THIS IS NOT THE WORLD WAR 3 I WAS PROMISED

[defrog]

Where’s the mushroom clouds? Where’s the nuclear winter? Where’s the radioactive mutants?

Et cetera.

So yes. Here we go again, eh?

Obviously it’s way too early to talk about what exactly is going to be the blowback from the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani. Predictions range from “Iranian people will now have freedom” to “World War III”. And I’m no expert on foreign policy, but I do have a blog and I do read other blogs, so here's a few unsolicited thoughts:

1. The US is effectively at war with Iran. Assassinating Soleimani wasn’t the equivalent of taking out some top-level ISIS or Taliban official. It was a direct and deliberate attack on a top official of a foreign govt. That’s an act of war by any standard.

2. The Trump admin has given official reasons for killing Soleimani, but there’s no reason to believe any of them are truthful – partly because the US govt in general has a history of exaggerating or outright lying to justify wars against podunk countries, but also because both Trump and Pompeo have a long track record of stating untrue things about Iran. In fact, Trump has a much longer and well-documented history of saying untrue things about all kinds of things several times a day, every day. Even Mike Pence is in on the act, claiming falsely that Soleimani was directly complicit in helping the 9/11 terrorists (see what he did there?).

As for the real reason, who knows? It’s possible Trump wanted a distraction from his impeachment, or a way to ensure re-election, or to justify a more hardline approach to immigration, especially regarding Muslims. It’s also possible Trump had no idea who Soleimani was until Fox News told him who he’d just had killed. But I don’t believe this happened now simply because Soleimani was an “imminent threat”. We’ve heard that one before – it wasn’t true then, and I doubt it’s true now.

3. Many of the Middle East experts who seem to have some kind of sense think the chances of this blossoming into a full-scale conventional war are not high – at least not right away –because for all the bluster and dick-waving, neither side wants one. The Iranian govt  knows it doesn’t have the military capability to beat the US, and Trump supposedly doesn’t particularly want another Iraq on his hands, if only because he’d rather spend the money building his wall. Also, as Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, has told Vox, the current Iranian govt doesn’t have a whole lot of support at home right now, so they’re tasked with maintaining internal stability while trying to figure out how to respond in a way that hurts the US.

4. On the other hand, neither Trump nor Ayatollah Khamenei can really be counted on to be the voice of reason and restraint here, especially as they continuously provoke each other. Everything depends on what Iran does in response, how Trump responds to that, how Khamenei responds to Trump’s response, etc and so on up the escalation ladder until they’ve painted themselves into the very corner they were hoping to avoid. I’m not optimistic that either of these guys will make smart decisions that lead to any kind of truce.

If anything, Trump will be real wild card in this equation, because he has no sense of (or interest in) military strategy, doesn’t listen to advisers, constantly contradicts statements from his own people on Twitter, and generally makes decisions based on how it benefits/enriches him personally and how much applause it will get at his next rally.

Meanwhile, the supposed official strategy for killing Soleimani – the neocon wet dream strategy of escalation is a deterrent – tends not to work when the target has already attacked you in the past.

5. Even without a ground war, we’re in for rough times. Iran’s immediate response is likely to take the form of terrorist attacks, assassinations (regionally of not in the US) and – most importantly – cyberwarfare. The latter is probably the most underappreciated aspect of this – Iran has formidable cyberwar capabilities, and we know this because they’ve used them in the past. Their arsenal isn’t as massive as the US (or Russia or China), but they can still pack a punch.

How big a punch depends on how good our cyberdefense capabilities are and our overall cyber strategy. The bad news: the current National Cyber Strategy of the Trump admin emphasizes offense over defense. From a security standpoint that’s a bad idea, not least because pre-emptive cyber attacks (just like real world attacks such as, say, the one the Trump admin just pulled om Iran) typically invite retaliation – which means you need sufficient defense of your systems.

Which we may or may not have.

6. So all up, things are looking grim. Whether it results in World War 3 remains to be seen. Personally I think that’s overblown, but as I say, the wild card is that the commander-in-chief is an erratic ignorant egotistical blowhard who sees Muslims in general as the enemy of the US and tends to make snap decisions without thinking about them.

And that’s bad enough without the fact that Trump is (1) surrounded by neocon sycophants who thought Iraq War 2 was a great idea and would like to throw more American military might around, (2) backed by a compliant GOP who will go along with any cockamamie idea he gins up, and (3) championed by the biggest cable TV news network in the country who will do their part in cheerleading the war and labelling whoever second-guesses Trump as a traitor.

So it’s hard to be optimistic when your only hope is that Iran will be the voice of reason, because it’s a fair bet Trump won’t be.

Whee.

Your new favorite quagmire,

This is dF