Qasem Soleimani

Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel Saturday night represents a dangerous escalation for three reasons. The first is its scale, some 300 drones and missiles. Second, it marks the first time the Islamic Regime has launched a lethal attack on Israeli territory from Iran itself, rather than through proxies. Most important of all is the combination of the first two: a major attack launched against Israel from Iranian territory. Although Israel, the US, the UK and, surprisingly, Jordan managed to shoot down nearly all the incoming drones and missiles, it was the thought that counts. And it was a very dangerous thought. Within hours, the Iranian attack changed the region’s strategic landscape.

The recent events in Afghanistan have made us think we know what regime collapse looks like. Militias roaming the streets, soldiers scrambling to helicopters, up against the clock to escape the anarchy below. But in some instances, the reality can be far more mundane. Across from Afghanistan’s own border, another Islamic theocracy — Iran — is struggling to manage a dangerous water shortage. As one hardline Muslim regime arose in Central Asia this year, another could yet be at the very beginning of its fall. In July, during the worst drought in half a century and scorching heat of over 120°F, protests erupted in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan as a water crisis that has been slowly bubbling for decades hit boiling point.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. President Biden may have promised that ‘America is back’, but the United States’ decades-long shadow war with Iran never left. Last month’s reciprocal strikes in Iraq and Syria, and a further 10 rockets launched at a US base in Anbar Province last week, were notable only for their normalcy. Far from being Biden’s ‘Hour One Crisis’, this kind of geopolitical hair-pulling via high explosives is all too normal in the post-Iraq War, post-Arab Spring hash of the Middle East. Two American contractors and at least one Iraqi Shia militiaman are now dead. More casualties are likely to come in the weeks ahead. This first Biden counter-strike was no more than violent messaging, perhaps primarily to a domestic audience.

In a roundabout way, coronavirus may have been responsible for the deaths of two American service personnel and a British soldier in a rocket attack in Iraq on Wednesday. This triggered a prompt US military retaliation — American forces launched strikes at five sites in the early hours of this morning — and the prospect now is of an escalation while the rest of the world is consumed with a global health crisis. What's going on? It was Gen. Qasem Soleimani’s birthday on Wednesday and a Shiite militia — probably Kataib Hezbollah — chose to mark the occasion by firing Katusha rockets at Camp Taji, the US base just north of Baghdad.

This article is in The Spectator’s February 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. ‘Get lost ayatollahs!’ ‘Death to Khamenei!’ The bravery of the anti-government demonstrators in Tehran is incredible, each one knowing that their actions could end with a bullet or a noose. I reached one through their favored encrypted app, Telegram, the interview arranged by a leading Iranian opposition group outside the country. ‘Elias’ — not his real name of course — is 25 and a postgraduate politics student in Tehran. The security forces were everywhere, he told me; everyone was very afraid. Still, he went on, ‘There is only one way this ends: toppling the regime.

What a difference a week makes when it comes to the western media narrative on the Middle East. When countless millions were mourning Gen. Qasem Soleimani in what was possibly the biggest funeral in history, we were told that Iran and its leadership had never been more united. Now, amid smaller protests inside the country against the mistaken downing of a Ukrainian airliner with mostly Iranian students on board, we are told that the Iranian people are rising up en masse to overthrow their hated leaders. Have the famously sophisticated Iranian people really become so absurdly fickle overnight? There is another explanation for the self-contradictory nonsense we are being told. Whatever happens in the Middle East, there is only one constant.

Last week, like millions of others across the globe, I emerged blinking and stumbling from my fallout bunker to assess the destruction wrought by World War Three. There were a few surprises in store. Nukes had failed to rain from the sky. Critical infrastructure remained intact. Rationing was not yet in force. People still weren’t going to see Cats. World War Three, historians will note, consisted of: an assassination, a poorly organized funeral, the histrionic launching of a few sketchy rockets, an Everest of bad tweets and the downing of a passenger plane. But one thing remained as permanent as the second law of thermodynamics: all of this was Donald Trump’s fault.

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.