By Matthew Continetti
Friday, January 03, 2020
The successful operation against Qassem Suleimani, head
of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is a stunning blow to international
terrorism and a reassertion of American might. It will also test President
Trump’s Iran strategy. It is now Trump, not Ayatollah Khamenei, who has
ascended a rung on the ladder of escalation by killing the military architect
of Iran’s Shiite empire. For years, Iran has set the rules. It was Iran that picked
the time and place of confrontation. No more.
Reciprocity has been the key to understanding Donald
Trump. Whether you are a media figure or a mullah, a prime minister or a pope,
he will be good to you if you are good to him. Say something mean, though, or
work against his interests, and he will respond in force. It won’t be pretty.
It won’t be polite. There will be fallout. But you may think twice before
crossing him again.
That has been the case with Iran. President Trump has
conditioned his policies on Iranian behavior. When Iran spread its malign
influence, Trump acted to check it. When Iran struck, Trump hit back: never
disproportionately, never definitively. He left open the possibility of
negotiations. He doesn’t want to have the greater Middle East — whether Libya,
Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, or Afghanistan — dominate his presidency the way it
dominated those of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. America no longer needs
Middle Eastern oil. Best to keep the region on the back burner and watch it so
it doesn’t boil over. Do not overcommit resources to this underdeveloped,
war-torn, sectarian land.
The result was reciprocal antagonism. In 2018, Trump
withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
negotiated by his predecessor. He began jacking up sanctions. The Iranian
economy turned to a shambles. This “maximum pressure” campaign of economic
warfare deprived the Iranian war machine of revenue and drove a wedge between
the Iranian public and the Iranian government. Trump offered the opportunity to
negotiate a new agreement. Iran refused.
And began to lash out. Last June, Iran’s fingerprints
were all over two oil tankers that exploded in the Persian Gulf. Trump
tightened the screws. Iran downed a U.S. drone. Trump called off a military
strike at the last minute and responded indirectly, with more sanctions, cyber
attacks, and additional troop deployments to the region. Last September a drone
fleet launched by Iranian proxies in Yemen devastated the Aramco oil facility
in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia. Trump responded as he had to previous incidents:
nonviolently.
Iran slowly brought the region to a boil. First it hit
boats, then drones, then the key infrastructure of a critical ally. On December
27 it went further: Members of the Kataib Hezbollah militia launched rockets at
a U.S. installation near Kirkuk, Iraq. Four U.S. soldiers were wounded. An
American contractor was killed.
Destroying physical objects merited economic sanctions
and cyber intrusions. Ending lives required a lethal response. It arrived on
December 29 when F-15s pounded five Kataib Hezbollah facilities across Iraq and
Syria. At least 25 militiamen were killed. Then, when Kataib Hezbollah and
other Iran-backed militias organized a mob to storm the U.S. embassy in
Baghdad, setting fire to the grounds, America made a show of force and
threatened severe reprisals. The angry crowd melted away.
The risk to the U.S. embassy — and the possibility of
another Benghazi — must have angered Trump. “The game has changed,” Secretary
of Defense Mark Esper said hours before the assassination of Soleimani at
Baghdad airport. Indeed it has. The decades-long gray-zone conflict between
Iran and the United States manifested itself in subterfuge, terrorism,
technological combat, financial chicanery, and proxy forces. Throughout it all,
the two sides confronted each other directly only once: in the second half of Ronald
Reagan’s presidency. That is about to change.
Deterrence, says Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise
Institute, is credibly holding at risk something your adversary holds dear. If
the reports out of Iraq are true, President Trump has put at risk the entirety
of the Iranian imperial enterprise even as his maximum-pressure campaign
strangles the Iranian economy and fosters domestic unrest. That will get the
ayatollah’s attention. And now the United States must prepare for his answer.
The bombs over Baghdad? That was Trump calling Khamenei’s
bluff. The game has changed. But it isn’t over.
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