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What happened in Iraq is just another example of the Floridaman administration's incompetence and inability to keep it's mouth shut. It's all about the ratings for Floridaman.
1. At @CNASdc we’ve been doing a study on Israel’s campaign against Iran in Syria where Israel has hit 1000 targets, rolled back Iran’s efforts and not triggered a war. interesting lessons learned. ALL OF WHICH TRUMP’S TEAM HAS IGNORED IN THE MOST INCOMPETENT WAY THIS WEEK
2. Lesson 1: think carefully about your public posture. Israel doesn’t come out publicly after every strike and often doesn’t take responsibility putting less pressure on Iran to respond and escalate.
3. Israel isn’t entirely silent. sometimes articles do mysteriously appear in the Arab press days later with no attribution. Sometimes Israeli leaders and military officials do let on. There is a deterrent value in the Iranians knowing where the strikes came from.
4. But israel does this carefully and they didn’t at all when they first started the campaign two years ago because they didn’t want to trigger Iranian retaliation.
5. Instead the US is owning everything publicly and rubbing the Iraqi government’s and Iran’s face in it. Pictures of marines deploying to Baghdad. Public readouts of calls with foreign leaders.
6. On the record briefings for journalists. This is all really provocative. It doesn’t “reestablish deterrence.” It provokes retaliation
7. Lesson 2: be proportionate and limit casualties. The Israelis go so far as to sometimes purposefully miss with the first shot on a target. Then many of the Iranian supported militia and Qods Force runaway. And Israel destroys the weapons, but avoid bigger escalation.
8. Clearly didn’t happen in this case. Instead we killed 24 Iraqis in response to one US fatality. Of course it was seen not as “establishing deterrence” but as escalation.
9. Lesson 3: factor in the reactions of key political players. Netanyahu has gone to great lengths to negotiate an arrangement with Putin that gives Israel a green light to conduct these strikes while avoiding an Israel-Russia confrontation.
10. And before every strike, the IDF games out the possible reactions of key militia groups, Assad, Iran, Turkey, Kurds, and others.
11. Clearly US didn’t do any of that. We didn’t even coordinate with the Iraqi government!! There was a scenario with a small limited quiet strike that the Iraqi govt would have supported or stayed quiet about. Instead this totally blows up in our face
12. Lesson 4: intelligence intelligence intelligence. Israelis emphasize that they have operated in Syria far longer than Iran, are physically closer and have a better intel picture on what is happening on the ground.
13. It is this information advantage which gives them the confidence to operate in Syria without triggering major Iranian retaliation.
14. Iran clearly has a better sense of what is going on on the ground in Iraq than the US does. Iran borders Iraq. The political and cultural ties are deep and Iran has a lot of Intel assets deployed there.
15. The US embassy staff is stuck in the green zone and since the scale down of our diplomatic presence a few months ago is disconnected from what is going on.
16. When you are at such a disadvantage, it is not a good environment In which to pick a fight and try to conduct very limited and careful strikes and a delicate political environment.
17. Lesson 5: have limited clear objectives. The Israeli objectives with these strikes is simply to degrade Iranian precision guided missile capabilities in Syria. That’s it. Very straightforward.
18. Trump administration’s objectives towards Iran are entirely unclear and confused. Were these strikes just to reestablish deterrence? If so they should have been much more limited.
19. Or was it to push Iran back in the region, get at Pompeo’s 12 points which are Hopelessly unrealistic. When it comes to Iran Policy (and many other things) The administration has no clear sense of what it is trying to do, which is a massive problem.
20. Lesson 6: operate in an arena where you have the military advantage. Israel has a major conventional advantage over Iran in Syria and no troops on the ground who could be easy targets for Iranian retaliation.
21. It’s very hard for Iran to hit Israel as evidenced by its limited and failed efforts to use drones to strike Israeli territory in response.
22. But in Iraq the US has troops and diplomats, which are targets for Iranian militia. And Iranian supported militias vastly outnumber the US presence creating vulnerability for retaliation which gives Iran the advantage.
23. And even with all this cafe, it’s complicated the Israelis triggered a major crisis with Russia when Syrian air defenses took out a Russian plane last year while trying to respond to an Israeli strike
24. But Bottom line: The Israelis have conducted in Syria an impressive, careful well thought out campaign to push back on Iranian influence in Syria and there is much the US could learn from.
25. The Trump administration this week conducted a master class in precisely how NOT to do this.
from Ilan Goldenberg
Middle East Security Director at CNAS. Former ”deep stater.” Iran, Israel-Palestine, broader regional issues.
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