabs nor the global economy will escape the consequences of conflict between Tehran and Washington.
As we’ve argued before, we’re at this dangerous juncture because of Trump’s foolish decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal, his through-the-looking-glass conception of coercive diplomacy, and his willing hardline enablers in Tehran. When the deal was in place, Iran remained an adversary—but U.S. unmanned aircraft weren’t being shot down by Iran in international waters, Gulf shipping and infrastructure weren’t being hit by Iranian mines and missiles, and U.S. personnel weren’t being targeted by Shia militias in Iraq. Abandoning the nuclear agreement, on our own and with no evidence of Iranian cheating, started a predictable cycle of escalation and brinksmanship. It is a cycle which Trump has accelerated with muscular bluster and “maximum pressure,” unconnected to realistic aims or careful foresight.
The Trump administration is not the first U.S. administration to engage in magical thinking in the Middle East, but the contradictions in its approach have set a new standard. The president came into office promising to undermine Iran’s regional reach and secure a “better deal” on its nuclear program—all while drawing down America’s military presence in the region and rejecting credible diplomacy.
At the beginning of 2020, a dispassionate reckoning would conclude that the United States is not only farther from those goals than it was three years ago, but more exposed to the unpredictable risks of escalating conflict with Iran, and the vast insecurities of the Middle East, the original land of unintended consequences. The wisdom of particular tactics, including the killing of Qassem Soleimani, is best judged by the strategic results they produce. America is stumbling into a tragedy of its own making. And the Iranian regime is poised to once again reap the rewards, turning Soleimani’s loss into a long-term gain.
Comments(7)
Any Israeli who reads this essay will quickly understand that the US diplomatic community under a left-leaning US administration cares little for its interests. In fact, Israel is hardly even mentioned in this piece. It is indeed a strange twist of fate that German interests play a large role in the thinking of liberal professionals; whereas Israel's concerns are shunted. Iran poses an existential threat to Israel and the JCPOA only aided in that threat. Prime Minister Netanyahu analyzed the situation explicitly before the US Congress in 2015, but Obama, Biden and the Democrats took no heed. West Bank settlements are more of a concern for the Democratic Party than Iranian hegemonic advances. However, with over 500,000 dead in Syria and countless other millions displaced, Obama claimed that Syria -- and therefore Iranian hegemony -- was not an American interest. Obama also failed in Iraq. The Bush surge was a success; the 2010 election saw the rise of a secular Iraqi politician not afraid to take on Iran; and then Obama declared his intension to pull-out. But why? He wanted to send a strong signal to Iran that the US would bend over backwards in order to achieve some kind of nuclear deal. In fact, as it turned out, any nuclear deal. As far as the Sunni Arab world is concerned, America is not a reliable ally under the Democrats. They know that Iran is currently in the ascendancy from Lebanon into Syria and Iraq. From capitals as diverse as Riyadh and Jerusalem, it is clear to most that the US Democratic party has no policy in place to end Iran's hegemonic reign of terror across the region. US bi-partisan foreign policy is dead. And Israel and Saudi Arabia can only expect a potential whipsaw action from Washington depending who wins (whatever) current election is taking place. In the case of Iraq, the Sunni community must indeed find an alternative to Iranian hegemony The same might be said for the young Shiites cheering Suleimany's demise. Secession might now be the best answer for the Sunni community, especially if the Shiite government forces the US forces out. The same might be true for Irbil. Time will indeed tell. Biden might just have gotten it correct years ago when he hypothesized that Iraq might be best if broken into three parts. The bottom line is that Trump understands that the JCPOA was a polluted deal, conceived in appeasement and designed by a weak administration to "kick the can down the road". But Trump plays hardball not European soccer.
Sometimes, PM Netanyahu doesn't seem to know how to protect his vulnerable country. The efficacy of the Iran nuclear deal is proven by the situation we find ourselves in since president Trump announced the US withdrawal from a less than perfect deal that was, nevertheless, working comparatively well to limit Iran's nuclear actions. It could have been a solid base from which to push the diplomatic process to its maximum effectiveness but for an American president without the necessary vision and competence required to take advantage of opportunities staring him straight in the face.
Just for the record, Biden was advocating for federalism in Iraq and was intended, among other things, to prevent Iraq from breaking up into its sectarian parts. And, I agree, if the Bush administration hadn't sabotaged the idea, then Iraq might not be in the political mess it is now. It might even have mitigated Iranian influence in Iraq.
Donald Trump for a long time has boasted that he is the greatest defender of Israel in America. It is hard to see how an action that will prove disasterous for the standing, safety and influence of the United States in the Middle East will redound to the benefit of the State of Israel, unless one presumes that he is not to be trusted, and that America under his administration, does not have its interests at heart. I submit that what is bad for America in this respect is bad for Israel.
Very helpful as a concerned US citizen trying to understand the potential impact of what’s been done. Thanks for the work you do to thoughtfully advance common understanding.
While it is understood that some of this resonates, the reality is the Iranians do not know what to make of Trump. He is far too erratic for their comfort. They will be cautious in the short run and see how the long game plays. They are not even sure if they have to deal with him in the next year or the next five. But American resolve under Trump is far different than it was in the placating administrations before Trump.
America, under the "placating" administration, had, along with its allies - and adversaries, for that matter - reined in Iran's nuclear program. Under the Trump administration, America's allies are running for the hills and Iran is no longer reined in. Trump's approach to Iran is kind of like his approach to everything else - get rid of something good because Obama did it and then replace the good stuff with nothing.
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