Iraq Unravels

[Bruce Monkhouse]

One thing is certainly emerging in big letters: the use of vanity social media by elected officials and especially those in charge of government, needs to be significantly regulated, perhaps even abolished. Maybe the world won’t go from zero to the kill button with a thoughtless tweet.

Total agreement. ...I'm a Trump fan but I wish he'd keep his phone locked away.

 

[FJAG]

Brihard. I tried to respond to your PM but your mailbox is full.

:cheers:

 

[Brad Sallows]

No need to fret over Congress; just assume each party will do what is politically expedient and in its own interests if you really need to know.  The trustworthy institution is the US armed services, in which I doubt Trump has a lot of fans in the high command tiers.  Furthermore, I doubt they will execute manifestly unlawful orders regardless of their opinions of Trump.

 

[brihard]

Brihard. I tried to respond to your PM but your mailbox is full.

:cheers:

Oops, remedied, thanks!

 

[Cloud Cover]

No need to fret over Congress; just assume each party will do what is politically expedient and in its own interests if you really need to know.  The trustworthy institution is the US armed services, in which I doubt Trump has a lot of fans in the high command tiers.  Furthermore, I doubt they will execute manifestly unlawful orders regardless of their opinions of Trump.

That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error, and no amount of whining will help. 

 

[The Bread Guy]

This from New Jersey's DHS ...

... Currently, there are no known or credible threats to New Jersey because of this incident. However, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has vowed “harsh revenge” in the aftermath of the killing. The head of Hizballah called the attack an “act of international terrorism.” Recently, authorities arrested multiple Hizballah operatives in New Jersey and New York who conducted pre-operational surveillance for potential targets.

The New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell (NJCCIC) assesses that the United States will remain an attractive target for a range of cyber-attacks designed to disrupt daily operations, steal sensitive data, instill fear in the community, and hold critical operational data for ransom. Organizations should remain vigilant and on alert for changes in their cyber threat environment and employ cyber hygiene best practices. Critical infrastructure owners and operators are advised to adopt a proactive, multilayered cybersecurity strategy to more effectively counter the threats posed by state and non-state actors ...

More @ link or in attached one-pager.

 

[OldSolduer]

Does POTUS have to notify Congress and if so can he notify after the event?

 

[The Bread Guy]

This from NATO's SecGen following a meeting of the North Atlantic Council ...

Good afternoon.

I have just chaired a meeting of the North Atlantic Council.

We addressed current tensions in the Middle East, and implications for NATO’s training mission in Iraq.

NATO and all NATO Allies take part in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.
And NATO’s mission in Iraq is an important contribution to the Coalition’s effort.

At the invitation of the Iraqi government, we are helping to train forces and prevent the return of ISIS.

At our meeting today, Allies expressed their strong support for the fight against ISIS and for the NATO mission in Iraq.

In everything that we do, the safety of our personnel is paramount.

As such, we have for the time being suspended our training on the ground.
And we are taking all precautions necessary to protect our people.

We are keeping the situation under close review.
And we remain in close contact with the Iraqi authorities.

NATO is prepared to continue our training and capacity-building when the situation permits.
We remain strongly committed to the fight against international terrorism.

***

At our meeting today, the United States also briefed on the regional situation, following recent attacks on coalition forces in Iraq, and the strike against General Soleimani.

For years, all Allies have expressed concern about Iran’s destabilising activities in the wider Middle East region.

We agree Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon.
We share concern about Iran’s missile tests.
And we are united in condemning Iran’s support for a variety of different terrorist groups.

We have recently seen an escalation by Iran, including the strike on a Saudi energy facility, and the shoot-down of an American drone.

At our meeting today, Allies called for restraint and de-escalation.

A new conflict would be in no-one’s interest.

So Iran must refrain from further violence and provocations.

***

With that, I am ready to take your questions.

 

[The Bread Guy]

From IRN state media ...

New Commander of Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Qods Force Brigadier General Esmayeel Qaani underlined that the US should wait for Tehran's reprisal after assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.
“The revenge for Soleimani’s martyrdom is a promise given by God, as the God is the main avenger,” Brigadier General Qaani said on Monday, addressing the funeral procession of late General Soleimani.

Brigadier General Qaani said that “we promise to continue Martyr Soleimani’s path with the same strength and his martyrdom will be reciprocated in several steps by removing the US from the region”.

He underlined that the continuance of this movement is to reach the global governance of Imam Mahdi (May God Hasten His Reappearance) ...

More in attached PDF of article.

 

[OldSolduer]

Targets...UP!

I can foresee another Iranian or two eating a Hellfire missile

 

[The Bread Guy]

Various takes of NATO's latest ...

• "NATO to review Iraq mission after Soleimani killing" (Al Jazeera)
• "Canadian-led training mission in Iraq isn't dead, says NATO secretary-general" (CBC.ca)
• "Canadian-led NATO mission in Iraq in limbo as alliance stands pat on suspension" (The Canadian Press)
• "NATO head says allies stand behind U.S. after killing of Iranian military leader" (Globe & Mail)
• "Nato chief holds back from endorsing US killing of Suleimani" (The Guardian)

 

[tomahawk6]

I would expect to see the NATO training mission to withdraw in the days and weeks ahead, then a few months later US forces at Blad will acould follow. Currently the government has not asked the US to withdraw.

 

[Quirky]

If ol' General Vance kicks the bucket or gets taken out for whatever reason, will we see a massive Canadian demonstration of support?

The Iranians sure love their military leadership.

 

[Remius]

If ol' General Vance kicks the bucket or gets taken out for whatever reason, will we see a massive Canadian demonstration of support?

The Iranians sure love their military leadership.

Their love for their military is proportionate to their love of not having their families disappear...

 

[Jarnhamar]

Edit:I'll move the question to an iran thread.

 

[brihard]

While mindful of the source (an outlet owned by a potential Presidential competitor in 2020), this editorial hits a number of nails on the head. A worthy read on the assassination of Soleimani, the risks, and the calculus that may be underlying the decision. And what has to be handled right for it to be worth it in the end.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-03/trump-iran-strike-how-the-u-s-gamble-can-pay-off

Trump’s Iran Policy Spirals Toward Control
The U.S. is gambling that the death of Tehran’s “indispensable man” will deter further aggression.
By Hal Brands , 2020-01-03, 11:20:04 AM

The U.S. airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a leader of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, was not simply a sharp departure in the Trump administration’s policy toward Tehran. It also marks a larger shift in America’s response to Iranian influence and provocations in the Middle East. President Donald Trump has gambled that an extraordinary escalation will allow it to reassert control of an intensifying U.S.-Iran confrontation. It may actually work. But weathering the diplomatic and military fallout will require far greater skill and competence than Trump’s team has displayed so far.

The political scientist Robert Jervis once distinguished between the “spiral model” and the “deterrence model” of conflict. In the spiral model, hitting an opponent simply causes him to hit you back; escalation begets escalation. In the deterrence model, hitting an opponent hard enough leads him to back down; escalation, or simply a show of strength, can beget de-escalation.

For much of the past two decades, the U.S. has mostly followed the logic of the spiral model in dealing with Iran. Iranian forces and Iraqi proxies under Soleimani's command used improvised explosive devices to kill hundreds of American troops following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Yet the George W. Bush administration — while periodically confronting Iraqi Shiite radicals under Iranian influence — mostly refrained from targeting top Iranian operatives such as Soleimani, for fear of provoking escalation with Tehran and a political backlash within Iraq.


The Barack Obama administration also found the logic of the spiral model compelling. Obama never doubted that the U.S. had greater power than Iran or other competitors. But he worried that those competitors had a greater intensity of interests within their home regions, and believed that confrontational policies might simply induce confrontational responses. 

In dealing with Iran, then, that administration brought great economic, diplomatic and other pressures to bear in hopes of securing a nuclear accord. Yet Obama showed restraint when it came to potential military or paramilitary confrontations with Iran and its proxies, whether in Iraq, Syria or elsewhere. (The administration did respond militarily, late in Obama's presidency, to attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels on shipping at the entrance to the Red Sea, but in a deliberately restrained, proportionate way.)   

Trump’s approach was initially harder to categorize. In some ways, he pursued a policy of maximum antagonism, by pulling out of the nuclear deal Tehran negotiated with the West in 2015 and imposing harsh economic sanctions. But after attacks on oil tankers, Saudi oil facilities and a U.S. drone, all of which the U.S. blamed on Iran, Trump repeatedly held back from any overt military response, citing the need to avoid a larger conflict.

This latest escalation represents an implicit admission that Trump’s earlier strategy had failed — that economic antagonism plus military restraint had provoked Iran but not adequately deterred it. That failure was confirmed most recently by militia attacks on U.S. facilities and personnel in Iraq, and by the menacing New Year’s Eve siege of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which seemed to show that Tehran and its proxies could put American diplomats at risk. Meanwhile, Trump’s disordered policy had sown doubt among U.S. partners in the Persian Gulf and throughout the region, who worried that Washington might not defend them from Iranian attacks that American policy was helping to incite.
Confronted with this failure, and also with evidence that Soleimani was apparently plotting additional attacks, Trump took several steps up the escalatory ladder. U.S. forces did not simply seek to disrupt attacks in preparation, or respond proportionately to them. They killed two of the most important men in Iran’s network of influence in the Middle East. Soleimani, in particular, was Iran’s “indispensable man” in countries from Lebanon to Yemen; he was the very symbol of Tehran’s strategic reach in the region and its defiance of the U.S. and other enemies.

The underlying calculation here seems to represent a shift from the spiral model to the deterrence model. By raising the stakes sharply, the thinking goes, Washington can shock Tehran and demonstrate how much the Iranian regime has to lose through further provocations. If Obama worried that Iran’s asymmetry of interests would outweigh America's asymmetry of power, Trump is now calculating that America's asymmetry of power — its ability to inflict far worse suffering on Iran’s regime than it can inflict on the U.S. — will outweigh Tehran’s asymmetrically intense interests in the region.

To call this a gamble is an understatement. Soleimani may have been a loathsome terrorist in American eyes, but he remains a national hero in Iran, and there will be immense pressure for some sort of retaliation. Iranian forces and proxies are capable of attacking — either immediately or over the long-run — U.S. military assets, diplomatic facilities and citizens in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. Tehran could also respond with cyberattacks, further assaults on Gulf oil infrastructure or proxy attacks against Israel. Tehran could further cast off the remaining restraints on its nuclear program; it could, and probably will, use its influence with Iraqi politicians in a bid to evict U.S. forces from Iraq. There are plenty of ways in which a U.S. operational success could turn into a strategic setback or a deeper confrontation. 
That said, Trump’s wager may pay off. The Iranian regime has historically been aggressive but not suicidal. The knowledge that the U.S. can and will target top regime leaders probably terrifies Iranian officials as much as it enrages them. And whereas Iran had been controlling the pace of the confrontation prior to this point — gradually increasing the military pressure in response to U.S. economic pressure — Washington has now shown its ability to escalate in unexpected and devastating ways. Washington may have miscalculated in killing Soleimani and Muhandis, but right now is it Iranian leaders who surely feel that they have badly misjudged the enemy. That realization may indeed have a sobering effect as Tehran considers whether it would profit from intensifying the confrontation. 

One thing is certain: Navigating the current crisis will require a higher quality of statecraft than has been the Trump administration’s norm. The U.S. will need to protect or evacuate vulnerable personnel and private citizens in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. It must formulate contingency plans for handling potential Iranian responses and determine what it will do if the present shock treatment does not have the desired effect. It must simultaneously maneuver so that this strike doesn't isolate America in the international diplomacy surrounding the Iran nuclear issue, and determine how it will respond when Tehran uses its political sway in Iraq to push for a U.S. withdrawal.
The administration’s showing to date is not reassuring. Trump has generally sundered, neglected or undermined diplomatic relationships, within the region and beyond, that would be very valuable right now. Tight messaging and skillful execution of policy have not been hallmarks of his presidency. Former secretaries of state such as Dean Acheson and George Shultz would have their hands full in dealing with this crisis, and nobody in Washington right now looks like another Acheson or Shultz.

“The game has changed,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper warned hours before the strike. True enough. We'll see if the Trump administration is ready for what comes next.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Some of the latest as of about supper time Eastern time ...

• "The United States-led military coalition against Islamic State said on Monday that it was pulling out of Iraq and would be repositioning forces over the next few days and weeks, a letter seen by Reuters showed ..." (Reuters)
• "Esper says U.S. has made no decision about leaving Iraq" (PBS, USA public radio)

op:

 

[PuckChaser]

Keep in mind the Iraqi parliament is partly,  if not a majority, controlled by Pro-Iran/Iranian-backed parties/politicians. The Prime Minister just quit due to corruption and pro-Iranian influence,  and the president rejected the replacement parliament suggested because he (the replacement) was too close to Iran. 2000 protesters have been killed for protesting Iranian influence among other things. It's of no surprise to me they'd vote like this.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

Keep in mind the Iraqi parliament is partly,  if not a majority, controlled by Pro-Iran/Iranian-backed parties/politicians. The Prime Minister just quit due to corruption and pro-Iranian influence,  and the president rejected the replacement parliament suggested because he (the replacement) was too close to Iran. 2000 protesters have been killed for protesting Iranian influence among other things. It's of no surprise to me they'd vote like this.

Yup. 

Democracy.

It is messy, and unpredictable.

But, it is democracy.  There is no guaranteeing that the will of the people will be wise.  There is also no guarantee that it will not be twisted, perverted, or used.  This holds true in every democracy in the world, old and new, east and west, natural and forced.

But still.

Democracy.

 

[Cloud Cover]

Yes. America is a democracy too, which seems to fit  sone of the above characteristics !!!