Various Imperial Reflexes (Iran and Venezuela Thread)

[Montmorency]

In retaliation to Iranian-backed Shiite militias besieging and trashing the US embassy in Iraq in retaliation against lethal US airstrikes retaliating against a mortar attack by the militias that killed and injured American forces, the United States has killed, via drone strike, preeminent Iranian military leader Qassim Suleimani. Iran has vowed to retaliate.

I am absolutely aghast at the fact that this has been done without consulting anyone, so haphazard and with incredibly dangerous consequences.

I'm not a huge stickler about thread divisions, but the Trump thread could use less love and we have ready alternatives.



Because it contains so much info, I'll repost a blog post on the event in its entirety:

My hot take on Suleimani: He was widely regarded as an exceptionally competent military officer with strong connections to militant groups across the region. He was ideologically and professionally committed to curtailing US and Israeli influence in the Middle East, and he facilitated actions that killed Americans, Israelis, Iraqis, and Syrians, along with the destabilization of Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. To his credit, he was the architect of the Iranian portion of the campaign to destroy ISIS, although he sought to replace ISIS with a coalition of militias loyal primarily to Iran, rather than to their home governments. In short, nothing about the “Suleimani was bad and it’s good he’s dead” takes is quite wrong, but it is dependent on “what I told you was true, from a certain point of view” thinking.

My read on why he’s dead at this very moment is that President Trump came into office committed to eliminating the JCPOA, but that he lacked any very firm set of ideas about what should replace it. Iran policy in this administration thus became “maximum pressure” almost by default. Trump did not appreciate that Iran could act at multiple levels of escalation and in multiple theaters across the Middle East, and was not prepared for the escalated Iranian military campaign that ensued after the US exited the JCPOA. Suleimani was an important architect of that campaign. Trump resisted the idea that the maximum pressure campaign necessarily included a military component, and thus was reluctant to respond militarily to Iranian actions against Saudi Arabia, in Iraq, in Syria, and in Yemen. Trump apparently believed that continued strong support for regional proxies (primarily Saudi Arabia and Israel) would be sufficient to manage Iran.

Trump of course takes a very personalistic approach to politics, and so the idea of killing Suleimani undoubtedly appealed to him, especially as he seemed to view the protests outside the US embassy in Baghdad as a personal affront. And so he apparently decided to push the button on Suleimani, a step that both President Bush and President Obama had considered and rejected. It’s worth pointing out here that this is *not* the worst way that he could have decided to respond; a relatively limited strike against folks in the direct chain of command is better than lots of things he could have done that would have risked killing civilians, destroying infrastructure, etc.

The issue of concern now is the Iranian response. Iran will undoubtedly feel the need to respond in some fashion, but that response may have a de-escalatory impact. Cyber-attacks, for example, may prove annoying and somewhat destructive, but they’ll also carry a clear message of “we need to hit back, but we don’t really want to fight.” But then it’s also possible that Iran will take more aggressive steps that will lead to a lot more deaths. Iran can also undertake plenty of below-the-radar actions that will make Iraq and Lebanon effectively ungovernable. And while Suleimani was undoubtedly personally important, I have reservations that he was so operationally significant that Iran will be unable, in the short- and medium- term, to continue its operations across the region. Finally, in response to some questions in the comments, I think that even though Iraq’s tolerance for Iranian interference in its local politics is running thin, its tolerance for the US presence in the country is running even thinner. That said, the US has managed to stick around for this long…

Here’s a good rundown of what we know about the attack.
Here’s an older, but still useful, profile of Suleimani by Dexter Filkins.
Here’s the Israeli perspective on Suleimani.
Here’s a good discussion of the de-escalatory nature of cyber-attacks.
The Saudis should be nervous about Iranian retaliation.
A bit more operational detail on the attack.
Here’s what the law says about the authorization for the attacks, with particular attention to issues associated with the violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

And a smart comment:

Here’s what the law says about the authorization for the attacks, with particular attention to issues associated with the violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

This is an extremely good link, and I urge everyone to read where its at... but I feel it makes a crucial mistake that's very common in the age of Trump.

Like, the section graf in their section on legal argument on legal theories and justifications begins thusly:

While the administration has not yet provided a clear statement of the legal theory under which it acted

And what follows is like... two thousand words about American war doctrine and legislation and statutes and the Constitution, and a lot of speculation about how and why the Trump Administration might have incorporated any of these. Example:

The 1973 War Powers Resolution obligates the executive branch to provide a report to Congress identifying the legal basis for any non-statutorily authorized military action within 48 hours, the deadline for which passed on Dec. 31. While not strictly required, such reports have generally been posted on the White House’s webpage. Yet no such report has been published to date, nor have there been reports that Congress has received one. If this situation holds, then the most likely explanation is that the Trump administration relied on statutory grounds to justify the Dec. 29 airstrikes.

Really. That's the most likely explanation?

Scott Anderson, the author, seems like a smart guy. But nowhere does he ever, in his reams and reams of analysis, raise what is almost certainly the actual explanation here.

And that explanation is this: the Trump Administration, by which we mean Trump himself, isn't operating under any firmer rationale than "we can do whatever the fuck we want and nobody has the power to stop us." Their legal theory is no firmer than "because suck our dicks, and by dicks we mean missiles, you cucks." They have not informed Congress as required by law not because they're relying on statutory interpretations that don't require this but because they hold Congress in utter contempt and they don't think Congress has either the will or the power to hold them to account. And any after-the-fact legal theories, rationales, or justifications they present for their actions will be just that; explanations they concocted after the fact as lies, that even they do not believe in but are uttering as part of political kabuki.

The Trump Administration doesn't think it needs any more justification for what it does than "'Murica, fuck yeah!"

Now, maybe my bead on this is wrong, but... it is very hard for me to take any analysis of the Trump Administrations actions seriously that does not raise this as a very, very serious possibility and discuss it at length. It doesn't matter how much you know about the War Powers Act and the 2001 and 2003 AUMFs if you're dealing with an administration that thinks none of that matters because president says so.