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With Suleimani’s Assassination, Trump Unites A Divided Iran

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Jim here.

Marcy has already provided some perspective on the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, although I would double the time frame in her observations by pointing out that the Tehran embassy hostage situation began just a year before the 1980 election and provided a chance for Reagan to break many norms in his back channel negotiations during the campaign. Note that had the militias acting as Iran’s proxy been successful in storming the Baghdad embassy and taking hostages earlier this week, we would have been put in the exact same situation just a year before an election 40 years later.

What I want to concentrate on here, though, is that Trump’s desire for regime change in Iran, even with John Bolton now sitting on the sidelines, was showing at least a small chance of success without a need for outright military confrontation. Barely a month ago, Iran was rocked by internal unrest that led to massive demonstrations that were violently quashed. From the New York Times:

Iran is experiencing its deadliest political unrest since the Islamic Revolution 40 years ago, with at least 180 people killed — and possibly hundreds more — as angry protests have been smothered in a government crackdown of unbridled force.

It began two weeks ago with an abrupt increase of at least 50 percent in gasoline prices. Within 72 hours, outraged demonstrators in cities large and small were calling for an end to the Islamic Republic’s government and the downfall of its leaders.

In many places, security forces responded by opening fire on unarmed protesters, largely unemployed or low-income young men between the ages of 19 and 26, according to witness accounts and videos. In the southwest city of Mahshahr alone, witnesses and medical personnel said, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps members surrounded, shot and killed 40 to 100 demonstrators — mostly unarmed young men — in a marsh where they had sought refuge.

But today, after last night’s assassination, there are massive demonstrations mourning Suleimani and calling for a presumably united Iran to avenge the killing. This photo the New York Times put up from Shutterstock conveys the mood:

Iran’s Fars News Agency tweeted more from the protests:

Those protests against Iran’s government are now gone and seem very unlikely to come back. Assassinating such a popular figure has clearly united the country in a newly-stoked hatred of the United States. On the surface, then, it would seem that Trump’s dream of regime change in Iran now has to align fully with the neocon desire to do so by means of a massive invasion.

With Trump, though, linear paths of logic never apply. Perhaps I’m being too much of a Pollyanna here, but note that Trump’s M.O. in many cases is to undo a perfectly good policy, escalate the bad result, and then go back to something very akin to where we started while claiming to have broken through a situation that was previously insoluble. In that regard, let’s remember that Obama sat quietly while Mossad assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists inside Iran but then a couple of years later signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Here’s hoping that Trump decides to pull back from war by “negotiating” a “whole new agreement” that takes us right back to the JCPOA from which he unilaterally withdrew and takes the world back from the brink of disaster.

Twenty Years of Continuity

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Last night, the US killed Qassem Suleimani in a targeted killing on Iraqi soil. DOD claimed they killed him in a “defensive” move to stop his plotting against US diplomats. Nancy Pelosi already made clear that Trump did not properly brief Congress (though Lindsey Graham says he got briefed while golfing at Mar a Lago).

Most experts fear this will escalate (indeed, recent events resemble a Colin Kahl think piece about how the US and Iran could escalate into a war without meaning to).  That’d be bad enough under a sane president, with competent advisors. But Trump has fired most of the experts in his White House and has been pardoning war criminals (and is thinking of pardoning more). Which means we may well be mobilizing service members to fight for a Commander in Chief they can’t expect to think through the use of force, but who has already demanded that his subordinates violate norms and laws partly because he has a temper problem and partly because he doesn’t understand how slow negotiation and strategy works.

But I also feel like this moment has been coming for twenty years, enabled by people who disdain Trump but nevertheless get treated as sane.

There’s our response to 9/11, which people on both sides of the aisles believed was license to break all the rules the US had claimed to adhere to since World War II. We embraced torture because some of the most experienced policy makers ever claimed to be at a loss to know how to respond to a threat they had been warned about. Yet those policy makers knew how to work the system, to have in-house lawyers write up OLC memos excusing the crimes in advance.

Then there’s the Iraq War, the forever stain. Those same experienced policy makers used the opportunity of 9/11 to launch a war of a choice, and then bungle it, in part out of the same impatience and imperiousness policy elites now criticize Trump for, in part by putting incompetent ideologues in charge of cleaning up the mess.

Along the way, we used tools meant to fight terrorism as a way to villainize Iran, in part because the Neocons wanted to avoid political negotiation with Iran at all costs and in part because figuring out a way to deal with Iran’s willingness to use proxies was too difficult otherwise.

It didn’t really get better with Obama. When faced with the challenge of an American citizen inciting attacks, Anwar al-Awlaki, he carried out a sustained effort to kill him using the same kind of targeted kill that Trump just used, excused by yet more shoddy OLC memos.

It seemed so easy, he did it again to take out Osama bin Laden, in a made-for-campaign-season strike that didn’t do much to address terrorism but did expand our claims to operate on other countries’ sovereign territory.

Then there was Libya, where the US made certain agreements to limit the action against Qaddafi, only to violate them and leave the country in chaos.

The Republicans’ cynical sustained response to Benghazi, yet another made-for-campaign-season event, made it their party line stance that any attack on the US must be met by a show of dick-wagging and force, regardless of the efficacy. Trump even made that stance a key part of his nominating convention. Benghazi-palooza made a response like yesterday’s targeted killing inevitable, even though a bunch of the same Republicans recognize that Trump doesn’t understand the fire he’s playing with.

Behind it all is a belief that the most powerful nation in the world shouldn’t have to tolerate any resistance to its power, and may break rules and norms — to say nothing of causing untold chaos in other places — to quash it. Purportedly sane mainstream politicians set the precedent that it was okay to commit war crimes as a misguided shortcut in defending America. A Nobel Prize winner normalized assassination. And both parties have enabled events and legal arguments that leave Trump with few restraints.

And yet the chattering classes will pretend this is something new with Trump.

CIA “Command and Control” in Syria

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Yesterday, in a story describing the state of affairs following the suicide bomb that took out key members of Bashar al Assad’s national security team, David Ignatius described CIA’s (and Israel’s) involvement in Syria this way:

The CIA has been working with the Syrian opposition for several weeks under a non-lethal directive that allows the United States to evaluate groups and assist them with command and control. Scores of Israeli intelligence officers are also operating along Syria’s border, though they are keeping a low profile.

Even before I read Ignatius’ piece, I wondered if we had shared intelligence with the rebels, helping them to decimate Assad’s team so effectively. Certainly, intelligence sharing could be included under non-lethal activities.

And now, Middle Eastern sources are reporting this RUMINT.

Reports in the Arab-language press indicate the head of Iran’s covert foreign operations Quds force was killed in Wednesday’s bombing in Damascus.
Al-Quds Force’s long-elusive commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, is reported to have made several trips to Damascua to meet with Assad and his top commanders since January of this year.
Iran has made no bones about having bolstered Assad’s embattled regime with members of its own elite Revolutionary Guard, but the death of Suleimani would be a direct blow to Tehran.

Suleimani, who masterminded al-Quds Force operations in Iraq and covert activities throughout the Persian Gulf and Lebanon, is a key figure in Iranian policymaking, particularly in security matters.

A combat veteran of Iran’s 1980-88 war with Iraq, Suleimani took command of the al-Quds Force in the late 1990s and has become a powerful figure in the upper echelons of the Tehran regime.

His death in Wednesday’s bombing could indicate Syria’s rebels have covert support from Western nations in their anti-Assad campaign.

Well now, that would be rather remarkable “luck,” wouldn’t it? Those feisty Islamist-tied rebels taking out Assad’s national security team and our enemy, all in one terrorist attack?

Additionally, Syrian rebels have seized the border crossing points between Syrian and Iraq, another pressing issue Ignatius rather presciently raised yesterday.

The main transit routes into Syria come from the four points of the compass — Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. The two key axes, in terms of Western assistance, are Turkey and Jordan, both close allies of the United States. The two potential flash points for spreading the sectarian fighting are Lebanon and Iraq, both of which have substantial Shiite militias allied with Iran, which backs Assad.

It all seems to be falling into place for the Islamist backed rebels, huh?

Meanwhile, in probably but not definitely unrelated news, King Abdullah just named Bandar bin Sultan to head Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service.

I wonder. Is the War on Terror still operative? Or has CIA been swapping prepositions of late?

Update: Wrong! Bandar’s appointment is totally related to Syria. He was appointed because he’s the guy who partnered with us the last time (save Libya) we used Islamists to clandestinely overthrow a country.

For Saudis and Westerners who remember Prince Bandar as a driving force rallying international support and procuring weapons for Muslim fighters seeking to push Soviet forces from Afghanistan in the 1980s, the appointment was a sign that the Saudis might play a more influential role as uprisings that may remake the Arab world, especially in Syria.

“In these very hectic moments for Saudi foreign policy…we need Bandar bin Sultan,” said Abdullah al-Shammri, a political analyst. “He’s a volcano, and we need a volcano at this moment.”

Mr. al-Shammri cited what he called Prince Bandar’s “special relationship” with American officials. He also mentioned parallels between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia working together in the 1980s against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and current circumstances in Syria, where the U.S., Saudi Arabia and others are trying to overcome Russian objections to tougher action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.