They’ll Never See It Coming

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, February 02, 2024

 

The strike on a Jordan-based U.S. outpost by an Iran-backed terrorist group that killed three Americans and wounded scores more occurred on Sunday night. Within hours, the president told reporters he had settled on a response to this significant escalation in a months-long campaign of hostilities involving Iran’s terrorist proxies. As of this writing and despite the significant U.S. military presence in the region, that response has not yet materialized.

 

And yet, we can be sure retaliation will be forthcoming. Why? Because the Biden administration is going out of its way to telegraph its punches before they are thrown.

 

CBS News reported on Thursday morning that the Pentagon has received approval from the president for strikes on targets “inside Iraq and Syria” — targets that include “Iranian personnel and facilities.” As Jim Geraghty detailed on Wednesday, Iran maintains hundreds of facilities in Syria and dozens more in Iraq, so that may not narrow down the list of potential targets that much. But Iran has had ample opportunity to prepare its personnel and facilities ahead of an American response.

 

Additionally, the Biden administration confirmed the conditions necessary to facilitate a strike. “Weather will be a major factor in the timing of the strikes,” the report continued. While “the U.S. has the capability to carry out strikes in bad weather,” the Pentagon “prefers to have better visibility of selected targets as a safeguard against inadvertently hitting civilians who might stray into the area at the last moment.”

 

Minimizing the prospect of collateral damage is what separates the civilized world from its barbarians, whose violent provocations the U.S. seeks to contain. But retailing both the likely targets of U.S. strikes and the environmental circumstances that will precipitate them reduces the likelihood that those strikes will produce more pain than Iran is willing to absorb. If the Biden White House proceeds accordingly, this exercise is unlikely to restore deterrence. Doing so would compel the Pentagon to raise the costs of Iran’s region-wide campaign of terrorism beyond its associated benefits — benefits that are tangible and compounding. Ensuring that Tehran has ample time to minimize the damage coalition forces will do to its assets and proxy forces undermines that goal.

 

The Biden administration has also retailed its intention to conduct these strikes in stages over the course of several days, if not weeks. Indeed, if the administration continues to communicate that its fear of regional escalation is greater than its resolve to reimpose sobriety on Iran, the campaign is destined to continue for some time, and it will likely invite Iranian reprisals as Tehran continues to test Joe Biden’s risk tolerance.

 

Suffice it to say, this is not how you restore stability to the Middle East. In fact, it may be how you get the wider war of which Biden is so clearly terrified.