By James M. Dorsey | January 9, 2020
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Iranians
play chess, Americans play backgammon when it comes to warfare, military
strategy and conflict management.
That is
becoming increasingly obvious in the US-Iranian tit-for-tat on an Iraqi
gameboard.
Hobbled by
harsh US economic sanctions and a weak military hand, Iran has perfected the
art of asymmetric warfare and carefully calibrated operations as well as acts
of political violence, an approach that the United States 40 years after the
1979 Iranian revolution has yet to come to grips with.
Iran’s firing of missiles at two US
bases in Iraq in its
initial military response to the killing of Iranian general Qassim Soleimani
deftly served multiple purposes while leaving the door open to de-escalation.
The Iranian
missiles targeting the bases, part of what Iran dubbed Operation Harsh Revenge,
were launched as millions crowded the streets of the city of Kerman for the
funeral of Mr. Soleimani, the third day of a mass outpouring of mourning, public
anger and calls for revenge.
Using guided
precision missiles, Iran was careful to demonstrate its capability while not
causing further US and/or Iraqi casualties that almost certainly would have provoked
a harsh US response.
Driving the
point home, Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the missile
attacks as a “slap in the face” of the United States.
Mr. Khamenei
went on to say that Iran’s real revenge would be the expulsion of US forces
from the Middle East. “Military
actions in this form are not sufficient for that issue. What is important
is that America’s corrupt presence must come to an end in this region,” he
said.
In a
televised address, Mr. Trump, flanked by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Vice
President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and several members of the
military top brass. appeared to respond positively to the Iranian overture,
cloaking it as Iran “standing down.”
Amid the
bluster justifying the killing of Mr. Soleimani, promises to impose additional
sanctions against Iran, vows that Iran would not be allowed to develop a nuclear
weapon, and extolling American military and economic might, Mr. Trump insisted
that “the United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.”
He noted
that the US and Iran had a common interest in fighting the Islamic State, one
reason why Mr. Soleimani was a popular figure in Iran, and went on to say that “we should
work together on this and other shared priorities.”
Determined
not to get embroiled in another Middle East war, Mr. Trump’s acknowledgement of
the Iranian gesture hardly comes as a surprise.
Mr. Trump
has in the past nine months exercised in military terms the kind of strategic
patience that Iran adopted in the first 18 months after the United States
withdrew in 2018 from the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s
nuclear program and imposed its economic sanctions.
Iran in
May/June of last year switched its posture to one of calibrated escalation
after Europe, Russia and China proved unwilling and/or incapable of salvaging
the nuclear accord in a way that Iran would be at least partially compensated
for the severe impact of the sanctions.
Mr. Trump
refrained from responding militarily to numerous attacks, including last year’s
Iranian downing of a US drone, attacks on tankers off the coast of the United
Arab Emirates, and two key Saudi oil facilities.
Those
attacks were the ones that caught the most international attention, but were,
according to US officials, only the tip of the iceberg.
The officials
said there had been some 90 attacks on US targets in Iraq since May 2019
carried out by Iranian-backed Iraqi militias, including Kataeb Hezbollah, whose
leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was killed alongside Mr. Soleimani.
The attacks
were intended not only to force the US to escalate tensions by provoking a
military response in the hope that it would lead to a return to the negotiating
table but also an environment conducive to a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq
at the behest of the Iraqi government and/or public pressure.
“The nearly
eight months in which the United States did not respond forcefully to a series
of military provocations and attacks almost certainly contributed to the increasingly
assertive and audacious actions by Iran and its proxies,” said Michael Eisenstadt, an expert
on the military and strategy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
(WINEP).
Mr. Trump’s
apparent, so far disproven, belief that bluster and intimidation will force his
adversaries coupled with television images of the besieged US embassy in
Baghdad is likely what persuaded him to respond disproportionately to the
killing of a US contractor by assassinating Mr. Soleimani.
Iran hopes
that the scare of an escalating tit-for-tat that gets out of control will
energize efforts to bring the United States and the Islamic republic back to
the negotiating table.
To do so, a
third party with leverage on both sides of the divide like Oman would have to
bridge a gap on the terms of reviving negotiations aimed at reinstituting the
nuclear accord that has been widened by Mr. Soleimani’s killing.
Revival of
the agreement would have to involve revised terms that include Iran’s
controversial ballistic missiles program and support for proxies across the
Middle East, the core of its defense strategy.
Timing is of
the essence.
Dialling down
tension at best buys the United States and Iran time. It does not solve
anything.
Mr. Pompeo,
the US Secretary of State, insisted this week that the
Trump administration’s goal was to “contain and confront” Iran.
Iran retains
a vested interest in strategic escalation. It may hope that the current crisis
is the monkey wrench that breaks the logjam but will seek to again push things
to the brink if it is disappointed.
Said The
Washington Post in an editorial prior to Mr. Trump’s latest remarks: “The way
to avoid these outcomes is to work with allies and other intermediaries to
offer Iran a diplomatic solution, before the slide toward war becomes
irreversible. In
short, what’s needed is Mr. Pompeo’s ‘de-escalation,’ not Mr. Trump’s reckless
threats.”
Mr. Trump
has proven that he can go either way.
Dr. James
M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow
at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director
of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture