Breaking: U.S. airstrike kills an Iranian General in major escalation towards war with Iran
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| he fallout from President Trump’s targeted killing of Iran’s most powerful commander is now underway. |
| The American military was on alert as tens of thousands mourned the assassinations of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the architect of Iran’s regional security strategy and intelligence chief who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops over the years, as well as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a top Iraqi militia commander, above. |
| We’re also learning more about the chaotic days leading up to Mr. Trump’s decision. The president opted to kill General Suleimani, despite disputes in the administration about the significance of what some officials said was a new stream of intelligence that warned of threats to American embassies, consulates and military personnel in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Pentagon officials were stunned. |
| Some U.S. officials have justified the assassination as retribution for the general’s actions and deterrence of future American deaths. The big strategic implications can get lost, though. Our Interpreter columnist breaks it down. |
As Tensions With Iran Escalated, Trump Opted for Most Extreme Measure
While senior officials argue the drone strike was warranted to prevent future attacks, some in the administration remain skeptical about the rationale for the attack.
Iranians in Tehran on Saturday protesting the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.Credit...Ebrahim Noroozi/Associated Press
By Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt, Maggie Haberman and Rukmini Callimachi
They didn’t think he would take it. In the wars waged since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Pentagon officials have often offered improbable options to presidents to make other possibilities appear more palatable.
After initially rejecting the Suleimani option on Dec. 28 and authorizing airstrikes on an Iranian-backed Shia militia group instead, a few days later Mr. Trump watched, fuming, as television reports showed Iranian-backed attacks on the American Embassy in Baghdad, according to Defense Department and administration officials.
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By late Thursday, the president had gone for the extreme option. Top Pentagon officials were stunned.
Image
President Trump spoke on Friday about the airstrike that killed Mr. Suleimani at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.Credit...Eric Thayer for The New York Times
Mr. Trump made the decision, senior officials said on Saturday, despite disputes in the administration about the significance of what some officials said was a new stream of intelligence that warned of threats to American embassies, consulates and military personnel in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. General Suleimani had just completed a tour of his forces in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, and was planning an “imminent” attack that could claim hundreds of lives, those officials said.
“Days, weeks,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Friday, when asked how imminent any attacks could be, without offering more detail other than to say that new information about unspecified plotting was “clear and unambiguous.”
But some officials voiced private skepticism about the rationale for a strike on General Suleimani, who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops over the years. According to one United States official, the new intelligence indicated “a normal Monday in the Middle East” — Dec. 30 — and General Suleimani’s travels amounted to “business as usual.”
That official described the intelligence as thin and said that General Suleimani’s attack was not imminent because of communications the United States had between Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and General Suleimani showing that the ayatollah had not yet approved any plans by the general for an attack. The ayatollah, according to the communications, had asked General Suleimani to come to Tehran for further discussions at least a week before his death.
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence were two of the most hawkish voices arguing for a response to Iranian aggression, according to administration officials. Mr. Pence’s office helped run herd on meetings and conference calls held by officials in the run-up to the strike.
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and General Milley declined to comment for this article, but General Milley’s spokeswoman, Col. DeDe Halfhill, said, without elaborating, that “some of the characterizations being asserted by other sources are false” and that she would not discuss conversations between General Milley and the president.
The fallout from Mr. Trump’s targeted killing is now underway. On Saturday in Iraq, the American military was on alert as tens of thousands of pro-Iranian fighters marched through the streets of Baghdad and calls accelerated to eject the United States from the country. United States Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said there were two rocket attacks near Iraqi bases that host American troops, but no one was injured.
In Iran, the ayatollah vowed “forceful revenge” as the country mourned the death of General Suleimani.
In Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump lashed back, promising to strike 52 sites across Iran — representing the number of American hostages taken by Iran in 1979 — if Iran attacked Americans or American interests. On Saturday night, Mr. Trump warned on Twitter that some sites were “at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.”
The president issued those warnings after American spy agencies on Saturday detected that Iranian ballistic missile units across the country had gone to a heightened state of readiness, a United States official said on Saturday night.
Other officials said it was unclear whether Iran was dispersing its ballistic missile units — the heart of the Iranian military — to avoid American attack, or was mobilizing the units for a major strike against American targets or allies in the region in retaliation for General Suleimani’s death.
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On Capitol Hill, Democrats voiced growing suspicions about the intelligence that led to the killing. At the White House, officials formally notified Congress of a war powers resolution with what the administration said was a legal justification for the strike.
At Fort Bragg, N.C., some 3,500 soldiers, one of the largest rapid deployments in decades, are bound for the Middle East.
Image
Officials mobilized some 3,500 soldiers from Fort Bragg, N.C., one of the largest rapid deployments in decades.Credit...Travis Dove for The New York Times
General Suleimani, who was considered the most important person in Iran after Ayatollah Khamenei, was a commanding general of a sovereign government. The last time the United States killed a major military leader in a foreign country was during World War II, when the American military shot down the plane carrying the Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
But administration officials are playing down General Suleimani’s status as a part of the Iranian state, suggesting his title gave him cover for terrorist activities. In the days since his death, they have sought to describe the strike as more in line with the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader, who died in October in an American commando raid in Syria.
Administration officials insisted they did not anticipate sweeping retaliation from Iran, in part because of divisions in the Iranian leadership. But Mr. Trump’s two predecessors — Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama — had rejected killing General Suleimani as too provocative.
General Suleimani had been in Mr. Trump’s sights since the beginning of the administration, although it was a Dec. 27 rocket attack on an Iraqi military base outside Kirkuk, which left an American civilian contractor dead, that set the killing in motion.
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General Milley and Mr. Esper traveled on Sunday to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach resort, a day after officials presented the president with an initial list of options for how to deal with escalating violence against American targets in Iraq.
The options included strikes on Iranian ships or missile facilities or against Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq. The Pentagon also tacked on the choice of targeting General Suleimani, mainly to make other options seem reasonable.
Mr. Trump chose strikes against militia groups. On Sunday, the Pentagon announced that airstrikes approved by the president had struck three locations in Iraq and two in Syria controlled by the group, Kataib Hezbollah.
Jonathan Hoffman, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said the targets included weapons storage facilities and command posts used to attack American and partner forces. About two dozen militia fighters were killed.
Image
Protesters on Tuesday at the American Embassy in Baghdad.Credit...Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press
“These were on remote sites,” General Milley told reporters on Friday in his Pentagon office. “There was no collateral damage.”
But the Iranians viewed the strikes as out of proportion to their attack on the Iraqi base and Iraqis, largely members of Iranian-backed militias, staged violent protests outside the American Embassy in Baghdad. Mr. Trump, who aides said had on his mind the specter of the 2012 attacks on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya, became increasingly angry as he watched television images of pro-Iranian demonstrators storming the embassy. Aides said he worried that no response would look weak after repeated threats by the United States.
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When Mr. Trump chose the option of killing General Suleimani, top military officials, flabbergasted, were immediately alarmed about the prospect of Iranian retaliatory strikes on American troops in the region. It is unclear if General Milley or Mr. Esper pushed back on the president’s decision.
Over the next several days, the military’s Special Operations Command looked for an opportunity to hit General Suleimani, who operated in the open and was treated like a celebrity in many places he visited in the Middle East. Military and intelligence officials said the strike drew on information from secret informants, electronic intercepts, reconnaissance aircraft and other surveillance tools.
The option that was eventually approved depended on who would greet General Suleimani at his expected arrival on Friday at Baghdad International Airport. If he was met by Iraqi government officials allied with Americans, one American official said, the strike would be called off. But the official said it was a “clean party,” meaning members of Kataib Hezbollah, including its leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Mr. Trump authorized the killing at about 5 p.m. on Thursday, officials said.
On Friday, missiles fired from an American MQ-9 Reaper blew up General Suleimani’s convoy as it departed the airport.
While senior officials argue the drone strike was warranted to prevent future attacks, some in the administration remain skeptical about the rationale for the attack.
Iranians in Tehran on Saturday protesting the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.Credit...Ebrahim Noroozi/Associated Press
By Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt, Maggie Haberman and Rukmini Callimachi
- Jan. 4, 2020
They didn’t think he would take it. In the wars waged since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Pentagon officials have often offered improbable options to presidents to make other possibilities appear more palatable.
After initially rejecting the Suleimani option on Dec. 28 and authorizing airstrikes on an Iranian-backed Shia militia group instead, a few days later Mr. Trump watched, fuming, as television reports showed Iranian-backed attacks on the American Embassy in Baghdad, according to Defense Department and administration officials.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
By late Thursday, the president had gone for the extreme option. Top Pentagon officials were stunned.
Image
President Trump spoke on Friday about the airstrike that killed Mr. Suleimani at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla.Credit...Eric Thayer for The New York Times
Mr. Trump made the decision, senior officials said on Saturday, despite disputes in the administration about the significance of what some officials said was a new stream of intelligence that warned of threats to American embassies, consulates and military personnel in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. General Suleimani had just completed a tour of his forces in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, and was planning an “imminent” attack that could claim hundreds of lives, those officials said.
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“Days, weeks,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Friday, when asked how imminent any attacks could be, without offering more detail other than to say that new information about unspecified plotting was “clear and unambiguous.”
But some officials voiced private skepticism about the rationale for a strike on General Suleimani, who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops over the years. According to one United States official, the new intelligence indicated “a normal Monday in the Middle East” — Dec. 30 — and General Suleimani’s travels amounted to “business as usual.”
That official described the intelligence as thin and said that General Suleimani’s attack was not imminent because of communications the United States had between Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and General Suleimani showing that the ayatollah had not yet approved any plans by the general for an attack. The ayatollah, according to the communications, had asked General Suleimani to come to Tehran for further discussions at least a week before his death.
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence were two of the most hawkish voices arguing for a response to Iranian aggression, according to administration officials. Mr. Pence’s office helped run herd on meetings and conference calls held by officials in the run-up to the strike.
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and General Milley declined to comment for this article, but General Milley’s spokeswoman, Col. DeDe Halfhill, said, without elaborating, that “some of the characterizations being asserted by other sources are false” and that she would not discuss conversations between General Milley and the president.
The fallout from Mr. Trump’s targeted killing is now underway. On Saturday in Iraq, the American military was on alert as tens of thousands of pro-Iranian fighters marched through the streets of Baghdad and calls accelerated to eject the United States from the country. United States Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said there were two rocket attacks near Iraqi bases that host American troops, but no one was injured.
In Iran, the ayatollah vowed “forceful revenge” as the country mourned the death of General Suleimani.
In Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump lashed back, promising to strike 52 sites across Iran — representing the number of American hostages taken by Iran in 1979 — if Iran attacked Americans or American interests. On Saturday night, Mr. Trump warned on Twitter that some sites were “at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.”
The president issued those warnings after American spy agencies on Saturday detected that Iranian ballistic missile units across the country had gone to a heightened state of readiness, a United States official said on Saturday night.
Other officials said it was unclear whether Iran was dispersing its ballistic missile units — the heart of the Iranian military — to avoid American attack, or was mobilizing the units for a major strike against American targets or allies in the region in retaliation for General Suleimani’s death.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
On Capitol Hill, Democrats voiced growing suspicions about the intelligence that led to the killing. At the White House, officials formally notified Congress of a war powers resolution with what the administration said was a legal justification for the strike.
At Fort Bragg, N.C., some 3,500 soldiers, one of the largest rapid deployments in decades, are bound for the Middle East.
Image
Officials mobilized some 3,500 soldiers from Fort Bragg, N.C., one of the largest rapid deployments in decades.Credit...Travis Dove for The New York Times
General Suleimani, who was considered the most important person in Iran after Ayatollah Khamenei, was a commanding general of a sovereign government. The last time the United States killed a major military leader in a foreign country was during World War II, when the American military shot down the plane carrying the Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
But administration officials are playing down General Suleimani’s status as a part of the Iranian state, suggesting his title gave him cover for terrorist activities. In the days since his death, they have sought to describe the strike as more in line with the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader, who died in October in an American commando raid in Syria.
Administration officials insisted they did not anticipate sweeping retaliation from Iran, in part because of divisions in the Iranian leadership. But Mr. Trump’s two predecessors — Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama — had rejected killing General Suleimani as too provocative.
General Suleimani had been in Mr. Trump’s sights since the beginning of the administration, although it was a Dec. 27 rocket attack on an Iraqi military base outside Kirkuk, which left an American civilian contractor dead, that set the killing in motion.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
General Milley and Mr. Esper traveled on Sunday to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Palm Beach resort, a day after officials presented the president with an initial list of options for how to deal with escalating violence against American targets in Iraq.
The options included strikes on Iranian ships or missile facilities or against Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq. The Pentagon also tacked on the choice of targeting General Suleimani, mainly to make other options seem reasonable.
Mr. Trump chose strikes against militia groups. On Sunday, the Pentagon announced that airstrikes approved by the president had struck three locations in Iraq and two in Syria controlled by the group, Kataib Hezbollah.
Jonathan Hoffman, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said the targets included weapons storage facilities and command posts used to attack American and partner forces. About two dozen militia fighters were killed.
Image
Protesters on Tuesday at the American Embassy in Baghdad.Credit...Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press
“These were on remote sites,” General Milley told reporters on Friday in his Pentagon office. “There was no collateral damage.”
But the Iranians viewed the strikes as out of proportion to their attack on the Iraqi base and Iraqis, largely members of Iranian-backed militias, staged violent protests outside the American Embassy in Baghdad. Mr. Trump, who aides said had on his mind the specter of the 2012 attacks on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya, became increasingly angry as he watched television images of pro-Iranian demonstrators storming the embassy. Aides said he worried that no response would look weak after repeated threats by the United States.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
When Mr. Trump chose the option of killing General Suleimani, top military officials, flabbergasted, were immediately alarmed about the prospect of Iranian retaliatory strikes on American troops in the region. It is unclear if General Milley or Mr. Esper pushed back on the president’s decision.
Over the next several days, the military’s Special Operations Command looked for an opportunity to hit General Suleimani, who operated in the open and was treated like a celebrity in many places he visited in the Middle East. Military and intelligence officials said the strike drew on information from secret informants, electronic intercepts, reconnaissance aircraft and other surveillance tools.
The option that was eventually approved depended on who would greet General Suleimani at his expected arrival on Friday at Baghdad International Airport. If he was met by Iraqi government officials allied with Americans, one American official said, the strike would be called off. But the official said it was a “clean party,” meaning members of Kataib Hezbollah, including its leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Mr. Trump authorized the killing at about 5 p.m. on Thursday, officials said.
On Friday, missiles fired from an American MQ-9 Reaper blew up General Suleimani’s convoy as it departed the airport.
Did the Killing of Qassim Suleimani Deter Iranian Attacks, or Encourage Them?
U.S. officials have justified the assassination as retribution for the general’s actions and as deterrence of future American deaths. The big strategic implications can get lost, though.
Posing for a picture with a poster of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad on Saturday.Credit...Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Amanda Taub
Some Iranian officials have called the killing of General Suleimani — whose role in Iran has been likened to that of an American vice president, chairman of the Joint Chiefs and C.I.A. director rolled into one — an act of war. But if it was, it took place without any of the public discussion in the United States that preceded actions like the 2003 American invasion of Iraq.
American officials have justified the attack in Baghdad as retribution for the general’s own actions and as deterrence of future American deaths. The strategic implications, though, can be confusing in this quickly unfolding debate.
Image
A vehicle hit in the United States strike in Baghdad that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran.Credit...Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office, via Associated Press
Crime(s) and Punishment
General Suleimani planned and directed attacks that killed thousands of civilians in Iraq and Syria, along with many American service members. American politicians on both the left and the right have taken pains to note his past, whether or not they support his being killed.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
“Qassem Soleimani masterminded Iran’s reign of terror for decades,” said Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican who supported the airstrikes. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., one of the leading Democratic presidential candidates, said General Suleimani “deserved to be brought to justice,” though he criticized the strategic wisdom of Mr. Trump’s decision.
“He was a monster, no question,” said Vipin Narang, an M.I.T. political scientist who has studied efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program. “But there’s a consequentialist argument as well.”
Using retribution as justification can be straightforward in criminal proceedings, where judges and juries can apply the law without considering strategic consequences. But that logic does not apply in foreign policy, analysts said.
“The underlying reason that we don’t go around killing all bad people is that we usually make a decision about which bad people it’s in our interest to kill at this time,” said Lindsay P. Cohn, a foreign policy scholar at the Naval War College, who spoke in a personal capacity. Relying on retribution alone as a basis for such action, she said, is “fundamentally unstrategic.”
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If the killing of General Suleimani creates a precedent for assassinating senior government figures, he said, American officials and their allies could become targets as well. And that would be a source of broad global instability.
“We killed people inside their sovereign territory, without the permission of the government,” Dr. Cohn said, noting that the American airstrike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an Iraqi militia leader aligned with Iran, and other Iraqis. “This is a massive violation of sovereignty.”
Image
A Shahab-3 surface-to-surface missile on display in Tehran in September.Credit...Vahid Salemi/Associated Press
A Case for Deterrence
The administration has also cited deterrence as a motive. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in an appearance on CNN, said the American strike disrupted an “imminent attack” on American interests in the Middle East.
Scholars tend to divide deterrence into two broad categories. Specific deterrence focuses on stopping individuals from specific acts. General deterrence sends a message that goes well beyond the direct targets.
In this case, the narrowest type of deterrence has been effective. Killing General Suleimani ensures he will no longer carry out attacks on the United States or its interests. But widen the circle slightly, and the picture becomes less clear.
“The best-case argument for deterrence is, you kill Suleimani and whoever replaces him is more moderate because they’re afraid of the same fate. And that’s possible,” said Dr. Narang, the M.I.T. political scientist.
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Continue reading the main story
Rupal Mehta, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska who studies Iran’s military and nuclear program, also said the American strike could send a message to the surviving members of General Suleimani’s network.
But when the United States has killed high-ranking members of terrorist organizations, Dr. Mehta said, their replacements have tended to be more extreme, not less.
The crucial question, when it comes to deterring future attacks by Iran or its allied militias, Dr. Cohn said, is whether the assassination has degraded Iran’s military capability.
If so, the assassination will probably avert further attacks, at least in the short term. Analysts agree that no single individual in Iran can match General Suleimani’s military skill and political power.
But Iran may not need to replace him precisely in order to maintain its military capacity.
General Suleimani created a network of armed groups that may withstand his death. It includes Iran’s Quds Force, which conducts the country’s foreign military operations, as well as militias in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
Dr. Narang of M.I.T. said the deterrence argument “assumes a unitary, rational actor.” While he said that could apply to Iran, which may want to avoid war, it may not apply, say, to Hezbollah, which Iran backs in Lebanon.
Image
President Trump on Friday at Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Palm Beach, Fla., describing the American attack in Baghdad.Credit...Eric Thayer for The New York Times
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The Risk Equation
Mr. Trump’s predecessors also had opportunities to assassinate General Suleimani but chose not to do so. By going ahead with the killing, Mr. Trump may gain leverage by demonstrating to Tehran that he has a higher tolerance for risk than did Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush.
“Tehran’s estimate of Trump’s cost tolerance has almost certainly increased,” Kyle E. Haynes, a Purdue University political scientist, wrote on Twitter.
Still, for general deterrence to work in foreign policy, a country needs to send a message — either directly through diplomatic channels, or implicitly via force and threats — that clearly conveys its demands and the threatened consequences for failing to cooperate.
“If I’m one country and you’re another country and I want you to do something or not do something, if you comply with my demands I have to hold up my end of the bargain,” said Elizabeth Saunders, an international relations scholar at Georgetown University. If the demands are unclear, the rewards of compliance will seem uncertain.
In this case, Mr. Trump has called for Iran’s “aggression in the region” to end, but specifics about what that entails are scarce.
Military force, like the attack on General Suleimani, is an especially high-risk means of delivering a message of deterrence. It threatens to create what foreign policy scholars call a spiral, in which tit-for-tat retaliation locks the parties into escalating conflict.
To prevent such a spiral, at least one of the parties has to have opportunities to back down without losing face, experts say.
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“These cases are all a kind of delicate dance, a mix of public signals and private signals,” Dr. Saunders said. Often, the less public a conflict is, the more options there are to defuse it.
By taking public responsibility for General Suleimani’s assassination, the Trump administration “blew up that delicate dance,” Dr. Saunders said, creating pressure on Iran to retaliate rather than step back from the conflict.
The administration is preparing for a potential escalation, which would seem to undermine its deterrence argument. On Friday, the Pentagon announced that 4,000 troops would deploy to Kuwait, “in response to increased threat levels against U.S. personnel and facilities.”
U.S. officials have justified the assassination as retribution for the general’s actions and as deterrence of future American deaths. The big strategic implications can get lost, though.
Posing for a picture with a poster of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad on Saturday.Credit...Ahmad Al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Amanda Taub
- Published Jan. 4, 2020Updated Jan. 5, 2020, 9:51 a.m. ET
Some Iranian officials have called the killing of General Suleimani — whose role in Iran has been likened to that of an American vice president, chairman of the Joint Chiefs and C.I.A. director rolled into one — an act of war. But if it was, it took place without any of the public discussion in the United States that preceded actions like the 2003 American invasion of Iraq.
American officials have justified the attack in Baghdad as retribution for the general’s own actions and as deterrence of future American deaths. The strategic implications, though, can be confusing in this quickly unfolding debate.
Image
A vehicle hit in the United States strike in Baghdad that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran.Credit...Iraqi Prime Minister Press Office, via Associated Press
Crime(s) and Punishment
General Suleimani planned and directed attacks that killed thousands of civilians in Iraq and Syria, along with many American service members. American politicians on both the left and the right have taken pains to note his past, whether or not they support his being killed.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
“Qassem Soleimani masterminded Iran’s reign of terror for decades,” said Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican who supported the airstrikes. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., one of the leading Democratic presidential candidates, said General Suleimani “deserved to be brought to justice,” though he criticized the strategic wisdom of Mr. Trump’s decision.
- You have 3 free articles remaining.
“He was a monster, no question,” said Vipin Narang, an M.I.T. political scientist who has studied efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program. “But there’s a consequentialist argument as well.”
Using retribution as justification can be straightforward in criminal proceedings, where judges and juries can apply the law without considering strategic consequences. But that logic does not apply in foreign policy, analysts said.
“The underlying reason that we don’t go around killing all bad people is that we usually make a decision about which bad people it’s in our interest to kill at this time,” said Lindsay P. Cohn, a foreign policy scholar at the Naval War College, who spoke in a personal capacity. Relying on retribution alone as a basis for such action, she said, is “fundamentally unstrategic.”
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If the killing of General Suleimani creates a precedent for assassinating senior government figures, he said, American officials and their allies could become targets as well. And that would be a source of broad global instability.
“We killed people inside their sovereign territory, without the permission of the government,” Dr. Cohn said, noting that the American airstrike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an Iraqi militia leader aligned with Iran, and other Iraqis. “This is a massive violation of sovereignty.”
Image
A Shahab-3 surface-to-surface missile on display in Tehran in September.Credit...Vahid Salemi/Associated Press
A Case for Deterrence
The administration has also cited deterrence as a motive. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in an appearance on CNN, said the American strike disrupted an “imminent attack” on American interests in the Middle East.
Scholars tend to divide deterrence into two broad categories. Specific deterrence focuses on stopping individuals from specific acts. General deterrence sends a message that goes well beyond the direct targets.
In this case, the narrowest type of deterrence has been effective. Killing General Suleimani ensures he will no longer carry out attacks on the United States or its interests. But widen the circle slightly, and the picture becomes less clear.
“The best-case argument for deterrence is, you kill Suleimani and whoever replaces him is more moderate because they’re afraid of the same fate. And that’s possible,” said Dr. Narang, the M.I.T. political scientist.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
Rupal Mehta, a political scientist at the University of Nebraska who studies Iran’s military and nuclear program, also said the American strike could send a message to the surviving members of General Suleimani’s network.
But when the United States has killed high-ranking members of terrorist organizations, Dr. Mehta said, their replacements have tended to be more extreme, not less.
The crucial question, when it comes to deterring future attacks by Iran or its allied militias, Dr. Cohn said, is whether the assassination has degraded Iran’s military capability.
If so, the assassination will probably avert further attacks, at least in the short term. Analysts agree that no single individual in Iran can match General Suleimani’s military skill and political power.
But Iran may not need to replace him precisely in order to maintain its military capacity.
General Suleimani created a network of armed groups that may withstand his death. It includes Iran’s Quds Force, which conducts the country’s foreign military operations, as well as militias in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
Dr. Narang of M.I.T. said the deterrence argument “assumes a unitary, rational actor.” While he said that could apply to Iran, which may want to avoid war, it may not apply, say, to Hezbollah, which Iran backs in Lebanon.
Image
President Trump on Friday at Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Palm Beach, Fla., describing the American attack in Baghdad.Credit...Eric Thayer for The New York Times
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Continue reading the main story
The Risk Equation
Mr. Trump’s predecessors also had opportunities to assassinate General Suleimani but chose not to do so. By going ahead with the killing, Mr. Trump may gain leverage by demonstrating to Tehran that he has a higher tolerance for risk than did Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush.
“Tehran’s estimate of Trump’s cost tolerance has almost certainly increased,” Kyle E. Haynes, a Purdue University political scientist, wrote on Twitter.
Still, for general deterrence to work in foreign policy, a country needs to send a message — either directly through diplomatic channels, or implicitly via force and threats — that clearly conveys its demands and the threatened consequences for failing to cooperate.
“If I’m one country and you’re another country and I want you to do something or not do something, if you comply with my demands I have to hold up my end of the bargain,” said Elizabeth Saunders, an international relations scholar at Georgetown University. If the demands are unclear, the rewards of compliance will seem uncertain.
In this case, Mr. Trump has called for Iran’s “aggression in the region” to end, but specifics about what that entails are scarce.
Military force, like the attack on General Suleimani, is an especially high-risk means of delivering a message of deterrence. It threatens to create what foreign policy scholars call a spiral, in which tit-for-tat retaliation locks the parties into escalating conflict.
To prevent such a spiral, at least one of the parties has to have opportunities to back down without losing face, experts say.
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“These cases are all a kind of delicate dance, a mix of public signals and private signals,” Dr. Saunders said. Often, the less public a conflict is, the more options there are to defuse it.
By taking public responsibility for General Suleimani’s assassination, the Trump administration “blew up that delicate dance,” Dr. Saunders said, creating pressure on Iran to retaliate rather than step back from the conflict.
The administration is preparing for a potential escalation, which would seem to undermine its deterrence argument. On Friday, the Pentagon announced that 4,000 troops would deploy to Kuwait, “in response to increased threat levels against U.S. personnel and facilities.”
Anybody looking at this as even a pretend positive is dumb as hell, and is probably about to get a wake up.
Iraq was a shitstorm, even though we "won". We're still sorting things out from that now. The only reason we came out of that remotely stable is because 1) 9/11 basically gave us carte blanche to wreck someone, and we doctored enough evidence to make it stick to them and 2) because of the nature of the attack on 9/11, pretty much every ally we have (an da few don't) had our backs going in.
Now, after destabilizing as much as possible the last few years and alienating our closest allies, we launch a bullshit attack with shaky at best provocation. I think some of these dumbasses actually believe the hype and think that we can't get fucked by a war, when we absolutely can get fucked. The recipe for it has been running smooth for the past 3 years, and now here we are at the doorstep.
And we already know that Trump will take the stupidest option possible, because in his mind, "Why not?" He has literally questioned why we don't use nukes and just let them "sit around". The man is just dumb enough to fuck everybody.
Again, if he can maintain support while pulling this shit, and somehow manages to get re-elected, we deserve every fucking thing we get, and I'll ride out the decline of the United States like everybody else will. But fuck everyone that has his back, either by support or inaction.
Iraq was a shitstorm, even though we "won". We're still sorting things out from that now. The only reason we came out of that remotely stable is because 1) 9/11 basically gave us carte blanche to wreck someone, and we doctored enough evidence to make it stick to them and 2) because of the nature of the attack on 9/11, pretty much every ally we have (an da few don't) had our backs going in.
Now, after destabilizing as much as possible the last few years and alienating our closest allies, we launch a bullshit attack with shaky at best provocation. I think some of these dumbasses actually believe the hype and think that we can't get fucked by a war, when we absolutely can get fucked. The recipe for it has been running smooth for the past 3 years, and now here we are at the doorstep.
And we already know that Trump will take the stupidest option possible, because in his mind, "Why not?" He has literally questioned why we don't use nukes and just let them "sit around". The man is just dumb enough to fuck everybody.
Again, if he can maintain support while pulling this shit, and somehow manages to get re-elected, we deserve every fucking thing we get, and I'll ride out the decline of the United States like everybody else will. But fuck everyone that has his back, either by support or inaction.
he’s gone completely insane.
not surprised him and his buddies have all voted republican.
According to you, both parties are the same and black folks shouldn't vote dem but consider other candidates. So why cast dispersions for voting republican? Either you don't believe the both parties are the same, or you're just trying to score points. Which is it?
at the deflection.neither you or @Watcher believe both parties are the same but made the conscious decision to vote for a diabolical family like the Bush family.
looks to me that neither of you got more politically savvy but just started watching more MSNBC to get indoctrinated to the left-wing thinking machine.
Evil is a stretch. I don't think anyone on BGOL has evil as motivation, even the ones trying to get black folks not to vote because they think it will collapse the system. I admit I try to influence participation and get folks to vote dem, and may have thrown around a dumbass or two, but it's not because I think they are evil if they don't. Misguided or short sighted, but for the most part people are doing what they feel is right at the time.
neither you or @Watcher believe both parties are the same but made the conscious decision to vote for a diabolical family like the Bush family.
looks to me that neither of you got more politically savvy but just started watching more MSNBC to get indoctrinated to the left-wing thinking machine.
When you know better, you do better. People grow, thinking changes. It would be more concerning if it didn't. You wanted everyone to open their minds and consider other candidates, or so you said. Now that you've found out i did this in the past, it's a problem? You're full of shit.
I'm always open to considering new people and plans. I'm always willing to consider my thinking is flawed. If I can be enlightened in an area, that helps me grow. I'm always opening to improving my outlook and gathering new information to inform my decisions. If you can make a case for something or make me see the error of my ways in a matter, then that is a service to me.
I've said repeatedly that the GOP has changed. All the sane folks have left, the rest are crazy, opportunists, criminal or Trump enablers. As I've said before, knowing what I know now, I wouldn't vote for him. That's growth. There are a whole bunch of y'all around here tho who knowing what you know now still wouldn't vote for Hillary, but I'm the problem...SMH...
When it comes to black people both the republicans and the democrats are the same. They have done nothing for black people when you look at the past 30-40 years.
The only difference is that. The conservatives are openly racist and does not pretend to like you and the white liberals will smile in your face but behind close doors they hate your guts and only use us to maintain there power. The moment you talk about tangibles all you get is silent and deflections.
My advice for the 2020 for black people. Be more like the Asians. Stack your money, build a economic base and invest in business so that way you could give 2 shits about who the president is. It’s really does not matter.
Because like this asian cat always tell me. Obama in the White House or trump being in the White House is not going to stop people from going to laundromats, supermarkets, barbershops, or needing a place to rent. Stack your money and invest and stop waiting on politicians to save you. Trust me they won’t!
Cameal you are a true coon.
#blocked
#blocked
If you promise you'll keep me blocked this time, I'll be that coon.
This has always been one of my biggest concerns about Trump. There's no doubt in my mind that he will make increasingly insane, desperate and poor decisions as he continues to get hemmed in by these investigations/impeachment etc. He's a simple minded, malignant narcissist unmoored from any real sense of duty or seriousness, buoyed by a literal cult with a strong taste for authoritarianism. He makes retarded and evil choices in the best of times, what can we expect as things get worse for him?
The strike was ordered around the same time it was reported that there's a new Deutsche Bank whistleblower who has docs showing Russian state owned bank VTB underwrote those financially dubious loans Trump got. Can you imagine how much more insane all this dumb shit can get as the walls close in?
The strike was ordered around the same time it was reported that there's a new Deutsche Bank whistleblower who has docs showing Russian state owned bank VTB underwrote those financially dubious loans Trump got. Can you imagine how much more insane all this dumb shit can get as the walls close in?
Fine time for everyone to speak when it's not going to affect them personally or professionally...Soldiers live lost because you refused to say anything...
I guess 20 or 30 years from now Esper will come out saying "I knew this whole war was a fabrication"...FOH with your revisionist history..
he is also unhinged because of the signs of dementia, which he clearly has early onset symptoms.
but the missle strike was not his call. The debt holders want their money and with the United States being broke, there are only a few options to start a war or conflict with to pillage resources.
You will only know what I choose to reveal. As things stand now, it will be whomever wins the dem nomination.
Apples and oranges. This is not about a preferred candidate. This is about hundreds of thousands of innocent people being killed because you want control of their land. So yes, anyone who supported that is evil. No one was misguided. No one was that dumb back then to believe Iraq was a threat to the US.
I don't think there's anyone more selfish and egocentric than Trump. Putting the whole nation at risk many times over to revel or bask on his own glory is unprecedented.
Not just Iran is looking at us now. All sleeper cells around the world have been unofficially activated to act against the US and the rest of the western world.
Not just Iran is looking at us now. All sleeper cells around the world have been unofficially activated to act against the US and the rest of the western world.
Any
other Arab countries that hates America.
Trump warns of 'disproportionate' strike if Iran retaliates against US
Trump warned of a 'disproportionate' response if Iran retaliates after the U.S. took out top general and Iran has placed an $80M bounty on Trump's head and threatened to attack the White House.
Trump decided to kill Soleimani from his Mar-a-Lago resort
Trump made the decision to kill Iranian General Qassem Soleimani (right) from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida despite the president's top national security advisers giving him a range of options.
Iranian MPs chant 'death to America' in fist-clenched fury
Parliament speaker Ali Larijani compared Soleimani's killing to the 1953 CIA-backed coup that cemented the shah's power and to the U.S. Navy's shootdown of an Iranian passenger plane.
Soleimani's coffin paraded through streets after body returned to Iran
Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad on Friday, was returned to Iran on Sunday. A video from the scene shows a casket wrapped in the Iranian flag.
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