The
Angry Arab: US Violated Unspoken Rule of
Engagement with Iran
As’ad AbuKhalil analyzes the Trump
administration’s decision to escalate
hostilities with Iran and its regional
allies.
By As`ad AbuKhalil
January 21, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -Something
big and unprecedented has happened in the
Middle East after the assassination of one
of Iran’s top commanders, Qasim Suleimani.
The U.S. has long assumed that assassinations of
major figures in the Iranian “resistance-axis” in
the Middle East would bring risk to the U.S.
military-intelligence presence in the Middle East.
Western and Arab media reported that the U.S. had
prevented
Israel in the past from killing Suleimani.
But with the top commander’s death, the Trump
administration seems to think a key barrier to U.S.
military operations in the Middle East has been
removed.
The U.S. and Israel had noticed that Hizbullah and
Iran did not retaliate against previous
assassinations by Israel (or the U.S.) that took
place in Syria (of Imad Mughniyyah, Jihad Mughniyyah,
Samir Quntar); or for other attacks on Palestinian
and Lebanese commanders in Syria.
The U.S. thus assumed that this assassination would
not bring repercussions or harm to U.S.
interests. Iranian reluctance to retaliate has only
increased the willingness of Israel and the U.S. to
violate the unspoken rules of engagement with Iran
in the Arab East.
For many years Israel did perpetrate various
assassinations against Iranian scientists and
officers in Syria during the on-going war. But
Israel and the U.S. avoided targeting leaders or
commanders of Iran. During the U.S. occupation of
Iraq, the U.S. and Iran collided directly and
indirectly, but avoided engaging in assassinations
for fear that this would unleash a series of
tit-for-tat.
But the Trump administration has become known for
not playing by the book, and for operating often
according to the whims and impulses of President
Donald Trump.
Different Level of Escalation
The decision to strike at Baghdad airport, however,
was a different level of escalation. In addition to
killing Suleimani it also killed Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandis, a key leader of Hashd forces in Iraq.
Like Suleimani, al-Muhandis was known for waging the
long fight against ISIS. (Despite this, the U.S.
media only give credit to the U.S. and its clients
who barely lifted a finger in the fight against
ISIS.)
On the surface of it, the strike was
uncharacteristic of Trump. Here is a man who
pledged to pull the U.S. out of the Middle East
turmoil — turmoil for which the U.S and Israel bear
the primary responsibility. And yet he seems willing
to order a strike that will guarantee
intensification of the conflict in the region, and
even the deployment of more U.S. forces.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
The first term of the Trump administration has
revealed the extent to which the U.S. war empire is
run by the military-intelligence apparatus. There
is not much a president — even a popular president
like Barack Obama in his second term — can do to
change the course of empire. It is not that Obama
wanted to end U.S. wars in the region, but Trump has
tried to retreat from Middle East conflicts and yet
he has been unable due to pressures not only from
the military-intelligence apparatus but also from
their war advocates in the U.S. Congress and Western
media, D.C. think tanks and the human-rights
industry. The pressures to preserve the war agenda
is too powerful on a U.S. president for it to cease
in the foreseeable future. But Trump has managed to
start fewer new wars than his predecessors — until
this strike.
Trump’s Obama Obsession
Trump in his foreign policy is obsessed with the
legacy and image of Obama. He decided to violate
the Iran nuclear agreement (which carried the weight
of international law after its adoption by the UN
Security Council) largely because he wanted to prove
that he is tougher than Obama, and also because he
wanted an international agreement that carries his
imprint. Just as Trump relishes putting his name on
buildings, hotels, and casinos he wants to put his
name on international agreements. His decision, to
strike at a convoy carrying perhaps the second most
important person in Iran was presumably attached to
an intelligence assessment that calculated that Iran
is too weakened and too fatigued to strike back
directly at the U.S.
Iran faced difficult choices in response to the
assassination of Suleimani. On the one hand, Iran
would appear weak and vulnerable if it did not
retaliate and that would only invite more direct
U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iranian targets.
On the other hand, the decision to respond in a
large-scale attack on U.S. military or diplomatic
targets in the Middle East would invite an immediate
massive U.S. strike inside Iran. Such an attack has
been on the books; the U.S military (and Israel, of
course) have been waiting for the right moment for
the U.S. to destroy key strategic sites inside Iran.
Furthermore, there is no question that the cruel
U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran have made life
difficult for the Iranian people and have limited
the choices of the government, and weakened its
political legitimacy, especially in the face of vast
Gulf-Western attempts to exploit internal dissent
and divisions inside Iran. (Not that dissent inside
Iran is not real, and not that repression by the
regime is not real).
Nonetheless, if the Iranian regime were to open an
all-out war against the U.S., this would certainly
cause great harm and damage to U.S. and Israeli
interests.
Iran Sending Messages
In the last year, however, Iran successfully sent
messages to Gulf regimes (through attacks on oil
shipping in the Gulf, for which Iran did not claim
responsibility, nor did it take responsibility for
the pin-point attack on ARAMCO oil installations)
that any future conflict would not spare their
territories.
That quickly reversed the policy orientations of
both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which suddenly became
weary of confrontation with Iran, and both are now
negotiating (openly and secretively) with the
Iranian government. Ironically, both the UAE and
Saudi regimes — which constituted a lobby for war
against Iran in Western capitals — are also eager to
distance themselves from U.S. military action
against
Iran. And Kuwait quickly
denied that the U.S. used its territory
in the U.S. attack on Baghdad airport, while Qatar
dispatched its foreign minister to Iran (officially
to offer condolences over the death of Suleimani,
but presumably also to distance itself and its
territory from the U.S. attack).
The Iranian response was very measured and very
specific. It was purposefully intended to avoid
causing U.S. casualties; it was intended more as a
message of Iranian missile capabilities and their
pin point accuracy. And that message was not lost on
Israel.
Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah, sent a
more strident message. He basically implied that it
would be left to Iran’s allies to engineer military
responses. He also declared a war on the U.S.
military presence in the Middle East, although he
was at pains to stress that U.S. civilians are to be
spared in any attack or retaliation.
Supporters of the Iran
resistance axis have been quite angry in the wake of
the assassination. The status of Suleimani in his
camp is similar to the status of Nasrallah although
Nasrallah — due to his charisma and to his
performance and the performance of his party in the
July 2006 war — may have attained a higher status.
It would be easy for
the Trump administration to ignite a Middle East war
by provoking Iran once again, and wrongly assuming
that there are no limits to Iranian caution and
self-restraint. But if the U.S. (and Israel with it
or behind it) were to start a Middle East war, it
will spread far wider and last far longer than the
last war in Iraq, which the U.S. is yet to complete.
As’ad AbuKhalil is
a Lebanese-American professor of political science
at California State University, Stanislaus. He is
the author of the “Historical Dictionary of Lebanon”
(1998), “Bin Laden, Islam and America’s New War on
Terrorism (2002), and “The Battle for Saudi Arabia”
(2004). He tweets as
@asadabukhal
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