Soleimani strike – Trump rips up his own playbook
The drone strike that killed Iran’s principal strategist General Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi deputy, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the commander of the leading Shiite militias in Iraq, is a major twist in the confrontation between America and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In the 40 years since Ayatollah Khomeini brought Islamic revolution to Tehran, the two countries have never seemed closer to all-out war.
The question is whether the attack was an opportunist blow against an old enemy, or part of a long-term strategy on the part of President Trump and his allies. After all, Qassem Soleimani had been the acknowledged architect of Iran’s aggressive tactics across the Gulf region for more than twenty years. To strike now is to invite a host of expected, and unexpected, reactions and consequences. For the acting prime minister of Iraq, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, “it is a declaration of war by America on Iraq.” The supreme leader in Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned within hours of “crushing revenge.”
Donald Trump acted quickly and decisively, once the target had presented itself. The plan was outlined on Thursday afternoon by Defence Secretary Mark Esper. Trump seems to have consulted very few of America’s allies before giving the go ahead for the attack – explanations to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Britain and France could come afterwards, if at all.
On one reading, it is a contradiction of one of the main foreign policy themes of the Trump presidency so far – that America would pull back forces from areas where it has diminishing interests, much of the Middle East and Africa included. Even against the great foe Iran, indirect tactics such as sanctions seemed the preferred option. Only a few days ago, the State Department special envoy on Iran, Brian Hook, briefed that the Trump team believed that sanctions against Iran were succeeding following the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal, the JCPOA. He speculated that the upsurge in activities by Qassem Soleimani’s Quds force was a “desperate lashing out in all directions.” He dared to hint at a collapse of the Iranian economy, possibly even a change of regime.
Since the summer US training facilities and outposts in Iraq have sustained 11 attacks by pro-Iranian Kataib Hezbollah forces. The tipping point was an assault last month on a joint Iraq-US facility at Kirkuk with 31 rockets which killed a US contractor and injured a number of Iraqis. The US shot back with bombing attacks on five Kataib Hezbollah bases, two just across the border in Syria. This was followed by the invasion of the US Embassy in Baghdad by PMF – Popular Mobilisation Forces – Shiite militiamen and supporters. The demonstrators were driven off after American Apache helicopters hosed them with tear gas. By then the die was cast, and plans to take out Qassem Soleimani were well under way.
Soleimani had been the architect of Iran’s military planning and strategy across the region for the best part of two decades. He led the training and arming of the Hezbollah militias – first in Lebanon and then Syria and Iraq. Lebanese Hezbollah under his inspiration, and funds and arms from Iran, became a fully-fledged army, and the model for Shiite militias across the region. Without Hezbollah support, Bashar al-Assad’s bunkered military regime in Damascus might not have survived at all. First Hezbollah from Lebanon and then the PMF militias from Iraq helped push back Islamic State forces. They now reinforce the regime in its re-engineering and distribution of the remaining Syrian Sunni Arab population, and as it puts pressure on the remaining rebel enclave of Idlib.
Bashar al-Assad is now wholly reliant on the presence of Russian advisers and air forces, plus the extensive use of the Shiite Hezbollah militias, in a scheme largely devised by Qassem Soleimani. The militias also contributed to the rolling back of Islamic State forces from large parts of Syria, often in sync with Kurdish militias allied to the US.
This did not hinder Iran and Soleimani pursuing their own parallel strategy of confrontation with the US and its allies – operations which became much more expansive after Trump cancelled the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran. The principal proxies were Lebanese Hezbollah, the Popular Mobilisation Forces and the Shiite militias in Iraq, and the Houthi insurgents that had taken over the capital of Yemen, Sana’a. In turn these targeted the US and its allies, principally Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel.
Israel has expressed alarm about the new class of precision guided rocket and ground launched missile Soleimani’s al Quds force has provided to Lebanese Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria. The improvement in range and precision has brought most strategic targets inside Israel within range, Tel Aviv airport and power generating stations on the coast among them. Israel has retaliated with dozens of air strikes.
The summer saw a step change in the quality and range of threat, tactics and attack by the Iranian forces and their proxies. Tankers, including some under British flag and protection, were waylaid in the Gulf and threatened by Houthi forces in the narrows of the Red Sea. A US drone was shot down over disputed international waters. Donald Trump responded by tweet, sent an aircraft carrier and a Marine expeditionary unit, but effectively did very little, kinetically speaking.
On September 14th a strike force of a dozen or more drones and cruise missiles struck the management and pumping facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais, cutting production in one of Saudi Arabia’s principal oilfields. At first it was claimed that this was a Houthi strike from Yemen – a technical impossibility. Later it emerged the missiles and drones were launched from desert space in Iraq held by the militias under Iranian command and training.
It was another step change. The attack was devastating psychologically. It was unexpected, and mounted with relatively crude weaponry which evaded the defences round the oil terminals including American Patriot missile batteries. The Iranians and their allies have proved masters of this kind of tactic. Swarms of cheap drones can confuse sophisticated radars. Similarly, in the Gulf, swarms of fast boats can be launched at unsuspecting commercial shipping.
Israeli security analysts now like to warn about a “belt of pro-Iranian militias and forces from Syria and Lebanon on the Mediterranean to Iran and Iraq on the Gulf.” The game isn’t quite as straightforward as that because the terms are very local and complex. The Hezbollah model of militias works as much through influence and subversion, tribal and community loyalty, and betrayal. This is matched by formidable skills in propaganda and disinformation, hacking and cyber warfare. When retaliation to Soleimani’s killing comes – as it surely will – it is as likely to be in cyber and influence operations as in the form of violent, physical attack. It could be more virtual than kinetic.
For all the threats and cries of vengeance coming from Tehran and the pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, Iran has to choose its next steps very carefully. The summer has seen riot and disturbance from Shiite communities especially in Baghdad, Kabala, Najaf, and Nasiriyah against the overweening Iranian influence in government. Hundreds of demonstrators have died, some shot by sniper rounds thought to be fired by Iranian-trained gunmen in the militias. Iran is not universally popular in the Shiite communities – who take pride, often, in their distinctive Iraqi, and therefore Arab, identity.
But the immediate crisis in decision-making terms lies with Donald Trump. He seems to have looked at his previous stratagems of confrontation with Iran through sanctions, and steady withdrawal of US forces from the trouble zones of the Middle East and Africa – and just set light to them. He is now in direct, military confrontation with Iran. As former Vice President, and now Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden put it, with maybe only a hint of exaggeration, “he has just thrown a stick of dynamite in a tinder box.”