Having killed Soleimani, what retaliation can the US expect from Iran?

Last week in the pages of this column, I speculated about how the United States, after a series of Iranian proxy attacks, might try to re-establish its deterrent posture vis-à-vis Iran: “Doing nothing will no doubt embolden those in Tehran….and cost more American lives and credibility in the near future. Given that the US failed to respond to previous Iranian attacks on US forces in Iraq (last November), or on their Saudi allies on various occasions during the past year, Washington’s credibility seems to be at stake.”

With Friday’s Baghdad drone strike on Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s top military commander, it seems clear that the Trump administration opted very much against “doing nothing.” The strike, which also killed Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis – the leader of the pro-Iranian, Iraqi Shiite Kataib Hezbollah militia – brings the US-Iran confrontation to a new level. Soleimani and his regime in Tehran did not think the Americans would go so far as to target him directly, which explains why he had taken to openly traveling and appearing at various public events all over Iraq.

That the Trump administration nonetheless brazenly eliminated Soleimani in Baghdad sends a very clear message to the Iranians. Soleimani was the architect of Iran’s proxy forces and asymmetric warfare strategy in the world. He was most likely behind the recent attack on Americans in Kirkuk, last week’s storming of the American embassy in Baghdad, Iranian moves against Saudi oil assets in the Gulf, and even an attempt on the life of the Saudi ambassador to America in 2011. From 2005 to around 2010, Soleimani was also behind an Iranian strategy of providing insurgents in Iraq with sophisticated Iranian-made explosive devices that killed hundreds of American soldiers in roadside bombs.

Killing Soleimani (as well as Mohandis) thus sends the message that “Washington knows and does not forget or forgive.” This seems an apt reply to Iranian strategists who of late came to increasingly think of America as a sort of paper tiger. Such a dramatic message, in other words, reinforces American deterrence.

Iranian leaders keen on revenge will now be left to wonder who or what the Trump administration will target next. Whatever Iran’s capabilities, they pale in comparison to those of the United States. At a moment’s notice, Washington could take out other Iranian leaders, Iranian oil refineries, Iranian bases in Syria, or any number of targets. The New York Times reported that President Trump, tweeting from his Florida resort, threatened “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.’”

Leaving aside the morality of striking what sound like civilian targets in Iran, the threat appears clear and credible. The regime in Tehran, after having killed some 1,500 of its own people in last month’s demonstrations against it, remains quite brittle. Although some leaders in Iran may think American threats help them shore up support at home, they must also remember how Saddam and Qaddafi’s regimes fell. Although the Iranians promised “harsh retaliation” for Soleimani’s killing, it seems extremely improbable that they will strike at the US militarily. It could spell the end of their ambitions in the Middle East, and even of their regime.

A much more likely course of action revolves around striking US allies and getting the government in Baghdad to expel American forces from Iraq. Attacking Soleimani in Baghdad constituted a brazen violation of Iraq sovereignty. Washington thus made the life of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi and Iraq’s caretaker government even more difficult than before. While they need US troops’ continuing help in Iraq, the pressure to expel the Americans may become unbearable for Iraqi Shiite politicians. If America’s troop presence in Iraq thus comes to an end, the American presence in northeast Syria will likely become untenable as well, as US troops in Syria get all their resupply from Iraq-based facilities and airports. Without troops to defend them from Iranians and their proxies, the US diplomatic presence in Iraq would also likely end for all intents and purposes.

This would amount to a big victory for Iran. Iraq would fall further into the Iranian orbit and American strategic interests in the region would suffer another catastrophic setback. In such a scenario, leaders in Iran might even conclude that the sacrifice of Soleimani would have been worth it.

David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.

Having killed Soleimani, what retaliation can the US expect from Iran?

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