Iran

Thursday

Taki

The Middle East for dummies

Gstaad   The French have a saying: ‘Il n’y a rien de plus bête que le sourire du gagnant.’ In other words, gloating is for dummies. Hence I won’t be doing it, despite the drubbing handed to the Bercows of this world by so-called common folk. Mind you, at a lunch in a gentlemen’s club in the Bagel on the very day the drubbing was being administered, an Anglo-American friend, Bartle Bull, asked me what I thought would be the outcome: ‘Hung parliament,’ answered the great electoral expert, ruining Bartle’s lunch and driving the rest of the guests to more drink. A month down the road, everything’s hunky-dory, at least for those of us who don’t like to be told what to do by Brussels-based bureaucrooks.

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Crisis in Iran, fires in Australia and Manchester rapist jailed

Home Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, who had not been told in advance of America’s killing in Iraq of Qassem Soleimani, the leading Iranian military leader, said that America ‘had a right to exercise self-defence’. British troops were put on standby to be sent to the region, and the frigate Montrose and the destroyer Defender sent to the Strait of Hormuz. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, returning from holiday in Mustique, said: ‘Given the leading role he has played in actions that have led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians and western personnel, we will not lament his death.’ England secured a 189-run victory over South Africa on the fifth day of the second Test in Cape Town, levelling the series 1-1.

Charles Lawley

My despair at those who weep for Quassem Soleimani

A few hours into the new year, pro-Assad forces targeted a school in southern Idlib with a cluster bomb. The bombing took place at 11am when it was clear the school would have been busy. Five children were killed. Two of those who died were just six years old; the oldest child victim was only thirteen. Four adults were also killed. I will forever be haunted by the faces of Yahya and Hour, the innocent six-year-olds who were amongst the child victims who attended – and died at – the school run by the organisation I work for. This isn’t the first time one of our schools has been destroyed. In fact, six of our schools have been hit in as many months in Syria. Make no mistake: this is a clear co-ordinated bombing campaign against children.

Freddy Gray

Is there method – or madness – behind Trump’s actions in Iraq?

Leaders are often accused of escalating a conflict abroad in order to distract from headaches at home. On Tuesday, before Iran’s missiles were fired, Donald Trump seemed to be doing the opposite. He and his media surrogates started their now all-too-familiar yabbering about impeachment and the Democrats. It felt as if they were trying to move the news cycle away from the Iran crisis. We’re in an election year after all, and the polls suggest a large majority of American voters don’t want more war. Then Tehran launched what it is calling ‘Operation Martyr Soleimani’, which at first prompted a rare nervous silence in Washington. The White House led reporters to believe the President would gravely address the nation that night, but he postponed.

John R. Bradley

Donald Trump has just blown up his goal of isolating Iran

A blood red flag was raised over the Jamkaran mosque in the Iranian holy city of Qom last week, one normally reserved to commemorate the death of martyrs. This time, it was intended as a call to arms. ‘We have unfurled this flag so that all [Shia] believers in the world gather around it to avenge Qassem Soleimani’s blood unjustly shed,’ said the mosque’s leader. In Tehran, there were calls for bloody retribution for the air strike that killed Iranian general Soleimani — and everywhere, talk of all-out war. If it was also intended to strike the fear of Allah into the hearts of Iran’s Sunni Arab enemies, it certainly succeeded. In Riyadh, there was panic.

Rod Liddle

This bungling Iranian regime is a threat only to the Iranian people

If this is the start of the third world war, as some quivering liberal commentators seem to believe, then my suspicion is that it will be over quite quickly, such is the majestic impotence of our opponents. I realise it is unwise to underestimate one’s enemy, but come on. In the immediate aftermath of the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, a couple of cheap rockets were lobbed in the direction of the US embassy in Baghdad — they missed, succeeding only in causing a handful of casualties including, presumably, similarly foam-flecked anti-American residents, i.e. people on their own side.

Martin Vander Weyer

All forecasts are off if Iran shuts the Strait of Hormuz

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water… Late last year, a range of forecasts suggested that the likelihood of recession in the US, with knock-on effects for the rest of the developed world, had significantly diminished. Last summer, many economists were putting the chance of a substantial downturn at 50 per cent but by November, Goldman Sachs had marked it down to 24 per cent and Morgan Stanley to ‘around 20 per cent’. Underlying this shift were strong corporate earnings and consumer spending, plus rising hopes of a settlement of US-China trade tensions. Last month saw a sell-off of safety-first government bonds reflecting the mood, and the FT’s end-of-year forecasts included a confident ‘No’ to ‘Will the US go into recession?

Wednesday

Matt McDonald

Time for Tulsi

From our US edition

Tulsi Gabbard is looking pretty good right now. I mean, even better than usual. The veteran and Hawaii congresswoman has stood out from the crowded Democratic field with her peacenik foreign policy-focused campaign. And now President Trump, with his impulsive killing of Qasem Soleimani, has become the Big Bad Hawk Gabbard has described him as all along. When she entered the race in February of last year, Gabbard pledged to strike out against the military-industrial complex: 'We must stand up.

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Daniel DePetris

Trump’s Iran strategy has finally won over the ‘Never Trumpers’

As a general rule, neoconservatives and hawkish Republican foreign policy officials don’t respect President Donald Trump’s capacities as commander-in-chief. They view him as impulsive, unwise, short-sighted, and buffoonish—the kind of guy who doesn’t do his homework, spends more time on Twitter than reading briefing books and would rather pull up America’s drawbridge than act as the leader of the free world. This crop of foreign policy intellectuals are quick to refer to Trump as an 'isolationist', a favourite pejorative of the Washington policy elite, who is shattering Washington’s superpower status into a million different pieces.

John Jenkins

Soleimani’s assassination has exposed the EU’s big weakness

What a difference a day makes. When I went to bed on 2 January what seemed to be the most important issue in the Middle East was the long-term impact of the brave – if desperate – mass protests in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. Many were trying to extract some positive meaning: were they the precursor of a renewed popular drive for better governance in some of the key states of the region? Could they shake the stability of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its grip on the greater Levant? Or would they be suppressed and ignored, only to recur more virulently, as had happened so many times before? When I woke up on 3 January, the world had changed.

David Patrikarakos

Could Iran’s retaliation against the United States lead to war?

So it happened. Iran has just struck back against the United States for its killing of Quds force chief Qassem Soleimani on 3 January. The Iranians had vowed to retaliate from almost the moment that their most potent – and famous – commander was killed. Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei had vowed a “severe revenge.” Now it has come. And while it may not so far be “severe “exactly, it was undoubtedly swift and it was bold. Details are still pouring in about the strike but it is clear that Iran has struck two bases housing US and coalition forces in Iraq with more than a dozen missiles.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

So much for de-escalation

From our US edition

‘We are not looking to start a war with Iran,’ said defense secretary Mark Esper today. ‘We are looking to finish one.’ Iran just replied by firing off at least a dozen missiles at American targets in Iraq in an effort supposedly dubbed Operation Martyr Soleimani. It doesn’t mean all out war yet — but all the Trump administration’s talk about ‘de-escalating’ the situation sounds like hot air. As I write, the details of Iran’s retaliation are unclear — we don’t know if the strikes were aimed at American troops or infrastructure. Is it a face-saving measure? A decoy? Why did Iran attack Erbil and Al-Asad, rather than more obvious US bases? Have the fortified American defenses at these bases worked?

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Paul Wood

Iran begins its ‘fierce revenge’

From our US edition

Details are still coming in as I write and the facts have not been confirmed, but it seems that ballistic missiles have been fired from inside Iran at US military targets in Iraq. A statement on Iran's official news media said: 'The fierce revenge by the Revolutionary Guards has begun.’ It went on to say that ‘tens’ of ground-to-ground missiles were fired in what the Iranian military is calling ‘Operation Martyr Soleimani’. That is of course a reference to the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force and the country’s most popular general. ABC News quoted a US official as saying that the facilities hit included a base in Erbil in northern Iraq and Al Asad Air Base in western Iraq.

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Cockburn

Exclusive: the Iranian cultural sites Trump will bomb

From our US edition

Hours after Donald Trump tweeted a threat to target ‘52 Iranian sites’, some of them ‘at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture’, Cockburn met an Iranian exile source at the Moby Dick House of Kabob, Connecticut Avenue, Washington, DC. The source took Cockburn’s order and then slipped a tiny piece of paper no bigger than a grain of rice into Cockburn’s baghali polo. As baghali polo is a rice dish, Cockburn didn’t know this until he’d eaten it. It took 24 hours to recover the message. When Cockburn read it, he realized that he was holding the president’s target list.The first five targets are listed here.

Claire Fox

My clash with Alastair Campbell convinced me it’s time to hug a remainer

I confess I had butterflies doing the first BBC Politics Live of 2020. It felt like the first day back at school. Beyond Twitter spats and Christmas family banter, the festive period had been politics-free. Would I be rusty, especially as one of the other panelists was the formidable Alastair Campbell? As a former People’s Vote heavyweight, Campbell is something of an arch nemesis who has a reputation for taking no prisoners. But regardless, one of my new year resolutions is to not dwell on past enmities. I am keen to build some unity, in order to make Brexit as productive as possible.

Stephen Daisley

Boris Johnson’s dismal response to Qasem Soleimani’s assassination

Two weeks ago, I asked what kind of prime minister Boris Johnson might be and whether he could be ‘the great disruptor’ on foreign policy, defying standard practices and elite assumptions as Donald Trump has. I think I might have my answer. On Trump’s decision to take out Iranian terrorist-in-chief Qasem Soleimani, the Prime Minister was silent for two days. When he finally spoke, it was hardly worth it. Of course Johnson was right to say, given the Quds Force head’s role in the killing of thousands of civilians, ‘we will not lament his death’. He was right too to warn Tehran against escalation.

Monday

Charles Lipson

Will the Iran-US confrontation spiral out of control? Even the experts don’t know

From our US edition

Politicians and policy experts tell us, with confidence, that America’s targeted killing of Qasem Soleimani makes the world safer — or more dangerous. Take your pick. Whatever answer they give, the talking heads sound very certain. They shouldn’t be. However deep their understanding of Iran, the Middle East, and US foreign policy, nobody really knows what will happen next.The problem is simply too complex. It depends on a sequence of difficult decisions, first by Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and then by President Donald Trump, each responding to the other’s choices, each calculating the risks of going too far — or not far enough.The next decision is Tehran’s.

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Jacob Heilbrunn

Mike Pompeo’s dishonest Iran defense

From our US edition

P.G. Wodehouse once described a character as so crooked that he sliced bread with a corkscrew. Secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s behavior on the Sunday morning television shows brings to mind Wodehouse’s description. No, Pompeo wasn’t toting a corkscrew or a loaf of bread, but he offered a study in deceit. Pompeo didn’t merely reiterate the wafer-thin claim that Iran was about to pose an 'imminent' threat to American interests in the Middle East, but also claimed that President Obama and his aides had essentially been in league with the mullahs of Tehran.In responding to Jake Tapper of CNN, Pompeo was unable to explain how blowing Qasem Soleimani to kingdom come would enhance the safety of America.

Saturday

Seth J. Frantzman

Qasem Soleimani’s demise is a gamechanger for Israel

The targeted assassination of Qasem Soleimani is a game changer for Israel in its simmering conflict with Tehran. This drone strike could mean an Iranian attack on Israel in response. But whether Iran seeks to attack or not, it means that the country’s remaining allies in the region – such as Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah – will know they could meet a similar, sticky end to Soleimani. For Israel, Trump's decision to target Soleimani is a moment to celebrate. Israel viewed the Iranian Quds Force commander as a central figure behind Tehran’s threats to destroy Israel. In August, Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu gave a stark warning to Soleimani, blaming him for an attempted drone attack on Israel from Syria.

David Patrikarakos

Iran’s generals are weeping for Qasem Soleimani. But soon they will prepare to fight

It has been 24 hours since America droned Qasem Soleimani near Baghdad airport. Now both Iran and the United States are getting ready to deal with a new reality in the Middle East that has (quite literally) exploded into being. There is a mutual recognition that when Soleimani died, the old rules of the game died alongside him. What is instructive about his assassination is not that it happened, but that it took so long. After all, this was a man whose carefully posed portrait spread across Twitter every time he visited yet another of Iran’s many wars in the region. If I knew when Haji Qasem was in Syria, then the Americans surely did too.