It was a summer day in the Balkan city of Sarajevo in 1914.\u00a0\u00a0The town was then in the Bosnian Province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.\u00a0\u00a0The Crown Prince of the Empire, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife Sophia were in town after inspecting the Austrian troops. They came for the feast of St. Vitus and to show Austrian loyalty to the region.\u00a0\u00a0A parade we held in their honor, and they waved their way through the town in the back of an open car. Suddenly an assassin jumped in and shot them both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The assassin, nineteen-year old Gavrilo Princip, was an impassioned member of the \u201cBlack Hand”. This was a Serbian society that wanted to unite the Southern Slav states into a nation separate from the Empire.\u00a0\u00a0Serbia was already independent, and wanted Bosnia to join as part of what would ultimately become Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the assassination of the Archduke had consequences far beyond his death.\u00a0\u00a0Austria-Hungary rightfully blamed Serbia, and mobilized troops at the Serbian border.\u00a0\u00a0Serbia responded with troop mobilization as well, and asked for help from their ally, Russia.\u00a0\u00a0Russia began to bring their troops up, and Austria-Hungary turned for help to their ally, Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Germany was already planning for European conquest. They attacked Russia\u2019s ally France.\u00a0\u00a0And thus World War I began, with the killing of one man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thursday, the United States used a drone attack to assassinate a leading Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani, as he travelled to the Baghdad Airport in Iraq. Soleimani was the mastermind behind twenty years of Iranian involvement in \u201cirregular\u201d forces, defined by the United States as terrorists, throughout the Middle East. These include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, the Popular Mobilization Force in Iraq, and the Houthis who are fighting against the Saudi Arabian backed government forces in Yemen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soleimani was one of the most powerful men in Iran, second behind leader Ayatollah\u00a0Ali Khamenei.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There is no question that he was the author of many terrorist actions throughout the Middle East.\u00a0\u00a0He was not a \u201cgood actor\u201d in the region. The United States government believed that Soleimani was planning additional attacks in Iraq targeting US assets and personnel, so he was targeted and killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But unlike Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; Soleimani was a \u201cstate actor\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0The difference is that bin Laden and al-Baghdadi were leaders of non-state, irregular terrorist forces.\u00a0\u00a0Both their organizations, al Qaeda and ISIS, were failing and widely dispersed. Those groups were\u00a0\u00a0unable to respond to the US actions.\u00a0\u00a0Soleimani was a general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, an official position in the Iranian government.\u00a0\u00a0With Soleimani gone, another general fills his position, and Iranian assets remain unchanged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Targeting another nation\u2019s leadership is a technical act of war.\u00a0\u00a0The United States, like it or not, has attacked Iran in a legal sense.\u00a0\u00a0It should be no surprise to anyone that Iran will respond to the attack. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This doesn\u2019t mean that Iran will launch conventional military attacks against US Forces.\u00a0\u00a0They aren\u2019t stupid; in a conventional war the United States has the overwhelming advantage.\u00a0\u00a0Iran will respond in a way that gives them an advantage. They might use their irregular allies throughout the Middle East.\u00a0\u00a0Or they could use their developed expertise in cyber-warfare, and somehow disrupt US networks or infrastructures.\u00a0\u00a0It is called \u201casymmetrical warfare,\u201d where attacks of one kind, like the US drone strike in Iraq, are responded to by random bombings, suicide attacks or electronic assaults in a totally different place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Young Gavrilo Princip did not kill Archduke Francis Ferdinand and Sophia to start World War I.\u00a0\u00a0There was no way that he could know the fuse he ignited, creating an explosion involving all of Europe, and ultimately the United States.\u00a0\u00a0That was far beyond that young man\u2019s nationalistic vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Neither he, nor the leaders of Europe, foresaw what would happen. Their actions resulted in the unintended consequence of a world at war, enormous loss, and irrevocable change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The assassination of Qasem Soleimani feels much the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran will have to respond.\u00a0\u00a0Where they will strike, and how the United States is prepared to respond, is difficult to know.\u00a0\u00a0But, unlike World War I, we know that America\u2019s current allies in NATO are not happy with US actions.\u00a0\u00a0Most of the them were still abiding by the Iranian Nuclear Protocol, negotiated by the Obama Administration to stop Iran\u2019s development of nuclear weapons.\u00a0\u00a0President Trump repudiated that deal, and now has directly attacked the Iranian government.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What will those allies do?\u00a0\u00a0How will they respond if Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz, strangling world and particularly European oil supplies?\u00a0\u00a0Or decides to disrupt the international banking network?\u00a0\u00a0And where will Russia and China, both frequent allies of Iran, stand?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And perhaps the biggest question is, has the Trump Administration actually thought through the consequences of the assassination?\u00a0\u00a0Are we following a carefully thought through plan for the Middle East, and the world? Or are we living in an era of knee-jerk reactions and unintended consequences. It’s easy to fear that the latter is the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"