Deterrence drove US to attack Iran
FOR ALL of the Trump administration’s insistence that the threat of an “imminent” attack led to the American drone strike on Iran’s top general, US officials behind the scenes say the strike was motivated as much, if not more, by a broader effort to rein in a dangerously emboldened Iran.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney-General William Barr gave voice to the broader rationale on Monday, saying deterrence was a key component of the strike. But they, like other US officials, stopped short of saying definitively that no specific plot was broken up.
Still, the shifting rationale has raised questions about the nature and credibility of the threat posed by General Qassem Soleimani.
Critics of President Donald Trump’s decision say he should have consulted Congress before taking an action that brought the US and Iran to the brink of war.
As lawmakers protested, the Trump administration seized on the “imminent threat” rationale, though Pompeo later said he didn’t know the time frame for Soleimani’s next attack and other officials indicated that there was no clear sense of the next targets either.
Trump on Friday said the threat was against four US embassies, but two days later Defence Secretary Mark Esper said he’d seen no such evidence.
In the latest round of confusion, the president maintained on Monday that there was no contradiction in their comments.
“Our ability to deter attacks had obviously broken down,” Barr said.
Pompeo said, “President Trump and those of us in his national security team are re-establishing deterrence – real deterrence – against the Islamic Republic.”
Trump himself implicitly acknowledged the deterrence aim, telling reporters on Monday that the strike against Soleimani “should have been done 20 years ago.”
And he implied as much in a tweet that day: “The Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners are working hard to determine whether or not the future attack by terrorist Soleimani was ‘imminent’ or not, & was my team in agreement,” he tweeted. “The answer to both is a strong YES., but it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past!”