Jan. 6, 2020

By George Friedman Geopolitical Future

In order to understand the current confrontation between Iran and the United States, we might begin with the Persian-Babylonian wars. Alternatively, we could begin with the decision of the United States to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq after the election of Barack Obama. Efficiency demands the latter.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was carried out without opposition from Iran and indeed with covert support. Iraq and Iran had fought a brutal war during the 1980s, resulting in about 1 million casualties and costing a combined $5 billion. Not long after, Iraq would overestimate its position by invading Kuwait, leading to the first Gulf War. To Iran, the control of Iraq by Sunnis – a minority population and a sectarian rival no less – was an existential threat. Tehran was therefore delighted to see Saddam Hussein fall, since his absence would create an opportunity for it to dominate whatever government came next.

The war went differently. The U.S. blocked Shiite ambitions, fought the Sunnis and wound up in a crossfire between the two. Obama came into office committed to making it stop, planning to withdraw most but not all U.S. troops and to build an Iraqi army consisting of both Sunnis and Shiites that was friendly to the United States. (Iran, naturally, opposed the prospect.) But then came the Islamic State, which forced Washington to maintain troops in Iraq and caused Iran to intervene so as not to let a Sunni power take hold in Baghdad. The U.S. and Iran often cooperated with each other in the ensuing fight.

Yet, they were always wary of each other, in no small part because of Iran’s aspirations for a nuclear weapons program. Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons resulted in an imposition of massive sanctions and in a widely advertised, U.S.-Israeli cyberattack on Iranian nuclear enrichment that was supposed to have set back the program dramatically. This reopened the possibility of keeping troops in the country, just as Donald Trump was taking office.

Trump said he wanted to reduce the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East but also favored regime change in Iran. This apparent contradiction had to do with the logic of a U.S. withdrawal. For Iran, directly controlling or at least neutralizing Iraq is a geopolitical imperative, but Tehran could not afford another war. After the fight against the Islamic State, the withdrawal of U.S. troops to a very small number left Iran in an extremely powerful position. At the same time, Iran maintained a number of pro-Iran groups in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and was supporting the Assad regime even before the Russian intervention.

In other words, Iran had used its operations in various countries, coupled with the drawdown of U.S. troops, to create a massive sphere of influence commonly known as the “Shiite Crescent,” stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean and all the way to the Arabian Sea. This strategy was forwarded by a series of elite Iranian generals, such as Qasem Soleimani. Iran had gone from solely defending itself from Iraq to emerging as the major force in the Middle East.

Escalation With the U.S.

The American perception of Iran was formed largely in the post-1979 era, with the occupation of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. While it’s true that Iran is responsible for both acts, it’s also true that Iran is more pragmatic than it is sometimes portrayed. It cooperates with the U.S. when it needs to and acts hostilely when it doesn’t. This is pretty normal behavior, but it creates confusion through which Washington has to navigate.

So when it was time to turn its attention to Tehran after the defeat of the Islamic State, Washington had two strategies. The first was to sponsor a coalition of states to undermine the growing Iranian sphere of influence. The key members of this odd coalition were Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Israel was focused on attacking Iranian assets in Syria (and potentially in Lebanon). The Saudis and UAE were fighting Iranian proxies in Yemen, where a battle erupted between the country’s Sunnis, who had been largely out of power since the fall of Saddam, and the Shiites. Managing this battle fell to the U.S. soldiers and intelligence personnel still in the country.

The second response was to increase economic sanctions on Iran, not really because of its nuclear or missile programs, but to remind Iran of the risks of building its sphere of influence. The sanctions severely damaged the Iranian economy, and the protests, arrests and amnesties commonly associated with economic duress broke out. The government in Tehran was not existentially threatened by sanctions, but they were bad enough to cripple the economy, spark internal unrest and thus warrant a response. There were riots in Lebanon and Iraq, both threatening Iranian socio-political influence. In other words, the gains that Iran had made were in danger of being reversed, while the Iranian economy itself was weakening.

Iran needed a counter. The goal was to demonstrate the weakness of the United States as a guarantor of regional stability and the ability of the Iranians to impose counter-economic pressures and, in the worst of cases, cause a U.S. intervention. The latter would be an intervention with insufficient force and might solidify the government’s position, providing an otherwise unhappy populace and Iran-sponsored militias with a unifying cause.

The first attempt at this came in the Persian Gulf, where Iranians captured several tankers. The hope was that soaring oil prices and pressure on the U.S. from oil consumers would halt hostile operations against Iran. It was a low risk, high reward tactic that ultimately failed to achieve its goals, especially after the U.S. declined to launch an air attack on Iran in response and indirectly supported the U.K.’s seizure of an Iranian tanker off the coast of Gibraltar.

The second attempt was an escalation on the same theme: the attack on a Saudi oil facility through Yemeni Houthi militants. It was also designed to boost oil prices and encourage the Saudis to reconsider their relationship with the U.S.-backed coalition. Once more, the attack didn’t achieve Iran’s ultimate objective.

Iran was in an increasingly precarious situation. Domestic unrest due to sanctions persisted. Its sphere of influence was under pressure on every front, particularly in Lebanon and Iraq where anti-Iran sentiment was growing.

Tensions Come to a Head

The deterioration of Iran’s position demanded that the government consider more assertive actions, particularly in Iraq. Its answer, as it had been so many times before, was the Quds Force, an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, led by none other than Soleimani. Like U.S. special operations, they specialize in training and maintaining allied forces abroad – including, in Iran’s case, Hezbollah and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.

When U.S. bases were attacked, the assumption was that the attacks were planned and perhaps carried out by Quds-backed militias, such as the PMF and Kataib Hezbollah. Whether the U.S. knew before or after the attacks that Soleimani was in Iraq after a trip to Syria, it was obvious that major operations were being planned against U.S. diplomatic and military personnel in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. The capture of Soleimani would be catastrophic to Iran. Therefore, the American read that the Iranians were being pressed to the wall was confirmed by his presence. Iran was taking a major risk given his knowledge of its operational capabilities. That meant that the Iranians had decided on escalating beyond prior attacks. The Quds Force’s specialty was attacking specific facilities to undermine military or intelligence capability or to achieve psychological and political ends. In any case, seeing him near Baghdad Airport likely told U.S. intelligence not only that he was there because the situation was difficult, but that he was there to correct the imbalance of Iranian power in the Levant. In other words, he was working with his Iraqi counterpart to carry out significant operations. It followed that the U.S. didn’t want these operations, whatever they were, carried out, and that killing him was a military necessity.

All of this has to be framed in the strategic context. The U.S. does not want to engage in extensive operations in the region. Washington is depending on sanctions and proxies. Iran still wants to maintain its sphere of influence into the Mediterranean, but above all, an even greater priority is the neutralization of Iraq and the stabilization of its own country. Iran can’t afford to allow Iraq to become a bastion of anti-Iran forces, nor can it wage a conventional war against the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Iran must therefore use what it has used so effectively in the past: special and covert operations. It follows that Iran will take its time to respond. It also follows that the U.S. and its allies, having bought time by killing the head of the Quds Force, must use the time effectively.

George Friedman: from one prediction to another.  https://geopoliticalfutures.com

The Coming War With Japan Hardcover – March 1, 1991

Argues that the post-Cold War world will see the United States and Japan emerge as opponents, traces Japan’s increasing power, and contends the United States holds the trump cards in the economic contest

Keeping the future in focus

https://geopoliticalfutures.com

George Friedman’s Thoughts: A Speech in Istanbul

by George Friedman – January 2, 2020

Turkey’s decision to move its economic zone in the Eastern Mediterranean to abut Libya’s and then to announce that it was planning to send troops to support the embattled government in Libya has changed the shape of the Middle East. The Libyan government is under attack by a faction with strong Russian support and troops. If the troops are sent, Turkey will have broken with the Russians by having troops on the ground in Libya.

Russian and Iranian troops began fighting against Turkish supporters in Syria. The United States carried out airstrikes against Iranian targets in Iraq. With Turkey facing the Russians in Libya and Syria, along with Russia’s current ally, Iran, where this leaves Israel is for the moment unclear. Put simply, it seems as though the U.S.-Turkey alliance logically is about to reemerge. This could of course all reverse itself or change shape, but at the moment Turkey has assumed its historic role as a major regional power.

I was invited to speak in late November in Istanbul to update my predictions for Turkey from my book “The Next 100 Years.” I spoke, as I had a decade before, about the inevitable reemergence of Turkey as a great power. I had reached that conclusion using my then-evolving forecasting method. Two things convinced me of this. The first was history. Asia Minor has historically generated empires. The eastern remnant of the Roman Empire was based in Constantinople, named for the great Christian emperor Constantine and later changed to Istanbul. The Muslim Ottomans later seized Asia minor and created an empire that lasted 500 years.

The last 100 years had been freakish. Modern Istanbul had been the seat of an empire ever since the third century, but after World War I, the empire left Istanbul in the hands of the secularists. Turkey, a small and impoverished nation, was all that remained. From my point of view, the last 100 years was a minor disruption in Turkish power. As the British and French left, and the Americans reconsidered their presence, only Turkey was in the geopolitical position to stabilize the region. If Asia Minor was the historic seat of empire, then Turkey was inherently more powerful than its neighbors.

I made the speech based on my model, which I believed, and that I’m sure was the speech my hosts expected I would make. Turkey would extend its power northwest into the Balkans, north into the Black Sea, into the Caucasus and into the Arab world. In addition, I said Turkey would emerge as the dominant power in the Eastern Mediterranean, as it had before. After the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks made an alliance with the Christian city of Venice to dominate the Mediterranean. These were the rough boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, and before that of the Eastern Roman Empire.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave the keynote address after my speech. Obviously he made no mention of his intentions in the Mediterranean, but he was strong and passionate in what he said. I had pleasant dinners and meetings with many people, some of whom had to know that Erdogan had already decided on a Mediterranean strategy. Quite reasonably no one mentioned it to me. I had not at all thought that he would begin with a leap into Libya, confronting the Russians and attempting to take control of Libyan oil and the deposits around Cyprus.

My speech was just a speech with my forecast, of no consequence beyond possibly letting senior officials start to think in terms of what was coming. But what it made me see is how much clearer the necessary course of history is from a distance. I could not know Erdogan’s next move. I could know that in due time a Turkish ruler would begin the process of expanding Turkish power. I also knew that the growth of power is not intended but develops from necessity. The United States did not intend in 1938 to occupy Western Europe. It came of small steps toward war, and small steps through the war. Empire falls to those who take care of their next step, and not to those who have dreams of greatness. The dreams come after the achievement.

Such is the case with Turkey. Caught between the Russian intervention in Syria and the long- running U.S. intervention in Iraq, Turkey sought to avoid being dragged into its ally’s war and did not attempt to block Russia when it knew it couldn’t. Turkey pursued an extremely cautious course, not allowing its forces to cross its borders in any significant way. Over time the region became more complex. Iran created an area of control to the Mediterranean, the Israelis attacked it, and the U.S. crippled its economy. The Russians engaged in some adventurism such as in Libya, where its presence was noted, although the weakness of this presence was generally ignored. The Americans railed about the S-400s but not to the extent of rupturing ties with Turkey or of giving up Incirlik air base. The Turks criticized the U.S. for supporting the Kurds in northern Syria. The regional system did not become peaceful but moved into gridlock.

Turkey needs oil that it can control. The Mediterranean would yield some in time, but Libya has it now. The gridlock in the region opened the door, and its need for energy compelled Turkey through the door in a move that should not have surprised me. It would not have surprised me in 10 years, but it did now. It was a move that tended toward reclaiming the Ottomans’ sea, and which opens the door to North Africa. Erdogan undoubtedly sensed the significance of what he was doing, but like any founder of an empire, his focus was on the next small move.

He may not ultimately succeed. The Russians do not want their proxies defeated. But the Russians also cannot afford to alienate Turkey, because Turkey can hurt Russia in the Caucasus, the Black Sea and even the Balkans. Plus, treaties or not, Russia needs the Bosporus. Is Libya worth a Russian rupture with Turkey? The United States is focused on undermining Iran in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and creating an internal crisis in Iran through successful sanctions. Turkey is hostile to the Syrian government and may be prepared to engage the Iranians. Greek and Israeli interests in the Mediterranean have to be secondary to dealing with Libya. Whatever the Russians or Americans say, the Turkish move does not threaten fundamental interests, and both want to be allied with Turkey.

The complexity can go on and on. I haven’t begun to talk about Israel and the Saudis, the Albanians and the Serbs, or Turkey and Azerbaijan. The Turkish move touches on all of these, some heavily, but for the most part, the cost of reversing the Turkish move seems higher than they are likely to play. There is also the question of actually getting troops to Libya and finding them bogged down in an endless war.

Turkey has announced its intentions, and it is likely going to carry them out. But then the complexity of being a great power will start to strike. For every successful move it will encounter complexity upon complexity. But I regarded Turkey as an emerging power precisely because the culture it inherited takes complexity for granted on the smallest things, as well as on great acts of statecraft. I have seen Turks analyze something I have said, extracting meanings I never had and relationships I never heard of. A good discussion with a Turk allows you to be surprised at yourself and left in complete doubt about him. From where I sit, the Turkish move was carefully planned, and while I hope our own intelligence agencies knew what was coming, I certainly didn’t, even though I spoke on it.

My job (self-appointed) is to create a method that allows you to sketch out the future. It is a hard job, and the pay is poor. The most difficult part of the job is getting listeners to distinguish between what you believe will happen and what you want to happen. Many times I have been viewed as an advocate rather than as a disinterested bystander. The danger is that I will be seduced not by a country but rather by my hunger to be right in my forecast. If I did that I would falsify my core thesis about history moving on its own. I am saved from this conundrum by the fact that I have no influence anywhere. But I do sometimes wind up close to an event that confirms my forecast, but to which I am blind at the moment.

by George Friedman – January 2, 2020 | Copyright © Geopolitical Futures. All rights reserved.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani is the latest example of the capricious way in which the president, as commander in chief, has chosen to flex his lethal powers.

By Mark Mazzetti

• Jan. 4, 2020Updated 3:26 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — The powers of an American president to wage war have grown stronger for nearly two decades, ever since the Sept. 11 attacks led the United States into an era of perpetual conflict.

Those powers are now in the hands of the most volatile president in recent memory.

President Trump’s decision to authorize the killing of a top Iranian military leader could be the match that sets off a regional conflagration, or it could have only marginal geopolitical impact like so many of the targeted killings ordered by Mr. Trump and his predecessors. But it is just the latest example of the capricious way in which the president, as commander in chief, has chosen to flex his lethal powers.

From his dealings with Iran, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, Mr. Trump has shown little evidence over the past three years that his decisions about war and peace are made after careful deliberation or serious consideration of the consequences.

In June, Mr. Trump shocked his vice president, his national security adviser and his secretary of state when he reversed himself and called off a strike against Iran with only 10 minutes to spare. That decision, days after Iran downed an American reconnaissance drone, came in part after Mr. Trump consulted Tucker Carlson, the Fox News personality, who reminded the president that he had pledged to get out of foreign conflicts rather than begin new ones. A strike on Iran, Mr. Carlson said, could anger the president’s political base.

A little more than six months later, Mr. Trump ordered the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who led Iran’s powerful Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. It was a move — set in motion after a rocket attack on Dec. 27 by forces linked to Iran killed an American contractor in Iraq — that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama considered too provocative to authorize.

The war-making powers that Congress granted to the president in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, combined with stunning advances in the technology of man-hunting, have given the inhabitant of the Oval Office the power to track and kill individuals practically anywhere on earth. General Suleimani was not even a particularly difficult target at Baghdad International Airport on Friday, when his convoy was hit by missiles fired by an American MQ-9 Reaper drone.

There have been attempts by lawmakers in recent years to limit the president’s abilities to wage new or expanded wars based on the authorities Congress granted in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks. But with little support from leaders of both parties on Capitol Hill, those efforts have generally gone nowhere.

“Our country has, quite self-consciously, given one person, the President, an enormous sprawling military and enormous discretion to use it in ways that can easily lead to a massive war. That is our system: one person decides,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former Justice Department official during the George W. Bush administration, wrote on Friday on Twitter.

Mr. Trump’s suspicions about the national security and intelligence bureaucracy he inherited have guided his unorthodox decisions on other aspects of foreign policy, like writing flattering, personal letters to the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, and outsourcing much of his policy toward Ukraine to Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer. There has been a dizzying turnover in his national security team: In three years, the president has had four national security advisers, two secretaries of state, two defense secretaries and one acting defense secretary.

How Mr. Trump sees the killing of General Suleimani as advancing his broader agenda on Iran is unclear, and on Friday he seemed to portray the operation as something of a one-off: a necessary step to ensure that tensions between the United States and Iran do not spiral out of control. General Suleimani was plotting “imminent and sinister attacks” before “we caught him in the act and terminated him,” the president said from his resort in Palm Beach, Fla., although administration officials did not describe any threats that were different from what they said the general had been orchestrating for years.

“We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war,” Mr. Trump said. The president’s decision to kill the general at this time appeared to many military experts as a potentially reckless escalation. But his policy toward Iran, what administration officials call a “maximum pressure” campaign, has long underestimated how the country would respond to economic sanctions that have crippled its economy.

When Iranian operatives blew holes in oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman in June and launched drone strikes on Saudi oil facilities in September, Mr. Trump opted in both cases against a direct, immediate military response. Still, one day after the drone strike targeting General Suleimani, the Pentagon announced it was sending around 3,000 more troops to Kuwait as a precaution against growing threats to American forces in the region.

Lindsay P. Cohn, a professor of political science at the Naval War College, said that Mr. Trump appears to be convinced that General Suleimani’s death will not lead to a significant surge of violence in the Middle East. It satisfies two imperatives for him: appearing to look tough without taking on, at least for now, any new commitments.

“He doesn’t want to get entangled. But he doesn’t want to look weak,” said Professor Cohn, adding that her opinions did not necessarily represent those of the Defense Department.

The president’s mercurial approach to Iran has left a trail of alienated allies — including European NATO allies angry about his decision to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and Arab nations in the Persian Gulf region uncertain about Mr. Trump’s resolve to support them in the face of direct attack from Iran.

Mr. Trump’s blunt language about the folly of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan led some to conclude that he was shy about using force. The evidence shows the opposite, said Micah Zenko, a national security expert who writes frequently about American presidents and the use of military power.

During the three years of the Trump administration, airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia have sharply increased, as have civilian casualties, Mr. Zenko said. But rather than centralizing decisions about lethal force inside the White House, Mr. Trump has often devolved authority to military commanders.

Mr. Zenko described the president as a “passive hawk,” wanting to appear tough without making decisions about military force that could incite long-term commitments.

Less than 10 days in office, Mr. Trump authorized a risky commando raid in Yemen that killed several civilians and one Navy SEAL, Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens. Amid criticism for the botched raid, Mr. Trump put the blame on military commanders who, he said, “lost Ryan.”

Twice Mr. Trump ordered cruise missile attacks against the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria in retaliation for chemical attacks on civilians there, something that Mr. Obama decided against. Administration officials said that Mr. Trump was particularly impressed by the success of the Special Operations raid in October that killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, something that may have led the president toward approving the killing of General Suleimani.

One of Mr. Trump’s former national security advisers, John R. Bolton, who was pushed out in September because the president considered him an irritant and too much of a hawk, was suddenly praising Mr. Trump on Friday.

The killing of General Suleimani was the type of strike that Mr. Bolton had long advocated — and Mr. Trump had once rebuffed — and the former aide tweeted that he hoped it would be the “first step toward regime change in Iran.”