What I Think About Iran

The remarks about the assassination of the commander of the Iranian Quds Force in Iraq continue. The New York Times has devoted nearly the entirety of its online opinion page to it with editors and columnists alike condemning the action, warning of dire consequences. I thought I might express my own views. I will do so as tersely as possible in bullet format.

  • Iran has been a major power in the Middle East for nearly 3,000 years. At its greatest extent the First Persian Empire went from parts of Eastern Europe on the West, parts of Egypt on the Southwest, all of the Middle East, and parts of India on the East. It is one of the oldest continuous cultures in the world. Those saying that this is the first time the Iranians have been a major force in the Middle East are misinformed.
  • Throughout most of U. S. history our relationship with Iran has been favorable.
  • The claim that the U. S. overthrew the Mossadegh regime in 1953 is an exaggeration, a combination of Soviet disinformation and modern Iranian creation myth, abetted by Kermit Roosevelt’s resume padding. It was overthrown by a putsch of Iranian military offices with encouragement from Britain and the United States. The most we did was supply a little walking around money for paid agitators. I have read the account of the putsch by one of the officers involved and I believe it.
  • The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with the United States since its beginnings. Occupying our embassy and holding members of our embassy staff hostage was an act of war. Failing to protect our embassy was an act of war.
  • The present ruling regime are very bad people. When they came to power they executed thousands of their own citizens probably including some of my college classmates. Remembering Mossadegh, initially those executed were military officers and royalists. Later, recognizing their mistake, they began murdering members of Tudeh and those who sympathized with them. Estimates vary on how many were executed, probably in the tens of thousands.
  • Like the Soviet Union the present regime is millennialist. It is what makes them dangerous.
  • That’s the reason that Saddam Hussein started his war with Iran. Most Iraqis are Shi’ites and Saddam was afraid that the Iranian revolution would spread to Iraq.
  • Most of the Iranians who died in that war died before the U. S. had supplied anything other than non-lethal aid to the Iraqis, probably before we had supplied any aid at all. Saddam wasn’t mining the Gulf but the Iranians were.
  • I don’t believe in advancing our foreign policy interests by assassination or by war. That’s why I oppose Soleimani’s assassination.
  • I think the threat posed by Iraq joining forces with Iran is greatly exaggerated. Most Iraqi Shi’ite clerics are not Khomeinist. Those clerics are actually more of a threat to the present Iranian regime than we are.
  • The Iranians had an active nuclear weapons program until 2003. The IAEA has said that it has found no credible evidence of an active nuclear weapons program since 2009.
  • We don’t know what we don’t know about Iran. Our human intelligence in Iran is not good although Israel’s appears to be.
  • Israel is extremely worried about Iranian nuclear weapons. Israel is about the size of a good-sized U. S. county or smallish state. One well-placed and appropriately-sized nuclear weapon would destroy Israel. Given Iran’s obvious views about Israel and its support of Hezbollah, along with Israel’s vulnerability the Israelis’ views of Iran are understandable.
  • I’m not worried about Iran cozying up to China. If the Iranians think that the U. S. attitude is arrogant, wait until they’ve dealt with China for a while.
  • I doubt that the present Iranian regime can persist for long. It is not a popular regime and its mismanagement is increasingly obvious.
  • I think that our interests are best served by strategic patience with respect to Iran. However, Iran’s recent provocations not the least being the threats to our embassy in Iraq make Soleimani’s assassination understandable.
15 comments… add one
  • TarsTarkas Link

    From your post you probably already know this:

    The Achaemenids were followed (after the Hellenistic hiatus) by the Parthians (not Persians but a linguistically related tribe) who crushed the Romans at Carrhae and afterwards prevented the Emperors from ever extending their realm beyond the Zagros. They were succeeded by the Sassanids, who not only continued to hold off the Romans but damn near conquered the Eastern Empire in the years immediately prior to the Muslim eruption. The Safavid and its successor dynasties fought the Ottoman Empire, the preeminent power in the world west of Tibet, to a standstill. Persia has only been ‘weak’ in the relatively recent past, starting when Russia began pounding them with superior armaments in the 19th century.

    And what famous religious figure supported the overthrow of Mossadegh? None other than Ayatollah Khomeini, in exile at the time.

  • steve Link

    1) Your view about the coup is different than what a lot of others believe. I can certainly see how one of the involved officers would want to minimize UK/US involvement. Wouldn’t make them look very good. Our immediate takeover with the UK of oil again plus our strong support of the shah is supportive of the idea we were more involved. Link goes to paper that links to a lot of original sources. Regardless, even if all we did was help finance a coup that is pretty much an act of war I think, so lets place the start of the war at 1953.

    https://tnsr.org/2019/11/the-collapse-narrative-the-united-states-mohammed-mossadegh-and-the-coup-decision-of-1953/

    2)”Most of the Iranians who died in that war died before the U. S. had supplied anything other than non-lethal aid to the Iraqis, probably before we had supplied any aid at all. Saddam wasn’t mining the Gulf but the Iranians were.”

    So we only helped kill 10,000-20,000 Irani soldiers? Then clearly mining the Gulf and instructing their proxy to attack the barracks in Lebanon was an overreaction. (Why did we supply non-lethal aid only to Iraq? Do we not realize money is fungible?)

    3) I think we have a law against assassination, but I am not really sure this counts as one. It is in a gray area. I agree with almost everything else. Iran is not a benevolent country. It is almost as bad as Saudi Arabia.

    4) What we should concentrate on is does the killing benefit us and are the likely consequences enough to offset the benefits, ie risk reward. I dont think we likely see a big benefit. Maybe Suleiman is the one indispensable guy, but I doubt it. He did some innovative stuff setting up militias, but that is already done. We should have killed him 15 years ago if we dont like those. My guess is his successors can maintain things now as well as he would. If anything this may actually help Iran as it will push in new leadership with new ideas. We shall see.

    Consequences? We mucked around in a lot of countries in the 50s and 60s assuming there would not be consequences, but there were. We aided Iraq and then were surprised that there were consequences. Hasn’t our time in the ME taught us that no one ever forgets anything and they always try to get revenge? We think that we will just a bunch of people and they will be cowed. Has never worked there.

    Last of all, even if the consequences are minimal and we actually benefit somehow, we are committing ourselves to staying in Iraq again. If we stay in Iraq, just like we are seeing in Afghanistan, we should expect to see attacks on our people and bases. We will kill some of them, they will some of us. Wont stop. What are getting out of this? AS I noted in your other piece commenting upon the WSJ article, we are back to trying to turn Iraq into Sweden (but probably with right wing politics this time). One of the very few positives about Trump was that he at least said he opposed this, and here we are again.

    Steve

  • Greyshambler Link

    As long as the US is engaged in the region, the strike was the right move. Should we leave ? Well the Shi’ites want us out but so what? The Sunnis want us in The Israelis want us in, the Europeans and defense contractors want us in so I guess we are in.

  • bob sykes Link

    It is said that countries and men are driven to fight by emotions, fear, greed, honor. Possibly Thucydides. It looks like Iran is seized by honor. They will retaliate, and we will respond, and …

    The complicating factor is the vote of the Iraqi parliament to expel American and other troops. There is no indication Trump is willing to comply. Today he demanding payment for all the bases we have in Iraq, and threatening sanctions worse than those imposed on Iran.

    So, although no one wants a war, emotions and unreason seem to be driving us into it. The situation of the summer of 1914 seems apt here.

    Trump and our flag officers expect a walk over war with Iran. That was the expectation of Feldmarschall Franz Xaver Josef Graf Conrad von Hötzendorf, too. In the end, the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian Empires were dust, and the British and French Empires were pushed to the edge of collapse, which happened 50 years later. A war with Iran would likely be big enough to collapse the American Empire. It is not clear that we have the military or economic strength or political will to fight a big war. We, like Iran, may be at our maximum sustainable effort right now.

  • Napoleon, on the other hand, said that there are only two great motivations—fear of loss and hope of gain. IMO Iran’s leadership will feel the need to respond to Soleimani’s assassination, especially in the context of the recent demonstrations, to maintain their hold on the reins of power. However, I think the form their action is likely to take is in what they have already been doing, mostly covert.

    One thing I’ve been reflecting on is Iranian military doctrine. They needed to start over after the revolution and in their first military challenge they had actually reverted back to the strategies that failed during World War I. I wonder what their actions in Syria might tell us about the evolution of their military doctrine.

    I would not be a bit surprised if they sprint to produce a nuclear weapon.

  • CuriousOnlooker Link

    Neither nuclear weapons nor asymmetric warfare can stop the one thing that is increasingly threatening the Iranian regime — the sanctions and oil embargo.

    It is worth thinking over the uses of a nuclear weapon. They are the ultimate deterrent against external invasion; but I believe their use in coercion is limited, ie MAD. And it threatens the countries Iran needs like Russia, Western Europe, India. Is external invasion the highest threat that Iran’s regime is facing?

  • If Iran’s rulers hire enough basiji, they can suppress any popular revolt. They won’t hesitate to do that. The present rulers are still True Believers—they see themselves as being on a divine mission. The only thing that could stop them is external intervention. I don’t advocate that—I’m just pointing it out.

    In another generation the True Believers will be gone and the regime will fall rapidly.

  • TarsTarkas Link

    ‘In another generation the True Believers will be gone and the regime will fall rapidly.’

    The True Believers hope to ring in the rule of the Twelfth Imam before that happens. And if a few billion people die in the process, so what? It will be heaven on earth forever afterwards.

    If they try to sprint to a nuke, bad things will happen to Iran sooner rather than later. I doubt Trump will have any qualms about raining hellfire down on on them no matter what seventh wonder of the world they hide their works under or next to, and the Israelis know what will happen to them once the mullahs can throw a nuke as far as Tel Aviv.

    And it’s all so stupid. The Persians and the Jews were always friendly (relatively for the ME) right up until 1979. It was Khomeini and Co. who whipped up the ‘Little Satan’ nonsense to unite the people behind him.

  • Greyshambler Link

    If Iranian leaders are watching CNN today like we are, they must feel sure the President is universally opposed in the US. Why would they give an inch?

  • steve Link

    “If Iranian leaders are watching CNN today like we are”

    From my time deployed in the ME it would be my observation that they are generally much better informed about us than we are informed about them. I would expect that they know that we are divided pretty closely in our politics. I also found that they were much more informed about our religious beliefs than we were about theirs. That said, I almost exclusively talked with officers.

    Also, for all we know they watch Fox. In which case they think Trump is the second coming, God returned to earth. (Just a joke but they certainly seemed to like blonde women so I could see them enjoying the blonde hooker lookalikes on Fox.)

    Steve

  • they are generally much better informed about us than we are informed about them

    Just as in the United States blacks tend to know more about white culture than whites do about black culture.

    The additional complication is that the Iranians are not Arabs. They are culturally, linguistically, and ethnically different.

    Also, I haven’t watched Fox News in years but if their female newsreaders look like hookers they don’t look like any hookers I’ve ever encountered socially.

  • CuriousOnlooker Link

    I was struck by some repeating themes from Iran today with Japan in the 30’s.

    – Internally, both societies are structured by an uneasy mix of authoritarianism with elements of liberalism.
    – The internal contradictions of the system is preventing needed reforms, sparking internal unrest.
    – Externally, they are seeking to be the dominant powers in their region, with success, but not really comfortable that success is a sustainable position.
    – Both have the phenomenon of a “state inside the state”, military forces that is not answerable to civilian leadership.

  • Andy Link

    In general, I agree it’s better to play for time with Iran. That was one reason I supported the JPCOA which is now completely dead. As a result of Trump’s actions, Iran’s nuclear program will be more technically advanced, and we will have less insight into it, than would have been the case had we stayed with it.

    We should work against the policies of the Iranian government while not going out of our way to piss off the Iranian people. We were justified in taking some action against Iran or it’s proxies in response to the actions of their proxies, but I’m doubtful the Soleimani assassination will, in the end, advance our position. The stage is set for further escalation since Iran must respond to this and Pres. Trump has already laid out the marker that we may attack Iran directly if they do respond.

    Furthermore, putting the possibility of striking cultural sites on the table is just plain stupid. First of all, it wouldn’t happen if he actually tried to order it, which I don’t think he would, but even as a boast it does nothing but unite Iranians. We should be doing things to divide the Iranian people from their government, not things that cause Iranians to circle the wagons.

    I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Anyone that claims that this killing was worth it is engaging in wishful thinking or, at best, speculation. I think the reality is that we’ve started something emergent.

  • Greyshambler Link

    I think this will ultimately result in a strike on their nuclear facilities. Hope that that’s successful.🤔

  • steve Link

    “any hookers I’ve ever encountered socially.”

    Hookers only came to the ER after midnight. Attire varied quite a bit. Lots were nasty, some weren’t. Nearly all wore lots of make-up. Lots of blondes, most of it fake. Hence the term “painted lady”.

    Steve

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