Will Trump Strike Iran as his October Surprise?
BOB DREYFUSS
08/12/2020
4SHARES
( Tomdispatch.com ) - Was Donald Trump's January 3rd drone assassination of
Major General Qasem Soleimani the first step in turning the simmering Cold
War between the United States and Iran into a hot war in the weeks before an
American presidential election? Of course, there's no way to know, but
behind by double digits in most national polls and flanked by ultra-hawkish
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump is a notoriously impetuous and erratic
figure. In recent weeks, for instance, he didn't hesitate to dispatch
federal paramilitary forces to American cities run by Democratic mayors and
his administration also seems to have launched a series of covert actions
against Tehran that look increasingly overt and have Iran watchers concerned
about whether an October surprise could be in the cards.
Much of that concern arises from the fact that, across Iran, things have
been blowing up or catching fire in ways that have seemed both mysterious
and threatening. Early last month, for instance, a suspicious explosion at
an Iranian nuclear research facility at Natanz, which is also the site of
its centrifuge production, briefly grabbed the headlines. Whether the site
was severely damaged by a bomb smuggled into the building or some kind of
airstrike remains unknown. "A Middle Eastern intelligence official said
Israel planted a bomb in a building where advanced centrifuges were being
developed," reported the New York Times. Similar fiery events have been
plaguing the country for weeks. On June 26th, for instance, there was "a
huge explosion in the area of a major Iranian military and weapons
development base east of Tehran." On July 15th, seven ships caught fire at
an Iranian shipyard. Other mysterious fires and explosions have hit
industrial facilities, a power plant, a missile production factory, a
medical complex, a petrochemical plant, and other sites as well.
"Some officials say that a joint American-Israeli strategy is evolving -
some might argue regressing - to a series of short-of-war clandestine
strikes," concluded another report in the Times.
Some of this sabotage has been conducted against the backdrop of a
two-year-old "very aggressive" CIA action plan to engage in offensive cyber
attacks against that country. As a Yahoo! News investigative report put it:
"The Central Intelligence Agency has conducted a series of covert cyber
operations against Iran and other targets since winning a secret victory in
2018 when President Trump signed what amounts to a sweeping authorization
for such activities, according to former U.S. officials with direct
knowledge of the matter. The finding has made it easier for the CIA to
damage adversaries' critical infrastructure, such as petrochemical plants."
Meanwhile, on July 23rd, two U.S. fighter jets buzzed an Iranian civilian
airliner in Syrian airspace, causing its pilot to swerve and drop altitude
suddenly, injuring a number of the plane's passengers.
For many in Iran, the drone assassination of Soleimani - and the campaign of
sabotage that followed - has amounted to a virtual declaration of war. The
equivalent to the Iranian major general's presidentially ordered murder,
according to some analysts, would have been Iran assassinating Secretary of
State Pompeo or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, although
such analogies actually understate Soleimani's stature in the Iranian
firmament.
In its aftermath, Iran largely held its fire, its only response being a
limited, telegraphed strike at a pair of American military bases in Iraq. If
Soleimani's murder was intended to draw Iran into a tit-for-tat military
escalation in an election year, it failed. So perhaps the U.S. and Israel
designed the drumbeat of attacks against critical Iranian targets this
summer as escalating provocations meant to goad Iran into retaliating in
ways that might provide an excuse for a far larger U.S. response.
Such a conflict-to-come would be unlikely to involve U.S. ground forces
against a nation several times larger and more powerful than Iraq. Instead,
it would perhaps involve a sustained campaign of airstrikes against dozens
of Iranian air defense installations and other military targets, along with
the widespread network of facilities that the United States has identified
as being part of that country's nuclear research program.
The "Art" of the Deal in 2020
In addition to military pressure and fierce sanctions against the Iranian
economy, Washington has been cynically trying to take advantage of the fact
that Iran, already in a weakened state, has been especially hard hit by the
Covid-19 pandemic. Those American sanctions have, for instance, made it far
harder for that country to get the economic support and medical and
humanitarian supplies it so desperately needs, given its soaring death
count.
According to a report by the European Leadership Network,
"Rather than easing the pressure during the crisis, the U.S. has applied
four more rounds of sanctions since February and contributed to the
derailing of Iran's application for an IMF [International Monetary Fund]
loan. The three special financial instruments designed to facilitate the
transfer of humanitarian aid to Iran in the face of secondary sanctions on
international banking transactions. have proven so far to have been one-shot
channels, stymied by U.S. regulatory red tape."
To no avail did Human Rights Watch call on the United States in April to
ease its sanctions in order to facilitate Iran's ability to grapple with the
deadly pandemic, which has officially killed nearly 17,000 people since
February (or possibly, if a leaked account of the government's actual death
figures is accurate, nearly 42,000).
Iran has every reason to feel aggrieved. At great political risk, President
Hassan Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei agreed in 2015 to a deal with
the United States and five other world powers over Iran's nuclear research
program. That accord, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),
accomplished exactly what it was supposed to do: it led Iran to make
significant concessions, cutting back both on its nuclear research and its
uranium enrichment program in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions
by the United States and other trade partners.
Though the JCPOA worked well, in 2018 President Trump unilaterally withdrew
from it, reimposed far tougher sanctions on Iran, began what the
administration called a campaign of "maximum pressure" against Tehran, and
since assassinating Soleimani has apparently launched military actions just
short of actual war. Inside Iran, Trump's confrontational stance has helped
tilt politics to the right, undermining Rouhani, a relative moderate, and
eviscerating the reformist movement there. In elections for parliament in
February, ultraconservatives and hardliners swept to a major victory.
But the Iranian leadership can read a calendar, too. Like voters in the
United States, they know that the Trump administration is probably going to
be voted out of office in three months. And they know that, in the event of
war, it's more likely than not that many Americans - including, sadly, some
hawkish Democrats in Congress, and influential analysts at
middle-of-the-road Washington think tanks - will rally to the White House.
So unless the campaign of covert warfare against targets in Iran were to
intensify dramatically, the Iranian leadership isn't likely to give Trump,
Pompeo, and crew the excuse they're looking for.
As evidence that Iran's leadership is paying close attention to the
president's electoral difficulties, Khamenei only recently rejected in the
most explicit terms possible what most observers believe is yet another
cynical ploy by the American president, when he suddenly asked Iran to
reengage in direct leader-to-leader talks. In a July 31st speech, the
Iranian leader replied that Iran is well aware Trump is seeking only sham
talks to help him in November. (In June, Trump tweeted Iran: "Don't wait
until after the U.S. Election to make the Big deal! I'm going to win!")
Indeed, proving that Washington has no intention of negotiating with Iran in
good faith, after wrecking the JCPOA and ratcheting up sanctions, the Trump
administration announced an onerous list of 12 conditions that would have to
precede the start of such talks. In sum, they amounted to a demand for a
wholesale, humiliating Iranian surrender. So much for the art of the deal in
2020.
October Surprises, Then and Now
Meanwhile, the United States isn't getting much support from the rest of the
world for its thinly disguised effort to create chaos, a possible uprising,
and the conditions to force regime change on Iran before November 3rd. At
the United Nations, when Secretary of State Pompeo called on the Security
Council to extend an onerous arms embargo on Iran, not only did Russia and
China promise to veto any such resolution but America's European allies
opposed it, too. They were particularly offended by Pompeo's threat to
impose "snapback" economic sanctions on Iran as laid out in the JCPOA if the
arms embargo wasn't endorsed by the council. Not lost on the participants
was the fact that, in justifying his demand for such new U.N. sanctions, the
American secretary of state was invoking the very agreement that Washington
had unilaterally abandoned. "Having quit the JCPOA, the U.S. is no longer a
participant and has no right to trigger a snapback at the U.N.," was the way
China's U.N. ambassador put it.
That other emerging great power has, in fact, become a major spoiler and
Iranian ally against the Trump administration's regime-change strategy, even
as its own relations with Washington grow grimmer by the week. Last month,
the New York Times reported that Iran and China had inked "a sweeping
economic and security partnership that would clear the way for billions of
dollars of Chinese investments in energy and other sectors, undercutting the
Trump administration's efforts to isolate the Iranian government." The
18-page document reportedly calls for closer military cooperation and a $400
billion Chinese investment and trade accord that, among other things, takes
direct aim at the Trump-Pompeo effort to cripple Iran's economy and its oil
exports.
According to Shireen Hunter, a veteran Middle Eastern analyst at Georgetown
University, that accord should be considered a world-changing one, as it
potentially gives China "a permanent foothold in Iran" and undermines "U.S.
strategic supremacy in the [Persian] Gulf." It is, she noted with some
alarm, a direct result of Trump's anti-Iranian obsession and Europe's
reluctance to confront Washington's harsh sanctions policy.
On June 20th, in a scathing editorial, the Washington Post agreed,
ridiculing the administration's "maximum pressure" strategy against Iran.
Not only had the president failed to bring down Iran's government or
compelled it to change its behavior in conflicts in places like Syria and
Yemen, but now, in a powerful blow to U.S. interests, "an Iranian
partnership with China. could rescue Iran's economy while giving Beijing a
powerful new place in the region."
If, however, the traditional Washington foreign policy establishment
believes that Trump's policy toward Iran is backfiring and so working
against U.S. hegemony in the Persian Gulf, his administration seems not to
care. As evidence mounts that its approach to Iran isn't having the intended
effect, the White House continues apace: squeezing that country
economically, undermining its effort to fight Covid-19, threatening it
militarily, appointing an extra-hardliner as its "special envoy" for Iran,
and apparently (along with Israel) carrying out a covert campaign of
terrorism inside the country.
Over the past four decades, "October surprise" has evolved into a catch-all
phrase meaning any unexpected action by a presidential campaign just before
an election designed to give one of the candidates a surprise advantage.
Ironically, its origins lay in Iran. In 1980, during the contest between
President Jimmy Carter and former California Governor Ronald Reagan, rumors
surfaced that Carter might stage a raid to rescue scores of American
diplomats then held captive in Tehran. (He didn't.) According to other
reports, the Reagan campaign had made clandestine contact with Tehran aimed
at persuading that country not to release its American hostages until after
the election. (Two books, October Surprise by Gary Sick, a senior national
security adviser to Carter, and Trick or Treason by investigative journalist
Bob Parry delved into the possibility that candidate Reagan, former CIA
Director Bill Casey, and others had engaged in a conspiracy with Iran to win
that election.)
Consider it beyond irony if, this October, the latest election "surprise"
were to take us back to the very origins of the term in the form of some
kind of armed conflict that could only end terribly for everyone involved.
It's a formula for disaster and like so many other things, when it comes to
Donald J. Trump, it can't be ruled out.