Trump basically: Iran can’t touch us, they’re standing down, and we’re going to retaliate with some sanctions.
So far, he’s actually taking the de-escalation route.
His advisors were likely able to make a very strong case to him that this is a qualified big win for his foreign policy. That line of thinking speaks to him. And…it isn’t really that wrong, I don’t think.
I feel like one of his big motivations is to kill someone bigger than Obama killed.
Menzo
1610
Hard to argue anything different right now. We assassinated a big enemy of the US in plain daylight and Iran responds by lobbing a few missiles at a few fields somewhere and then slinks away with their tail between their legs.
Is it possible that we just avoided a huge war thanks to the restraint of Iran’s ruling clerics? WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?!
PS - Lindsey Graham is going to have a serious case of blue balls.
Iran will focus on building a nuclear bomb. No need for them to retaliate further. They know once they have a bomb the equation changes.
This is also a very good point. And absolutely why I’d call it a qualified win for Trump’s foreign policy. The end result is likely to be a nuclear-armed Iran.
I think this strike by Iran was deliberately designed to give Trump that kind of win. Basically, if they do nothing at all then the only possible conclusion is that they are planning something and everyone needs to be on high alert. So instead they do something symbolic, Trump claims they are too weak to hit us hard, and we can move back to a shadow war. Of course, Iran almost certainly has to have a stronger response planned, but that will just be terrorism-as-usual.
It isn’t really a win, though - we’ve lost credibility (doubly so if there really was a lure of peace used to expose Soleimani), Iran is now engines full on its nuclear program, and it isn’t at all clear that anyone is planning to enforce the treaty sanctions, so we are the only ones sanctioning them.
Unless Trump’s foreign policy is a nuclear armed Iran, I’m not clear on what makes it a win, even qualified. “We can assassinate whoever we want and you can’t do shit about it” isn’t really a foreign policy.
Trump backing out of the deal was what Iran needed to escalate their nuclear program anyway. I don’t think this episode changes that too much. I am surprised at Iran’s reaction though. It’s like getting blood revenge on your neighbor… by blowing up his camper at the campground in the middle of the winter.
I don’t think either side wants a shooting war, but I expect Iran to make the US’s lives as hard as possible in that region. More close calls in the gulf, cyber attacks, that sort of thing.
Tman
1617
Cross posting b/c this analysis is spot on IMO and shows that missles are the least of our worries.
Menzo
1618
I don’t get it. The embedded tweet is about the rocket attack. But Ali says that’s not a big deal.
Edit: nevermind, had to read the original tweet thread. Journalism in 2020 sucks.
Tman
1619
Ya, embedded tweets responding to a tweet are not the best. Here are the relevant sections:
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Those examples are pretty tight timelines for Iranians. The Iranian gov sees revenge as almost a generational thing…their timeline can be in months/years. Revenge always doesn’t come via a show of force they take PUBLIC credit for.
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So what I’m saying is all these people with their chest thumping, I would be cautious about what you see as Iranian revenge and unfortunately prepare yourselves for the kind of attacks that are unexpected, that don’t follow a tight timeline, and show up where you least expect
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If people think that this is it…that Iran has chosen to retaliate against the US for killing the second most powerful man in Iran, by lobbing some missiles across the border that didn’t result in US casualties then I have a bridge to sell you
I think this gave them cover to formally break the treaty at a time when everyone was distracted by an explosive situation, so that there wasn’t immediate pressure on the other signatories to enforce it. I don’t know if that will actually work, but I suspect there isn’t a lot of appetite for working with Trump at the moment.
I suspect their primary objective here was to defuse what was essentially the start of an actual Iran-America hot war. They needed an outlet and a symbol, but they also needed to remain the aggrieved party. Now they can work against us more effectively since the moral right is arguably on their side, and they can likely quash internal unrest that might have made the country more friendly to the US.
Yeah, this will keep the hardliners in power for years to come. Long term damage to US relations is also the likely outcome (when seen in context of all the other deranged bullshit.) It’d be fun if Iranian hackers end up releasing trump’s financial records and RNC data, but given that in America, if you’re a Republican they let you do it, I doubt the media will pay any attention to it. Gotta board the fuckyeahMurica train.
Edit: Here’s a more reasoned analysis.
Alstein
1622
I tihnk once Iran shows capability for a nuclear bomb the US will immediately invade. They won’t tolerate it and will strike before Iran can hit the US with anything.
Clay
1623
Iran also has internal politics to consider. Whether the larger Iranian population is satisfied with the milquetoast response of lobbing a few ballistic missiles remains to be seen. If the public there demands more action and takes to the streets, it may force the Iranians to act for political reasons. It’s one thing to forcibly quell protest directed at internal actors and something entirely different to quell protest asking for Iran to flex its muscles.
I am actually very surprised Trump was convinced to tone down the rhetoric and go the deescalation route. Happy, but surprised. This morning it sounded like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, among others, were pushing for an all-out shooting war. I would have thought the “'Murica, Fuck Yeah!” approach would have appealed to Trump. Kudos to whomever managed to steer him the other direction.
That said, this is all win-win for Iran, and it has been since Trump ordered the hit on Soleimani. The attack last night was all about giving the Iranian public a show, a visible response to American aggression, and was never designed to do the kind of real damage that would result in an automatic response in force. Iran is getting exactly what they want, the U.S. will back off now, Iran’s nuclear program can continue unabated, the younger, more moderate faction within the country that was beginning to lean towards reconciliation with the Western word is effectively silenced and the real retaliation for America’s (Trump’s) actions will come weeks or even months from now, when Iranian-backed terror groups attack soft targets in the Middle East and elsewhere.
It’s another huge misstep for Trump (and America) in the Middle East. First we lost our strongest ally in the region (Kurds) and drove them into the waiting arms of Putin and Russia while destabilizing a region we’d just finished securing at great cost, now we’ve stirred up a hornets nest on the other side of Iraq, angering both Iran and our Iraqi allies, setting back the moderate movement in a country we desperately need to see turning more moderate, and sacrificed even more stability in the region.
It almost appears as if the Trump Administration is intentionally imploding America’s Middle East situation in an effort to leave a smoking ruin for his successor and/or ensure there will be trillions of dollars in defense contractor work for a decade to come. That’s giving too much credit where it’s not due though, as it’s pretty obvious this isn’t a master plan of any kind, just colossal stupidity and foreign policy incompetence.
No need for that, as a simple phone call to Israel will suffice. They have a had a squadron of bombers on standby for just such a strike for at least a decade now.
They did that with Iraq, back in 1981, with the Osirak strike. From what the analysts I’ve seen say, all that did was push Iraq into an actual WMD program, and convince everyone who had such programs to dig them in deep. Since Osirak, there is effectively no way to eradicate a nascent nuclear program except with…nuclear weapons, generally.
Hitting Osirik and hitting Iran are two completely different things.
The Iranians have and will bury their stuff deep. The distances are extremely far for the tactical strike aircraft that the IDF has. They don’t have strategic bombers. You think Strike Eagles, but they’d need lots of in-air refueling.
And there’s probably not going to be “one facility” that can easily be taken out. When the US and UK did Desert Fox against Iraq in 1998 to degrade their capabilities, it was three-days with dozens of bombers and fighter-bombers, hundreds of sorties, hundreds of cruise missiles.
The IDF can’t replicate that.
