Iran-USA: "Hybrid" Wars Confront « Might Makes Right » - Alfredo G. A. Valladão (Paris)

             Published January 15, 2020

          

O P I N I O N 

Iran-USA: "Hybrid" Wars Confront « Might Makes Right »

Alfredo G. A. Valladão

Professor Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA – Sciences Po)

Senior Felllow Policy Center for the New South

The drone strike that claimed the life of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani unmasks the limits of so-called "hybrid" – or "asymmetric" – strategies. These low-intensity military operations, conducted through unofficial paramilitary forces, are suppose to allow a weaker state to gain geopolitical advantages without risking an open war with a stronger one. The idea is to gradually accumulate small tactical victories by capitalizing on more powerful states’ lack of appetite for distant major military interventions. In Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was able to profit from the fact that neither the Americans nor the Europeans were ready to die for Kiev.

As for the US, fatigue about playing the role of "world policeman" does not date from the Trump administration. Under Barack Obama’s government confronted with the Afghan and Iraqi quagmires, it was no longer possible to continue risking American lives and riches in endless, fragmented local conflicts, with no prospect of victory. The US military forces cannot afford anymore to get bogged down by swarms of Lilliputian fighters (terrorists, militias, proxys…) far away from home. This is not traditional American "isolationism", just a much more down to earth consideration: the United States’ tremendous military superiority should solely be used – overwhelmingly – when there is a direct threat to the country’s strategic interests. Exit “regime change”, exporting democracy or playing sugar daddy to allies’ quarrels. Give-and-take: an agenda that got Donald Trump elected.

Washington therefore, has lost much interest in local Middle East political games.  Today, the only strategic priorities of America’s state apparatus boil down to maintaining its influence on world oil prices by securing production and flows through the Strait of Hormuz, guaranteeing the integrity of the State of Israel and preventing the rebirth of a new terrorist territorial “caliphate”. Even access to Gulf oil reserves is no longer a prime concern, thanks to the domestic shale oil and gas industries, while American dwindling imports from the region account for only 9%. As for the myriad of interstate and sub-state conflicts blooding the whole region, it would be enough to just let the different protagonists keep slaying each other. And if "outside" powers – such as Russia, Turkey or Iran – want to get bogged down in that ineluctable morass, good luck to them. Provided they respect a clear "red line": no power (regional or global) should threaten American strategic interests by aiming for hegemonic domination of this huge geographical area.

The Iranian government for its part is well aware that it has neither the military nor the economic means to sustain a direct-armed conflict with the United States. And that the other great powers, Russia and China, have no intention of dying for Tehran. But Iran had to face mounting Western pressure on its nuclear and ballistic program, as well as crippling economic sanctions. The solution was to fall back to an “indirect” dual strategy. On one hand, to try to lessen the weight of economic sanctions by signing, in 2015, a limited ten years-long international agreement controlling its uranium enrichment policy. On the other, an "asymmetrical" offensive, aimed at spreading and reinforcing its influence over a territorial arc extending from the Iraqi border to Southern Syria and Lebanon. A sort of low-cost Iranian empire, designed and commandeered by General Soleimani, making use of local Shiite paramilitary militias armed and "advised" by Iranian officers (Lebanese Hezbollah, the various Syrian Shiite groups, the "Popular Movement" in Iraq, Hamas in Gaza or the Houthis in Yemen). The aim was to strengthen Teheran’s role as a central and essential dealmaker in the region. But without forgetting to take care of United States’ sensitivities by engaging Iraqi Shiite militias alongside American troops in the fight against the ISIS “caliphate”. No doubt, a brilliant game of geopolitical chess... until the big power decides to kick the chessboard.

Trump’s decision to leave the 2015 nuclear deal and to impose tougher economic sanctions was already a wake-up call. By demanding renegotiations including the control over the Iranian missiles program, Washington was clearly targeting the rampant expansionism of the Islamic Republic in the Middle East. By killing the main architect of the Iranian “hybrid” strategy, the White House dots the i’s and cross the t’s: either Tehran settles for a low intensity presence through proxy militias and abides its role as an actor among others in the Middle Eastern theater, or else it will face an unaffordable military escalation. In fact, the benefits of "asymmetry" are being reversed. The survival of the mullahs' regime is at stake, which is not the case with the American state apparatus. The more so that the Iranian regime must also face recent “internal” revolts: those of its own citizens against the economic conditions and the cost of external adventures, and those of large parts of the Lebanese and Iraqi populations (including Shiites) who rebel against the Iranian stranglehold on their countries. Iran therefore does not have many options.

          

The downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane has further reduced these options. After tree days of dithering and denial, the Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and government finally acknowledged being responsible for this “disastrous mistake”. The main political consequences of this catastrophe are domestic. Who could have anticipated that the impressive show of national unity during the funeral of general Soleimani would have been already superseded by the growing raucous gap between the Islamic Republic regime and a significant part of its population? Social media anger and street demonstrations calling for the resignation of the government – and even, amazingly, for the removal of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei himself – are reminiscent of the widespread and huge protests of November 2019, which were put to rest with the killing of hundreds of demonstrators by the regime’s security apparatus. Meanwhile, throngs of Iraqi citizens – supported by their most important Shiite religious leader, Ali Sistani – are again manifesting all over their country against both America and Iran. This crumbling consensus about Teheran’s power plays, at home and in the Middle East is a clear case of “Imperial overstretch”. It does not bode well for the Islamic regime, particularly in the eve of the February 21 elections to renovate the national Parliament and the most important Assembly of Experts, which is empowered to elect or dismiss the Supreme Leader.   

          

True, a lot of miscalculations are always possible and sometimes unavoidable. But despite violent verbal escalations, American and Iranian authorities are not used to decide about their core strategic policies on a whim. For now, the very prudent “proportional” Iranian reprisals to avenge the death of Qassem Soleimani and the relatively soothing statements from both sides are nor really a surprise. Meanwhile, "hybrid" strategies, which supposedly level the playing field between the weak and the powerful, remain what they have always been: a makeshift that stops being suitable when the game of chess gives way to "Texas Hold’em" poker.

Niall Ferguson examina paralelos históricos ao atual conflito Irã-EUA

Iran is too weak to start a world war

Niall Ferguson

The Times, Londres – 6/01/2020

My response to the news that US forces had assassinated Qassem Soleimani was: “Good riddance. Now what?” No tears should be shed for Soleimani. As the mastermind of Iran’s numerous proxy wars beyond the Islamic Republic’s borders, he had the blood of countless people on his hands, including hundreds of American and coalition soldiers killed by the Shi’ite militias he helped to train and finance. Second only to the Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in personal power, Soleimani had come to personify the ruthless, bloodthirsty spirit of the regime in Tehran.

But what will the consequences be of his assassination? Let us begin by dismissing that hardy perennial, “Oh no! Reckless Donald Trump has lit the fuse for the Third World War.” At a time such as this, commentators in need of a facile historical analogy inevitably reach for the murder of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914, generally regarded as the catalyst for the First World War.

But Soleimani was no Franz Ferdinand. First, it was Bosnian-Serb terrorists backed by Serbian military intelligence who carried out the hit on the legitimate heir to the august Austro-Hungarian imperial throne.Soleimani’s career as a sponsor of terrorism puts him closer to the Sarajevo assassin, Gavrilo Princip, than to his victim.

Second, the Middle East in January 2020 is not Europe in June 1914. The great powers then were quite evenly matched; each made the mistake of thinking that it might gain from a full-scale European war.Today, Iran’s leaders are under no illusions. They cannot risk a war with the vastly superior United States, which numbers among its allies both the richest state in the region (Saudi Arabia) and the most technologically advanced (Israel).

A better analogy might be with the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, “the man with the iron heart” (Hitler’s grim accolade), the founding head of the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service), the creator of the genocidal Einsatzgruppen and the brutal tyrant of the dismembered Czechoslovakia, who was fatally wounded by British-trained agents of the Czech government in exile in May 1942.

The British government’s decision to train and send Heydrich’s killers was made in the full knowledge that there would be harsh reprisals. There were. In the erroneous belief that the assassins were connected to the villages of Lidice and Lezaky, Hitler ordered the execution of all their male inhabitants over 16, as well as all the women of Lezaky. More than 1,300 Czechs perished in this orgy of vengeance.

Winston Churchill, who was fond of the kind of “dirty war” waged by the Special Operations Executive, favoured further retaliation, proposing that the RAF wipe out three German villages for every Czech one destroyed. Only with difficulty did the other members of the war cabinet dissuade him.

In much the same way, Trump and his advisers knew when they took the decision to launch an airstrike on Soleimani that there would be reprisals. There will be. On Friday, Khamenei tweeted the hashtag #SevereRevenge. Stand by for attacks by Iranian forces and their Shi’ite proxies on US personnel, as well as against US allies, all over the Middle East. The question is will the benefits of killing Soleimani outweigh those costs?

Benjamin Disraeli famously observed, in response to Abraham Lincoln’s murder, that “assassination has never changed the history of the world”. He was wrong. As Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken show in my favourite economics paper on this subject — which covers all 298 assassination attempts on national leaders from 1875 to 2004 — successful assassinations tend to increase the intensity of small-scale conflicts. But when an autocrat is killed, the probability of a transition to democracy rises.

The downside of killing Soleimani is that Iraq will now blow up. Freed from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny by the US invasion of 2003, it is a democracy with only limited US security support. Iranian penetration of Shi’ite militias and political parties means that it is dangerously close to becoming a vassal of Tehran. Significantly, the Iraqi prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, has condemned the US strike against Soleimani. The danger is a return to civil war.

This assassination does nothing to solve the problem created by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, when he decided to liquidate the US presence in Iraq in excessive haste, squandering all that had been achieved in the “surge” that ended the last Iraqi civil war.

The upside of killing Soleimani is that the Iran regime’s bluff has been called and its vulnerability exposed for everyone in the region to see.

Iran is in dire economic straits, largely because of American sanctions, which the Trump administration tightened last year. Oil production is down by nearly half since April 2018. The International Monetary Fund estimates that the Iranian economy shrank by 9.5% last year. The Statistical Centre for Iran puts the inflation rate at 47.2%.

The country’s beleaguered rulers gambled that they could force America to relax sanctions by exerting force, in the belief that Trump would not risk war in an election year. Wrong. America may now face pandemonium in Iraq, but Iran will not necessarily be the beneficiary. There is a good deal of anti-Iranian sentiment in the country; indeed, there have been numerous anti-Iranian protests since October and many in Iraq celebrated Soleimani’s obliteration last week.

It is in the wider regional struggle for mastery, however, that Iran is most obviously at a disadvantage. Last July Israel struck Iranian targets in Iraq, where Iran is believed to have stockpiled missiles. In September it was the turn of Hezbollah, Iran’s client in Lebanon. The Israelis have also been hitting Iran’s forces in Syria. Last month Israel’s defence minister, Naftali Bennett, threatened to turn Syria into “Iran’s Vietnam”.

Aside from Qatar, the Arab states are uniformly hostile to Tehran. Not only are the Saudis still smarting from Iran’s attack on their oil facilities in September; they also bitterly resent Iranian support for the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Meanwhile, the Europeans are finding it harder to keep the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action alive, as Iranian violations grow ever more flagrant.

As for the other main players in the region — Russia and Turkey — they are increasingly antagonistic to Iran. With the Syrian civil war all but over, Moscow is intent on squeezing out the Iranians.

Civil war in Iraq? Quite possibly. A Third World War? Forget about it. The unanswered question is what, if anything, can be done to reverse the biggest trend of the past decade, which has been Russia — not Iran — taking over from the United States as the Middle East’s powerbroker. The assassination of Soleimani changes many things. It doesn’t change that.

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford

[Grato a meu amigo, embaixador Pedro Luiz Rodrigues, pela seleção da matéria.]

Conflito EUA-Irã: generais Santos Cruz e Santa Rosa contra a adesão aos EUA

Generais Santos Cruz e Santa Rosa: Brasil deve ficar neutro em conflito

Depois do general Sérgio Etchegoyen comentar ao jornalista Tales Faria o ataque americano que matou o iraniano Qassim Suleimani, dois outros generais falaram à coluna sobre o assunto. Maynard Santa Rosa e Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz, ambos ex-integrantes do governo do presidente Jair Bolsonaro, defendem que o Brasil deve manter a neutralidade em relação ao conflito entre Estados Unidos e Irã.

Ex-ministro-chefe da Secretaria de Governo da Presidência, Santos Cruz afirma, em texto enviado à coluna (leia a íntegra abaixo), que estimular a resolução pacífica dos confrontos é uma tradição brasileira. "Qualquer posicionamento, nesse caso, fora da neutralidade e imparcialidade é falta de noção de consequência e irresponsabilidade", escreveu ele.

Em breve entrevista (leia a integra abaixo), o general Santa Rosa, que até o início de novembro era o responsável pela Secretaria de Assuntos Estratégicos do governo Bolsonaro, diz não enxergar risco direto para o Brasil, por ser um país que tem boa relação com as duas partes. A atual postura de proximidade ao governo americano não seria um problema. "Esse alinhamento é mais um discurso do que uma práxis", analisa Santa Rosa.

Os dois generais da reserva, que estão entre os mais experientes e respeitados do Exército Brasileiro, também analisaram o contexto politico-econômico do ataque.

A seguir, a entrevista de Santa Rosa e o texto de Santos Cruz:

ENTREVISTA DO GENERAL MAYNARD SANTA ROSA

UOL - Como o sr. interpreta o ataque americano que matou o general iraniano Suleimani em solo iraquiano?

General Santa Rosa - Do ponto de vista estratégico, vejo o incidente como uma forma de os Estados Unidos voltarem a exercer protagonismo e a ocupar um espaço midiático na região, perdido para a Rússia e a China, após o revés sofrido na Síria e o fiasco político no Iraque.

Quais os riscos para o Brasil?

Não há risco direto para o Brasil. Temos bom relacionamento com ambas as partes.

Mesmo com nosso atual alinhamento diplomático com os Estados Unidos?

Esse alinhamento é mais um discurso do que uma práxis.

O efeito será global, pela desestabilização causada. Pode haver reflexos no preço do petróleo, afetando o interesse chinês. Pode refletir-se na Turquia, colocando Erdogan em cheque. Mas, favorece a Arábia Saudita e seus aliados sunitas.

Qual a avaliação do posicionamento do governo Bolsonaro sobre o assunto, até aqui?

A melhor estratégia deveria ser o silêncio.

O melhor termômetro para medir a crise será a posição de Putin. Até o momento, permanece enigmática.

TEXTO DO GENERAL CARLOS ALBERTO DOS SANTOS CRUZ

Esse ataque dos Estados Unidos que matou o general Suleimani, sem dúvida deve gerar reações da parte iraniana, que não precisam necessariamente ser imediatas. As animosidades entre os dois países já são antigas e esse tipo de escalada de conflito sempre tem consequências ruins.

Para o Brasil, as reações imediatas em bolsas de valores e preço do petróleo por exemplo, são absolutamente normais e possíveis de administração sem nenhum problema mais significativo. Normalmente essas alterações são passageiras e perfeitamente administráveis. Também não acredito que os dois países vão entrar numa guerra clássica de alta intensidade. A comunidade internacional toda está empenhada em solicitar cautela.

Os atritos e os conflitos entre EUA e Irã já têm uma longa história, que começa depois da Revolução Islâmica em 1979 quando foi retirado do poder o Mohammed Reza Palhavi. O Brasil jamais tomou partido nessa animosidade. Não tem razões para isso.

O nosso país tem excelentes relações com EUA e Irã e o melhor caminho é a neutralidade e a imparcialidade no caso. A participação do Brasil é importante para somar sua voz à comunidade internacional que se manifesta pelo equilíbrio, pelo bom senso e pela desescalada do conflito.

Isso não é pela preservação de relações comerciais do Brasil. As manifestações por uma solução pacífica devem ser genuinamente pelo desejo do Brasil de sempre colaborar com a paz mundial e de estimular a resolução pacífica de conflitos. Essa é a nossa tradição e característica. Qualquer posicionamento, nesse caso, fora da neutralidade e da imparcialidade é falta de noção de consequência e irresponsabilidade.