If the US hits Iran harder, be ready for blowback

By Hal Brands

If the Pentagon hits Iran hard, will Iran back down or fight back?

That’s a critical question as Washington wages its latest Middle Eastern war, in response to attacks by Tehran’s legion of lethal proxies. The answer can be informed by revisiting what happened four years ago, when the US — following another spate of Tehran-backed attacks — escalated matters dramatically by killing Qassem Soleimani, the notorious commander of Iran’s Quds Force.

Today, many hawks say the Soleimani strike proved that Iran doesn’t want a showdown, so dialing up US attacks on Tehran’s interests is the best way of securing its restraint. The real lesson, however, is more complicated: It can certainly pay to punch Iran, but only if the US is ready for the counterpunch.

The Soleimani killing occurred against the backdrop of a decades-long US-Iran rivalry, and amid a spike in tensions during the presidency of Donald Trump. In 2018, Trump withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran nuclear deal) and began pummeling Tehran with sanctions. Iran responded by getting violent.

In June 2019, Iran shot down a US reconnaissance drone; in September, it carried out missile and drone attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure. In December, Iranian proxy groups launched escalating attacks against US military facilities in Iraq that resulted in the death of an American civilian contractor ; on New Year’s Eve, Iranian-backed “demonstrators” invaded the US Embassy compound in Baghdad. In early January 2020, Soleimani was traveling in the region to rally his troops for a bigger wave of attacks. But US intelligence pinpointed his location, and just after he landed in Baghdad, a drone-fired missile ended his life.

The strike was a sharp, unexpected blow, which surprised Iranian and American observers alike. It was Trump’s effort to cut through a familiar tangle of problems.

Then as now, Iranian proxies were waging war against America’s presence in the Middle East, while Tehran hid behind a veil of deniability. Then as now, an American president didn’t want a major conflict but needed to restore deterrence.

Trump went for shock value, targeting Soleimani — a man whose role combined the duties of spymaster, special operations chief and shadow foreign minister — to demonstrate the vulnerability of Iran’s top leadership. For good measure, the US killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a militia leader who was Soleimani’s right-hand man in Iraq.

The strategy worked, in a sense. Tehran lashed out after Soleimani’s killing, raining missiles on al-Asad air base in western Iraq (where a sizable contingent of US personnel was stationed) and then accidentally shooting down a civilian airliner amid the hair-trigger tensions. But Iran’s actions came after an interval sufficient for US intelligence to see what was coming, and for the Pentagon to evacuate some forces before the air base attack. And after that strike produced many injuries (mostly concussions) but no fatalities, the Iranians quietly signaled that they weren’t looking for any more trouble.

Overblown fears of “World War III” notwithstanding, the immediate crisis ended. If Iran’s leaders aren’t eager for conflict with the US today, that’s presumably because they remember how badly the last round turned out for one of their own.

But the Soleimani story also involves two other key points.

First, Iran didn’t stay deterred for long. In March 2020, two US soldiers were killed in an attack by Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group in Iraq (the same one suspected of involvement in last month’s deadly strike on American forces in Jordan). By early 2021, attacks on US forces were intensifying, as Tehran also plotted to assassinate high-level American officials. Killing Soleimani helped bring one crisis to an end — but it brought only a momentary pause in Iran’s ongoing struggle with the US.

Second, Trump didn’t avoid a bigger war by much. Although there was some speculation Iran had tried to miss US forces at al-Asad, the more likely explanation is that Washington just got lucky. Had a few missiles landed in slightly different places, the Pentagon might have been dealing with dozens of deaths instead of dozens of concussions. Had that occurred, the Trump administration was reportedly considering a much larger military campaign inside Iran — just the sort of conflict Trump had hoped to avoid.

Today, the US is trying to restrain Iran and its proxies in another confrontation. Among its options are strikes aimed at Iranian personnel in Iraq and Syria, against Soleimani’s successors atop the Quds Force, or perhaps even within Iran itself.

Such tactics could potentially help manage the present crisis, by reminding officials in Tehran — as Trump did four years ago — of how existentially overmatched they might be in a showdown with a superpower. But don’t assume such attacks will prevent Tehran from seeking revenge or bring more than a temporary respite.

As Soleimani’s death reminds us, the present crisis is just one round of a protracted strategic rivalry. If the US intends to hit Iran harder, it had better get ready for Iran to hit back.