On Wednesday, Trump publicly addressed the situation with Iran, which has escalated in recent weeks, coming to a head when US forces killed Iranian military leader Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
In the aftermath of the targeted killing, Iran announced that it would no longer adhere to some more of the commitments made in the nuclear deal. In the days that followed, the tensions escalated still further, culminating in an Iranian attack on on Iraqi bases that were housing US soldiers, early Wednesday local time.
The President's remarks may mark a respite in overt hostilities, but absent an intelligence driven approach, we are just going to continue spinning through a rinse-and-repeat retaliatory cycle.
During President Trump's public statement to address the situation, the world was watching to see what version of Trump would address the nation: the scripted, less bellicose commander in chief or the Trump tweeting machine that threatened Iranian cultural sites and more over the last few days.
These two personalities aren't mutually exclusive -- after Trump's last public remarks following the strike against Soleimani, which were scripted and relatively less escalatory, Trump shot himself in the foot with a series of tweets soon after.
But on Wednesday, the President's scripted remarks were (relatively) measured -- he didn't promise fire and fury and indicated that the US is ready to "embrace peace with all who seek it." This follows Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's tweet that the regime's attacks were in self-defense and that it does not "seek escalation or war."
Now, everything Zarif says has to be taken with a grain of salt, as his honesty track record is transparently thin. But both the Iranian regime and the administration are saying publicly that they don't want a further escalation of tensions and, notably, both the US and the Iranian government are claiming they were justified in their actions, with Trump citing an imminent threat from Soleimani.
President Trump didn't start his statement by talking about Iran's support for terrorism; instead he began and anchored his remarks around the Iranian nuclear program, kicking off his statement with a promise to never let Iran get a nuclear weapon. He left out the fact that Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon today than when Trump took office, having announced in the aftermath of Soleimani's death that is no longer abiding by certain restrictions set forth in the nuclear deal.
By focusing on the nuclear program, Trump gave himself a scapegoat -- his predecessor President Barack Obama. He went as far as to state that "the missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration." Trump consistently misrepresented reality when it comes to Iranian assets unfrozen once the nuclear deal was signed and continued to misrepresent reality yet again on Wednesday.
Trump made this Obama's fault, not his own, despite the reality that hostilities have increased since Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal, regardless of the fact that Iran was abiding by its commitments.
Trump's speech appeared to clumsily try to accomplish two things: to deescalate tension and to lay out some semblance of a strategy moving forward. But, the speech itself should be put in context -- it was an important public message that outlined the strategic thrust of the administration's likely next steps, namely that it is letting Iran off the hook militarily by saying that Iran purposefully didn't hit Americans in their attack of the Iraqi bases.
We don't know if that assessment is, in fact, based on intelligence or if it's an off-ramp that the President taking because he wisely does not want to take more action. But in light of that assessment, the administration, according to the President, is not taking a tit-for-tat response and striking Iranian military sites.
Instead, it will be upping sanctions and urging NATO to "become much more involved in the Middle East process." We don't have more information on what that means -- but the Iranians (not to mention the Russians) want to see less US troops in the region and will likely be waiting to see whether the US footprint decreases.
President Trump needs smart intelligence assessments now more than ever. His public remarks were based around a key assumption -- that "Iran appears to be standing down." Trump's statement that Iranian missiles didn't hurt or kill Americans seemed to suggest that if Iran wanted to hurt us, they would have, but instead they showed restraint -- which in this case means firing over a dozen missiles at Iraqi Airbases hosting American and coalition forces.
We don't have access to classified intelligence, and we don't know if it is, in fact, the case that the intelligence community assesses Iran to have held back on harming Americans. That would have been a pretty big gamble on Iran's part -- they would have had to bank on early-detection systems kicking into gear and all personnel getting out of the way.
But by making the assertion that "Iran appears to be standing down," President Trump took a gamble of his own: that he isn't goading the regime to prove him wrong. President Trump nuanced his remarks somewhat by noting that there is a brighter future for the people of Iran -- but he also indicated more sanctions are coming and that other signatories to the Iran nuclear deal should withdraw from it. (He specifically named Russia, which means, for a change, he asked Putin to do something Putin won't like.)
By focusing on increasing sanctions rather than a military response, Trump did choose the least immediately escalatory option. But still, Trump is putting more pressure on Iran, and in the past weeks, we've seen what that pressure can result in. Absent an off-ramp for the maximum pressure campaign -- namely diplomacy -- we could just be seeing more of the same.
Negotiations with Iran shouldn't be made for TV moments, and Trump didn't need to lay out a public path for negotiations while on air today. Secretary of State Pompeo's efforts to do just that in May 2018 haven't yielded fruit. But, everything Trump said today rests on what wasn't said publicly -- whether we are communicating with the Iranians privately about how to deescalate and negotiate.
While defending Americans is critical right now -- and our military experts and law enforcement personnel are doing important work to this end -- one of the most important people in the Situation Room right now is whomever is briefing the intelligence. That briefer is responsible for flagging the most pressing threats, assessing what will deter more escalation and hopefully reviewing every word that officials say to ensure that it doesn't have unintended consequences.
Intelligence should be driving Trump's strategy when it comes to assessing what it will actually take to get Iran back to the negotiating table so that there's more than a tactical pause in escalation and hostilities. Intelligence should also be driving any approach to key allies and rival powers like China and Russia who are all key to convincing Iran that engaging in diplomacy is the best option.
In short, the people who Trump has relentlessly degraded, the members of the intelligence community he has referred to as the "deep state," are what's standing between him and stumbling into war.
No comments:
Post a Comment