If you glance through Facebook, you see it. There are memes and statements, demanding absolute loyalty to America\u2019s new policy in the Middle East. \u201cThis is war, you must stand by the flag,\u201d and \u201cprotect our soldiers in the line of fire,\u201d appear in one form or another, over and over again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The assassination of Iranian General Soleimani by US drones is an American political sledgehammer.\u00a0\u00a0Question the action, and you must be \u201csoft\u201d at best, or a traitor at worst.\u00a0\u00a0Stand with the President or stand against your country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course all of that isn\u2019t true. It\u2019s perfectly OK to question President Trump\u2019s actions in the Middle East. We don\u2019t know his \u201cplan\u201d other than the threats and bluster we read on Twitter. His wild threats, and Mike Pompeo\u2019s pompous assertions demanding trust in their unknowable plan, do nothing to relieve national skepticism. Leaders lead through confidence, education, and reason. The Trump Administration has revealed none of those traits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the question we have to ask: is this a Trump strategy for the Middle East, or is this a Trump strategy for 2020. Or, perhaps even scarier, is this a random act decided between the fourteenth tee and green at Mara Lago with no strategy involved at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If it’s a Middle East strategy, it\u2019s a risky one. At the best, the United States has determined that it\u2019s all or nothing with Iran. In the past decades, the primary goal was to make sure that Iran couldn\u2019t become a nuclear power, able to use the ultimate weapon to pursue their acknowledged goal of Middle East domination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was the tradeoff the Obama Administration made.\u00a0\u00a0They would accept the \u201casymmetric warfare\u201d Iran waged, led by General Soleimani, as long as Iran abandoned the strategic objective of getting a \u201cbomb\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Previous Presidents, Obama, Bush and Clinton; were well aware of Soleimani\u2019s role in encouraging the terrorists militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine.\u00a0\u00a0They also were aware that until we invaded Iraq in 2002, Iran served as the counter-balance to Iraq\u2019s military aggression led by Saddam Hussein.\u00a0\u00a0We changed that dynamic, taking the \u201ccork out of the bottle\u201d in Iraq and leaving a huge vacuum in leadership.\u00a0\u00a0Iran wanted to fill that vacuum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s so much more than just \u201cpower\u201d though. Iran is the center of Shia Islam, and sees with some justification, the repression of Shias throughout the rest of the Sunni Islamic Middle East.\u00a0\u00a0Iran also has a different ethnic group, Persian, rather than the majority Arab of the rest of the Middle East.\u00a0\u00a0So Iran\u2019s not just using their influence to gain power for themselves, but also for minority groups throughout the region.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Clinton, Bush and Obama accepted that Iran would support groups that the US often opposed. And, sometimes, the US and Iran would find mutual enemies and work together. The most recent battles against ISIS, a Sunni extremist cult, found Iranian supported militias and US forces working shoulder to shoulder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in the Trump Administration all relationships are transactional: support today if it benefits us, enemy tomorrow if there\u2019s profit in that. Ask the Kurds, or our NATO allies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s odd that this attack occurred right now. The Iranian government was rocked by protests in their own country; marches and demands by young Iranians to change policy. The US economic sanctions were working; many Iranians wanted change. The Iranian people have never been a \u201cmonolithic\u201d Shia block. They are a modern people, highly educated, and want better conditions, and more say in their government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there are no protests against that government today. The Facebook campaign in the United States may or may not be working, but in Iran, the actual remains of General Soleimani have served as a unifying force. It may be just what the Iranian theocracy needed: now it\u2019s all \u201cdeath to Americans\u201d. Their nation is focused, and ready to sacrifice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Secretary of State Pompeo states we have a \u201cvast alliance\u201d to stand against the aggressor Iran.\u00a0\u00a0Let\u2019s hope that\u2019s true.\u00a0\u00a0We know that the traditional Iranian enemy, Sunni Saudi Arabia will be happy with the new US stance.\u00a0\u00a0Saudi is in a \u201cproxy war\u201d with Iran in Yemen, and the Iranians were escalating beyond \u201cproxies\u201d with attacks on Saudi oil producing facilities.\u00a0\u00a0Now the US has stepped into the breach to force Iranian attention in our direction.\u00a0\u00a0The MBS-Kushner axis may be at work (MBS \u2013 Muhammad bin Salman, the Crown Prince and leader of Saudi Arabia and Kushner, Mr. Trump\u2019s son-in-law).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iraq is faced with a no-win situation. The Iraqi government exists because of US support. Should the US withdraw, Iraq will become an Iranian vassal state. In the end, Sunnis have controlled Iraq, but the nation is two-thirds Shia. The pressure of Iran is intense. It\u2019s why Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war in the 1980\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unless the US is willing to become fully involved in war with Iran, it\u2019s hard to see a \u201creasonable\u201d outcome in this situation. Iran isn\u2019t likely to abandon their allies in the Middle East, and if that\u2019s the price the US wants, it will be the US military that will have to extract it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ground war in Iran would be ugly, much worse than Iraq or Afghanistan. There are fewer \u201cfriendlies\u201d in Iran than there were in Iraq, and the opposition will be better organized and dedicated than Afghanistan. It\u2019s not a matter of who has \u201cthe most\u201d power, but whether that power is enough to dominate a stubborn and determined opponent. That hasn\u2019t worked historically: Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq all come to mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was a movie released in the 1990\u2019s just before the Bill Clinton scandal was fully revealed. It was about a President who started a war to distract from a sex scandal. Wag the Dog<\/a> <\/em>became a watchword of the Clinton impeachment: what would the President do to change the subject from impeachment and Monica?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is this escalation against Iran a Trump ploy to mobilize his base in the United States, in the face of Senate trial for impeachment, and the drip-drip-drip of negative revelations? You can hear echoes of \u201ccampaign\u201d in the President\u2019s tweets: the false equivalence of Baghdad and Benghazi, and the fifty-two targets in Iran for the fifty-two hostages in 1979-80 that a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, couldn\u2019t get out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week, Office of Management and Budget emails were revealed showing the President directly ordered Ukrainian aid to be held. This week the Senate will determine whether witnesses will be heard in the impeachment trial. If the Senate hears Bolton, Mulvaney, Blair and Duffy, it seems clear that their story will further damage the President. If the Senate refuses, then Democrats will run with the \u201cSenate Republican cover-up\u201d story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This weekend we found out that a sanctioned Russian bank might have backed millions of dollars of Deutsche Bank loans to Donald Trump (Forensic<\/a>). And the pressure is growing as the US Supreme Court determines whether Mr. Trump\u2019s taxes will be revealed to Congress or the Courts. It might be a good week to change the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever the reason, the United States has changed the dynamic in the Middle East.\u00a0\u00a0We are on an \u201cadventure\u201d in foreign policy, a journey into the unknown.\u00a0\u00a0Whether this is a strategy to succeed in the Middle East, or the 2020 election, it’s put Americans and the Middle East at greater risk of violence and war.\u00a0\u00a0And there\u2019s no backing out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No Backing Out<\/h3>\n\n\n\n