At a Time and a Place of Their Choosing ...
"It turns out that most Shiites in Iraq are unwilling to join Soleimani’s adulation as a fairy-tale hero and do not want to see Iraq become a battlefield between Iran and the United States."
"Most Shiite militias deployed by Iran in Iraq have left the country in recent days for fear of further assassinations by the Americans."
"[US President Donald Trump’s threat to strike 52 major Iranian targets if the Islamic Republic attacks] is likely to affect the Supreme Leader Khamenei’s system of considerations. He in no way wants war."
"He would like to drag the United States into a skirmish in the form of attrition around the presence of 5,000 American troops in Iraq, but he does not want to provoke Tomahawk missiles and the US Air Force. Iran has no answer to US capabilities."
Middle East analyst Ehud Yaari
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| Lebanon’s Hezbollah supporters attend a funeral ceremony rally to mourn Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who was killed in an air strike at Baghdad airport, in Beirut’s suburbs, Lebanon, January 5, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher. |
"[The summary execution] seriously undermines the assumptions and great sense of self-confidence the Iranian regime has held that it is immune to direct harm."How those who consider themselves mighty powerful assume too much, and in their arrogance manage to create situations out of which they find it increasingly difficult to extract themselves without endangering their position to an even greater degree, is astonishing. And such appears to be the simmering situation that Iran's leading Ayatollahs find themselves in now, with the death of their leading terror commander and their Iraqi Shiite proxies. An insult to Shiite Islamist confidence and its power structure that cannot go unanswered.
"[Iran had acted with impunity because it assumed] the West recoils from a military confrontation with Iran [and President Trump would not risk war during an election year. But now], Iran has sustained two fierce blows by the US in just a few days."
"[This assault on Iranian prestige] severely damages its deterrence image … while there are ongoing protests in Lebanon and Iraq. Protests which, to a large extent, are aimed at getting Iran out of those two countries."
“Some argue that the assassination of Soleimani will increase tensions in the Middle East. This outlook confuses cause and effect: Tensions in the Middle East have intensified over the past decade because of the violent Iranian aggression which Soleimani spearheaded. … Killing Soleimani is not the cause of the escalation — but the result."
"Iraq will be the main arena [with possible] internal clashes between Iranian-backed militias and Iraqi forces who want to or have been commanded to end — or significantly reduce — Iran’s influence on Iraq [and a possible] drastic Iranian move."
Avi Melamed, President, CEO, Inside the Middle East: Intelligence Perspectives
Yet it is the depth, strength and quality of the response that will place the Islamic Republic of Iran at greater risk. From within, its population protests Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's focus on conquest and sponsorship of terror while the country's finances are in dire straits and people facing impoverishment to accompany the social, cultural and religious stresses already long imposed upon them has created one dangerous front, while the other is that of its purported enemies plotting the downfall of the regime.
The simple truth is, the Islamic Republic's own crafting of its dedication to installing itself as the supreme force in the Middle East, one buttressed by nuclear arms and ballistic missiles to better suppress counter-planning by the majority Sunni Middle East states, alongside Iran's agenda to create a Shiite axis while extending its influence into Africa and Southwest Asia, the while continuing to provoke the United States, created its own trap out of which it finds itself unable to spontaneously react to free itself.
It was largely human intelligence that enabled the U.S. intelligence establishment and the military to persuade U.S. President Donald Trump that the removal of Soleimani would wound the thorn in the side of America that kept launching attacks on allies and on American troops. Iranians who themselves are so disengaged with their leadership they are prepared to do anything to have them removed to return Iran to its former civilized status.
The hundreds of thousands of mourners who turned out for the funeral of Soleimani were predictable.
Fear of arrest, imprisonment and torture leading to death is a powerful incentive for a reluctant population urged to support a leadership that has them in vicious thrall. But how that leadership now plans in its asymmetrical warfare capabilities of long experience to respond to the American gauntlet is another issue altogether.
Labels: Ayatollahs, Conflict, Iran, Political Crisis, United States
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, January 07, 2020
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