War: what is it good for?

We've just blundered into war with Iran

No, I’m not exaggerating.

Our assassination of Qasem Soleimani — personally ordered by President Donald Trump, according to the Department of Defense — is just a massive error. It’s the equivalent of our Vice President being assassinated; that’s how major it is. Dexter Filkins wrote an excellent portrayal of Soleimani back in 2013; you should read it.

We should expect an extraordinary reaction from Iran. This isn’t “like going to war”, or “tantamount to war”. This is an act of war, and we’re at war with Iran now.

If you want to know more, read what my good friend Spencer Ackerman wrote tonight:

Killing Soleimani, a senior official of a nation with which the U.S. is not officially at war, is highly likely to prompt reprisal attacks against Americans in Iraq and perhaps elsewhere. In addition to the 5,000 troops in Iraq, there are nearly 10,000 more deployed across the Middle East, including in Saudi Arabia, which is fighting a U.S.-backed proxy war with Iran in Yemen. 

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But the U.S. had long feared that taking direct military action against Iran would result in an entirely new, devastating war. The Obama administration, seeking to avert escalation, signed a deal with Iran to forestall its development of a nuclear weapon. In Iraq, U.S. and Iranian forces reached an uneasy, unacknowledged alignment of interests when both fought against the so-called Islamic State. (emphasis added)

Honestly, this is a world-historical mistake right up there with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. We’ve committed an act of war, and we are not remotely ready for what comes next.

How unready are we? How’s this: the Deputy National Security Advisor for Middle East and North Africa, Victoria Coates, is a fucking art historian with no intelligence or foreign policy experience. I guarantee you two things, at the very least:

• this was almost certainly a knee-jerk response. Trump felt humiliated after the U.S. embassy debacle in Baghdad this past week, and demanded payback. Someone proposed killing Soleimani as a “solution”, and since there’s no one around with the experience or expertise to say otherwise, there was no pushback to this. Once given this option, Trump ran with it.

• there’s no plan for what comes next. We know that because Washington Post reporter Robert Costa, who’s extremely plugged in with Republicans, thinks they can get Trump to “move slow”:

  Robert Costa @costareports

  the sources generally describe POTUS as a noninterventionist who doesn’t want to be bullied by Tehran, but they know he has rarely if ever been tested in this way. For now, several said they will rally behind him but push privately to move slow, keep action contained.

  Moving slow? That’s not happening. That opportunity is gone.

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What’s next?

War.

That’s what’s next. The reason I made the Franz Ferdinand above is because that’s almost certainly the end result. There’s going to be an increasingly escalating cycle of provocation-and-response that’s going to be extremely difficult to stop. That would be the case even if you had competent people working for Trump; that was never the case, and the people surrounding him now are a Z-list collection of yes-folk who will acquiesce to his worst instincts. It’s going to be a shit-show at the fuck-up corral.

Congressional Republicans will essentially line up in support of whatever Trump does, regardless of how they feel privately.

Iran will respond with force; we will respond to whatever they do, and escalate. They will, in turn, respond to that. And so on.

What will that look like?

For starters, expect all-out war in Iraq. Shi’a militias will attack American forces, diplomats, and civilians. We should assume that this is the end of our presence in Iraq, and that no Iraqi politician want us to stay.

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, will target Americans in Lebanon, as well as our assets. Speaking of assets: it’s fairly likely that Iran will launch missile strikes at Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), targeting American bases and oil facilities. There were missile strikes back in September, but the Iranians held back; they won’t this time. They will try to inflict maximum damage.

There’s some other things that could happen, but outside of the Middle East, Iran’s capabilities to inflict harm decrease markedly, regardless of what you may see, hear, or read elsewhere.

The problem is that Trump will likely insist on escalating in response to any of the things Iran does. For instance, say Iran targets our bases in the UAE and inflicts real damage, both in terms of American lives and structure. It’s nearly a given that Trump will demand that we strike at Iran directly in response. Colin Kahl (former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East) sketched out just how easily we could blunder into war with Iran in May of last year.

I’ll close with what Kelly Magsamen said tonight. Kelly and I don’t agree on national security or foreign policy (she’s more hawkish than I am), but we do agree on this:

Kelly Magsamen @kellymagsamen

I worked the Iran account for years at the NSC under two Presidents. I’m honestly terrified right now that we don’t have a functioning national security process to evaluate options and prepare for contingencies. God help us.

In short: we are fucked.

What can I do?

You can start by demanding no war without Congressional approval. Use this script (by my friend Celeste P.) to talk with your reps. Call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

For what it’s worth: the reason so many of us on the left were upset about House Democrats rushing through the defense appropriations bill is that Dem leaders removed safeguards that would’ve made it harder for Trump to get us into a war with Iran.

And now here we are.

Also: the Democrats to keep an eye on are all the new members with a national security background — members like Jason Crow, Abigail Spanberger, and Max Rose. They’re the ones that will almost certainly buckle under & support going to war, despite the fact that they know such a war would be an even more colossal, world-historical catastrophe than the Iraq War.

We don’t need to say that it is good that Soleimani is dead. We don’t believe in assassinations, so it isn’t good that we killed him. We need to say, with one voice: “No War With Iran.”

Things are about to get extremely serious, and we have no plan for it. This is the worst-case scenario.