Kill Shot

In the immediate aftermath of the assault on the U.S. embassy in Iraq, I was discussing the matter with a friend of mine and my immediate reaction was that the most appropriate response was a “proportionate response,” that is, something military, but more or less meaningless.  No one was killed in the assault on the embassy, so taking out a port or something like that seemed to me to be the correct response.  That would have been the incorrect answer.

I fell into the trap that many have been falling into since 2016 with Trump—that of underestimating him.

A targeted hit on the head of Iran’s notorious Quods force, Qasem Soleiamani was the perfect response, for it had multiple positive effects.  Sure, it represents a major escalation in the Middle East and with Iran, including the risks of a general war with multiple parties.   But smoking Soleiamani achieves a number of objectives that make the risk worth it.

·        Trump is not going to get Jimmy Cartered.  The attack on our embassy in Iraq was beginning to look like a replay of 1979 and he was simply not going to allow that to happen.

·        The contrast with Benghazi needs no more comment.

·        The attack occurred on foreign soil, and not Iran’s.  What was he doing there anyway?  The attack reinforced the message that, as with bin Laden, the U.S. will pull the trigger on a terrorist any place, any time and will not necessarily be bound by borders.  Better to ask forgiveness than permission.   The Israelis piloted that response in their reaction to the murder of their athletes at the 1972 Olympics.

·        This was the third major incident.  The first was the Iranian downing of our drone.  Then came the attack on the Saudi oil fields.  “I told you once.  I told you twice…”

·        This is retribution for the hundreds of killed and maimed servicemen and women in Iraq.  Soleimani was behind all that.

·        There were no civilian casualties.  No other Iranians were killed except the bad guys.  It was antiseptic and precise, perfectly executed.

·        It also put Kim Jung-Un on notice.  The U.S. has a long arm.

·        Almost as important, the hit highlighted the fecklessness of the American left.  WaPo nauseatingly referred to Soleimani as a “revered military leader.”  Richard Haass fired off several tweets of hand wringing calling for diplomacy.  But this is diplomacy.  Stop your aggression and we can talk.

It is important to remember how this was handled pre-Trump.  Obama flushed the Iranians with cash, and permitted Hezbollah to operate with impunity….in our own hemisphere.  Hezbollah was raising cash through the drug trade via Venezuela.   The DEA was on the brink of shutting this all down and Obama stepped on his own DEA.

Yes, there were risks in taking this step.  But we were bearing those risks anyway, and it was Iran that chose escalation, not us.

The real beauty of this operation is the only Iranians that died are those that needed to. 

I did not expect the mistakes of two administrations to be fixed overnight and without risk.  But Trump correctly assessed that the bigger risk was in inaction. The game is changing and Trump is bold enough to do it.