Battlegrounds

by H. R. McMaster

  Pakistan provides a stark warning. Iran could become, like Pakistan today, a nuclear armed state in which terrorists already enjoy a support base. The greatest threat to humanity in the coming decades may lie at the nexus between terrorists and the most destructive weapons on earth.

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  THAT IS why blocking Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon should remain a top priority. Aside from the potential transfer of such weapons to terrorists, it is also likely that Saudi Arabia and other nations will conclude that they, too, need nuclear weapons to deter Iran. The breakdown of nonproliferation in the Middle East would increase the potential for apocalyptic war in a region already enmeshed in persistent political and religious conflict. Iran’s leaders’ messianic ideology and their cult of martyrdom raise doubts about the ability to effectively deter a nuclear-armed Iran, as they may be willing to risk massive casualties among their own people. The billboards that Iranian teenagers walked by as they went to their deaths during the Iran-Iraq War stated tellingly, “The sword does not bring victory; it is the blood that brings it.”34

  The JCPOA could not address the underlying problem: the Iranian regime’s hostility to the United States, Israel, the Arab monarchies, and the West. The agreement actually allowed Iran to have it both ways. The regime benefited economically and used those resources to intensify its proxy war. It is past time to force Iran’s leaders to choose between economic ruin and isolation or an agreement that combines a peace treaty to end its proxy wars and strong verification of promises not to pursue nuclear weapons, missiles, or other weapons of mass destruction.35

  Combined with the effect of sanctions, it was the credible threat of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program that moved Iran to enter multiple rounds of nuclear negotiations between 2006 and 2015.36 But after the U.S. departure from the JCPOA, an Iranian government dominated by the revolutionaries is unlikely to enter another agreement in the near future. As the United States and others attempt to influence a shift in the nature of the Iranian regime, it would be prudent to implement all available measures to delay and disrupt its program. Integrated intelligence, law enforcement, and cyber efforts should have support across the political spectrum as they did after President George W. Bush briefed President-elect Barack Obama about the range of U.S. efforts against Iran’s nuclear program, telling him, “We want you to succeed.”37

  As pressure on Iran mounts, the United States and other nations must be prepared for escalation. Past patterns of escalation are instructive. In June 2010, a number of computer viruses, including a particularly elegant cyber malware called Stuxnet wrecked approximately one third of the centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility. Cybersecurity experts judge the virus to have been the creation of Israeli and U.S. scientists.38 Then, in November 2011, a large explosion occurred during an Iranian missile test, killing seventeen members of the Revolutionary Guard, including Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, director of Iran’s missile program. As Israel prepared for military strikes against Iranian nuclear and missile facilities, Israeli leaders appear to have expanded their efforts through clandestine attacks. Between 2010 and 2012, five Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated. Motorcyclists pulled up next to their cars and attached “sticky bombs” to their car doors before speeding away.39 Iran then sought retribution with multiple assassination attempts, including the brazen 2011 plot against the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, at Washington’s Café Milano. Contingency plans should identify the range of potential Iranian escalations and identify the actions that could be taken now to prevent them or mitigate their effects.

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  IN THE fall of 2017, I asked our NSC staff to coordinate across the government to develop such contingency plans. As in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the future course of events in Iran’s proxy wars depends on continuous interaction with a determined adversary. U.S. strategy toward Iran should be flexible and attempt to anticipate Iranian reactions and initiatives. Some potential Iranian actions are not difficult to predict, as we have seen most of it before across the four-decade-long proxy war: mining of the Persian Gulf and the Bab-el-Mandeb; shore-to-ship missiles fired at U.S. or other nations’ naval or commercial vessels; rockets fired into Arab partner nations from Yemen or into Israel from southern Lebanon or Gaza; assassinations, kidnappings, and hostage taking; attacks on U.S. forces in the region; bombings of U.S. military facilities; attacks on Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure. Even the relatively new options available to Iran, such as drone strikes and cyber attacks, are somewhat predictable. It would have been negligent not to prepare for these potential actions. With time to think, it is possible to understand better and mitigate risk as well as identify and take advantage of opportunities. Importantly, it is also possible to work with partners to craft multinational responses to Iranian aggression.

  In 2020 it was clear that Supreme Leader Khamenei, after realizing that the regime could no longer enjoy the benefits of foreign investment and international trade while continuing wars of terror and subversion, chose to intensify Iran’s proxy wars and violate portions of the JCPOA in an effort to extort concessions. Given the regime’s behavior over the last forty years, the choice should not have been surprising. The revolutionaries’ pride and resentment, sustained by their ideological cocktail of Marxism and Shia millenarianism, made concessions impossible. Due to the combination of sanctions, falling oil exports and prices, and the regime’s corrupt practices, the economic pressure was too severe to wait out Donald Trump.

  Although the Supreme Leader’s and the IRGC’s escalating attacks at the end of 2019 were predictable, the U.S. killing of Soleimani and Muhandis must have surprised Iranian leaders. As the regime encouraged large-scale protests in Iraq and Iran and whipped up anti-U.S. sentiment, it was also predictable that Iran would have to respond. Khamenei vowed to exact “severe revenge.” On January 7, the IRGC fired sixteen ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases hosting U.S. forces.40 There were no fatalities, although soldiers suffered brain injuries in the attack.

  The reaction among U.S. allies on the death of Soleimani and Muhandis was mixed. Some called the strike an escalation, but those comments did not account for the forty-year-long proxy war that Iran had waged against the United States or give due consideration to Iran’s escalation of that war on its own terms without fear of significant retribution. Soleimani was not only a purveyor of death and suffering outside Iran’s borders, but also a scourge on the Iranian people. Under his leadership, the Quds Force squandered Iran’s wealth while earning the country’s status as a pariah terrorist sponsor that deserves isolation and sanction. Less than two months before Soleimani’s death, the deadliest protests since the 1979 revolution spread to twenty-nine of the thirty-one Iranian provinces. Protesters shouted, “Death to Khamenei” and “Death to the dictator” as they ransacked state-run banks owned by corrupt leaders. The regime unleashed the state security forces on its own citizens. It is estimated that more than three hundred people were killed, two thousand wounded, and seven thousand arrested.41 It is likely that Khamenei hoped that Soleimani’s killing might divert the people’s anger away from him and the corrupt order. It was not to be.

  Public anger toward the regime erupted again just eight days after Soleimani’s death, over the Iranian military’s shooting down of a commercial airliner with 176 people on board. “They tell us the lie that it is America, but our enemy is right here,” a crowd shouted as protesters referred to the IRGC as akin to ISIS.42 It is possible financial ruin and calls for an end to the regime could chasten Iranian leaders and make them reluctant to intensify proxy attacks or resume their nuclear weapons programs. It is more likely that they will order a continuation of their proxy wars. Iran’s leaders will almost certainly continue to use external conflict as a way to divert the public’s anger away from them . . . and toward “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan.”

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  AN INCREASINGLY desperate regime could use combin
ations of old tactics and new capabilities to escalate conflict. The regime could decide to inflict mass casualties with chemical agents or a dirty bomb, which combines explosives with radiological materials. The IRGC would no doubt attempt to conduct those attacks through proxies, but everyone would know the return address. What seems even more likely, however, is that Iran would find ways to attack U.S. and European interests beyond the Middle East, including cyber attacks against critical infrastructure.

  And those cyber attacks could be larger in scope and more effective than in the past. In 2012, the same year malware attacks hit Saudi Aramco, Iranian hackers targeted U.S. financial institutions with 176 days of distributed denial-of-service attacks similar to those that Russia used to attack Estonia’s system in 2007. Targeted banks were temporarily paralyzed. In 2013, in what was likely a rehearsal for cyber attacks on U.S. infrastructure, Iranian hackers broke into the control system of the Bowman Avenue Dam, in Rye Brook, New York.43 Cyber attacks will become more likely if Iran’s revolutionaries conclude that they have little to lose.

  A conflict initiated by an Iranian cyber attack would likely continue after U.S., Saudi Arabian, Israeli, or multinational retaliation. Iran could escalate further with rockets and missiles from proxy forces or from its own territory. Iran is increasing its ability to strike targets in Israel, the Gulf states, and the waterways of the Persian Gulf and Bab-el-Mandeb with precision rockets and missiles. Therefore, the deployment of additional integrated missile defenses, air defense, surveillance, and strike-and-counter drone capabilities to prevent, defend against, or respond to an Iranian attack is prudent. As would be the removal of U.S. forces in the region that are vulnerable to attack and are not contributing materially to important missions. The 1983 bombings of French paratroopers and U.S. Marines in Lebanon and the 1996 bombing of mainly U.S. Airmen in Saudi Arabia should serve as warnings.

  Still, despite the best efforts to anticipate Iranian actions and reactions, a conflict could easily produce unintended consequences on both sides. Consider how Iranian riots in Mecca during the 1987 Hajj led to military clashes that involved Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United States, resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians as well as combatants. Mohsen Rezaei, the head of the Revolutionary Guard, responded to the riots and the Saudi response by ordering a commando attack on Saudi Arabian oil fields. Since the Kuwaiti royal family had asked the United States to protect Gulf shipping from Iranian interdiction as the Iran-Iraq War raged on Kuwait’s doorstep, American helicopters were in place patrolling the Gulf. Those helicopters destroyed IRGC Navy boats, forcing the rest of the attackers to withdraw. Chastened by the failure, the Revolutionary Guard next struck two oil tankers near a dock outside Kuwait City with Chinese-made Silkworm missiles. One was a reflagged U.S. vessel; seventeen crewmen and the American captain were injured. The U.S. Navy responded by shelling two Revolutionary Guard bases located on oil platforms that had been used to stage attacks on shipping. In a reprisal attack four months later, the IRGC Navy laid mines, and the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts struck one; it blew a hole in its hull, injuring ten sailors. The U.S. responded with attacks on two Iranian frigates and Revolutionary Guard bases. Iranian attacks on neutral ships dropped, but tensions remained high. On July 3, 1988, USS Vincennes, while engaged with Iranian boats, mistook Iran Air Flight 655 for an Iranian F-14 and shot it down over the Strait of Hormuz, killing the 290 innocent passengers and crew on board, including 66 children. The United States did not admit fault, and President Reagan’s lamentable decision to award the captain of the Vincennes with a medal deepened the legacy of mutual distrust and enmity between the United States and the Iranian regime.44 The series of events demonstrated how interaction between Iran and the objects of its proxy wars can lead to escalation and unintended, tragic consequences.

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  THE IRGC and mullahs in Tehran are in a weakened position. The country’s infrastructure is deteriorating. The corruption of the bonyads and the IRGC-controlled companies are a further drain on the economy. Iranians with the means and opportunity are leaving; the country is experiencing a massive brain drain. Approximately 150,000 educated Iranians emigrate every year, costing the country up to $150 billion annually. Pressure on the regime to focus on nation building at home instead of destruction abroad may mount, as it did during the widespread demonstrations of 2018, 2019, and early 2020. It was not an unprecedented reaction to the diversion of resources to the military. During the oil boom of 1973–74, vast expenditures on military hardware instead of investments in industry, agriculture, and education led to resentment of the Shah’s military establishment.45

  Revolution in Iran can be sudden and violent. The Iranian regime today has created conditions that are analogous to 1979. The Shah fell, in part, because the economy was collapsing, corruption was rife, military spending was excessive, and efforts to develop political alternatives to his rule were stifled. The Shah thought he had escaped historical dangers of porous borders, hostile neighbors, and internal divisions. He had not. There are earlier historical precedents for the regime’s problems. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the rulers of the declining Safavid dynasty governed their empire through a system that balanced theirs and their military’s power against that of the clergy. The clergy sometimes shifted its allegiance between the regime and the merchant class. Today, the Supreme Leader finds himself in a position redolent of that of his monarchical predecessors. As the economy worsens, clerics and Iranian citizens increase their criticisms; Khamenei has responded by tightening his grip on Shiism’s holy city of Qom, which, in turn, strengthens the clerics of its Iraqi competitor Najaf, who adhere to the quietist tradition and oppose the rule of the jurisprudent, which underpins Khamenei’s power. Khamenei has to prevent internal opposition, defend against those he has provoked, and continue the pursuit of his messianic vision to export the revolution. Paradoxically, he and his fellow revolutionaries may have created political, economic, social, and military conditions similar to those that led to the demise of both the government they overthrew and the empire they want desperately to restore.

  The tension between religious tradition and secular modernity is also not new. The Shah’s suppression of the Shia ulema (scholars of Islamic sacred law and theology) contributed to his fall. The revolutionaries’ brutal repression of republicans who prefer secular representative government to theocratic authoritarianism may also generate growing internal opposition. The Guardian Council’s denial of approximately seven thousand candidates for parliamentary elections in 2020 made clear that the revolutionaries remained unwilling to grant political space to the reformers. The Shah was unable to reconcile tensions between the traditional and the modern, the religious and the secular, the rural and the urban. The Supreme Leader faces the same dilemma.

  The Iranian people may tire of and reject the rule of jurisprudence. The concept is not inherent to Iranian culture. There are signs that Shia clerics of the quietist tradition in the Iraqi city of Najaf and the Iranian city of Qom are increasingly critical of clerical rule, and those criticisms are inspiring others. As Shiism’s preeminent Marja’, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, entered his ninth decade and Ayatollah Khamenei was well into his eighth, it was not clear how their successors might influence clerical rule in Iran.

  It is possible that the Iranian regime can evolve such that it ceases its permanent hostility to the United States, Israel, its Arab neighbors, and the West. Although, since 1979, the Iranian regime has proven consistently hostile and the revolutionaries are ascendant, the Iranian regime is not a monolith. Also, the IRGC and the Iranian regime are particularly vulnerable to a concerted multinational effort to force them to choose between continuing their murderous proxy wars or behaving like a responsible nation. The United States and other nations can encourage them to choose the latter if we implement a long-term strategy to defend against the Iranian regime’s aggression, and force Iranian leaders to make a choice.

  Part VIr />
  North Korea

  U.S. AND NORTH KOREA AGREE TO BUILD ON NUCLEAR ACCORD . . . Kim Jong-Il doesn’t seem to want to open up . . . SUNSHINE POLICY WARMS OLD RIVALS . . . POLITICS SANK ACCORD ON MISSILES WITH NORTH KOREA . . . North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens . . . The talks are hopeless and North Korea can’t be negotiated with . . . U.S. INTELLIGENCE SAYS ACTIVITY OBSERVED AROUND NUCLEAR TEST SITES . . . NORTH KOREA TO CLOSE REACTOR IN EXCHANGE FOR AID . . . KIM JONG-IL . . . NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR TEST DRAWS ANGER, INCLUDING FROM CHINA . . . OBAMA’S STRATEGIC PATIENCE ON NORTH KOREA IS TURNING INTO STRATEGIC NEGLECT . . . OTTO WARMBIER, AMERICAN STUDENT RELEASED FROM NORTH KOREA, DIES . . . NORTH KOREA VOWS “THOUSANDS-FOLD” REVENGE ON U.S. OVER SANCTIONS . . . They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen . . . NORTH KOREA FIRES MISSILE OVER JAPAN . . . Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime . . . A PLOT TO MURDER NORTH KOREA’S EXILED SON . . . HAWAII TO RESUME COLD WAR–ERA NUCLEAR SIREN TESTS . . . The country has fired 23 missiles perfecting its technology with each launch . . . 2017 has been a year of rapid progress for North Korea’s missile program . . . I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger one . . . They wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety . . . Sometimes you have to walk and this was one of those times . . . NORTH KOREA WANTED FAMOUS BASKETBALL PLAYERS FOR NUCLEAR DEAL . . . THE ART OF NO DEAL . . . TRUMP SENDS BIRTHDAY GREETING TO KIM JONG-UN . . . My hope is that North Korea will come back to the table . . .