Retaliation Begins: Multiple Mortar Attacks On US Presence In Iraq, Hezbollah Warns Security Forces "Stay Away"
President Rouhani reportedly threatened a "lightning strike" against America...
Iraqi Kata'ib Hezbollah warning Iraqi Security Forces should stay away from US bases starting Sunday evening.
US Officials Say Soleimani Was Planning Attacks On Diplomatic Targets In Syria, Lebanon
"By the way, it still might happen"
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The obvious:
The death of Soleimani doesn't alter the concept, structure or resource base defining the operational capacity of whatever it was Iran's planning had been designed to enable. As the "plan" was near execution anyway... that means Iran already had most of the resources and people in place to execute their plans... and killing one guy doesn't change that.
Iran has been, for a long time already, attacking Americans and American interests in Syria, Iraq, and anywhere else in the region that they can. Understanding current events in context... requires awareness of the connections between current events and prior Iranian drone attacks in and on Saudi Arabia... the ongoing support by Iran of the war in Yemen, and the Houthi missile launches targeting U.S. Navy ships in the Red Sea, as well as those organized efforts in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon... and the parallel and ongoing maritime harassment of U.S. naval vessels in the Arabian Gulf.
Iran is engaging America with direct action... while carrying out their attacks in others countries... clearly continuing to assume that proportionate responses will not possibly include "escalation" in the form of American direct action in counter-attacks conducted elsewhere... as, perhaps, inside of Iran.
Probably the only way to slow this down... will be for Trump to make a statement that "attacks on American forces by Iran and Iranian controlled proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon... at American bases in other parts of the Middle East... or anywhere else... including Iranians approaching, threatening or attacking American naval vessels... will invite immediate, direct, and proportional American retaliation on those forces, and on the drivers of those efforts, on the people and resources enabling them, and on all Iranian interests at the points of origin enabling them... including on the leadership directing them... whereever they are located".
Iran has not been held accountable for ANY of their adventurism over the last 40 years... which has led them to believe, in error, that they cannot be held accountable. For change to occur, the fiction that recent events in the Middle East are anything other than Iranian created and directed military adventures... needs to be dispelled... and that will not occur only in result of taking out Soleimani... inside of Iraq.
Iran... can choose to stand down... but, thus far... there's nothing that I see that suggests they've been provided any direct "incentive" to do so.
Well, there's this... Air Force Releases Video Of B-2 Stealth Bomber In Action
However, that's a fairly routine product of the sort of Cold War mentality driven "subtlety" in chest thumping... a bit of saber rattling no one believes matters... of the sort that has allowed the situation we see playing out to develop in the first place... while giving no reason for Iran to doubt that we have that capability... and no reason for Iran to think or believe that we would ever employ it.
The influence of power is rendered fully impotent when it is not used... (why and how it is withheld being critical in others analysis). It is rendered effectively impotent when no one believes it can or will be used... And it is made fully impotent when its potential is fecklessly wasted in fostering the opposite belief... in the certainty of expectation (even if it is error in expectation) that it cannot and will not be used... so there is no reason to believe that it even matters.
Many elements of the ongoing conflict are inevitabilities... as they have been since 1979. However, as Trump notes, the Iranians have not lost a negotiation since then... and what we see evolving in Iraq and Syria (Lebanon, Yemen, at sea, or whereever Iran chooses) today is still only a negotiation... one in which Iran still believes they hold all the cards... and have nothing that is essential to them capable of being held at risk... just more of the same in the flow of events in the same channels as before... in a flow that's been similarly entrained since 1979...
The rules need to change... or, be changed... perception needs to change... if war is to be avoided.
Reagan, perhaps, stood them down for a moment... but it's been all Jimmy Carter all the time since then...
My guess, at this point, is that war will not be avoided.
Iran has no reason to throttle back their plans... no reason to expect that doing so would matter or be useful... and has lots of reason to believe that given the recent events "use it or lose it" is the most correct analysis... while the potential to near certain loss of what exists now, and their ability to sustain and reconstitute what already exists now... while it still exists... is the most obvious consequence of inaction.
The only way I see to stop it... is to address all of it in its entirety... while demanding it be stopped... while refusing to recognize the fictions that the boundaries (as the niceties in diplomatic cover, the fictions in limits in negotiated agreements, as physical borders, or, as capacity limits or choices in operational thresholds) should function to enable exemptions that insulate the origin from the expression.
We've reached a "Cuban Missile Crisis" moment in the Middle East, with Iran backed by Russia and China ?
Given what I see now, I don't think that's what's going to happen... which is why I think that an step-wise escalation into hot war will not be avoided... the way it was avoided in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
More to the point... Iran doesn't think that's going to happen... which is why they'll not stand down. Clearly, they've been planning to break out of "threshold" constraints anyway... the U.S. only acting preemptively in a narrow target set... still fully within the context Iran chose to frame the dispute. The planning now exposed by that preemptive response... suggests Iran believed that bit of escalation they'd planned... executed now... might result in the U.S. retreating from the Middle East entirely ?
That leaves only questions about the nature and extent of the war that results... of who will violate the boundaries, by what extent, and where, how, and when... in (the continuation and escalation of the ongoing) war that results. In that, Iran believes they continue to hold the initiative... as they have since 1979. It appears they believed themselves on the verge of "winning" by forcing an American retreat... which they thought they had the ability to deliver by force ?
Will the U.S. continue to sustain the diplomatic (and other) fictions, as they have... and only trade blows directly at the times and places and in the manner of Iran's choosing, or dictating... or will the U.S. respond with another decapitation strike on Iranian leadership ?
Thus far, we've seen a trend that flows from "Soleimani on down"... with follow up only on additional leadership targets selected by working down the organizational chart, inside of Iraq... not working up the organization chart... ?
Perhaps the U.S. thinks it can wrap up the Iranian influence, in Iraq, in Syria, in Lebanon, in Yemen... without doing more than that... and then might either be able to obviate or sustain the insult that's coming in result ? And, perhaps they CAN... but, is that what they should choose... and is it what they will choose ?
We should find out, starting tomorrow... |
