DIVIDED WE STAND: There was little evidence that any minds were changed by yesterday’s closed-door briefings on Capitol Hill, in which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan laid out the intelligence that prompted the United States to dispatch more ships and bombers to the Persian Gulf and warn Iran about “unrelenting force” if anything bad happens to American interests.
“I walked them through what the Department of Defense has been doing since May 3rd, when we received credible intelligence about threats to our interests in the Middle East and to American forces,” Shanahan told reporters after the two briefings, underscoring that he “acted on that credible intelligence.”
The meetings were tense at times, according to some of the participants. “I would say there was a lot of heat in that room,” Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner following the Senate briefing.
CONFIRMATION BIAS: From all reports, Democrats who fear the Trump administration is hyping the threat saw the presentation as unconvincing while Republicans who support the president viewed the threat as real and the response as prudent. In other words, each side saw what they wanted to see.
“What I’ll say today, there really has been no significant change over the last year,” said Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., after the House briefing. “It is a dangerous place. And it was before and will be in the future.”
Speaking on CNN, Garamendi warned that the administration seemed to be on hair-trigger alert. “I think it’s extremely dangerous. Things happen. We could wind up with a Tonkin Gulf situation, in which there’s a real or accidental incident of some sort or another.”
On Fox News Channel, John Barrasso, R-Wyo., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the intelligence convinced him of the need to “deter Iran from doing something stupid.”
“The information I saw is credible. It is serious and has been increasing,” he told Fox’s Neil Cavuto. “We wanted to show that we have the capacity to attack them if need be, and we have the willingness to do it if we have to. But no one wants to do that. We want them to stop the activities that they have been doing.”
IT’S WORKING: “Our biggest focus at this point is to prevent Iranian miscalculation. We do not want the situation to escalate. This is about deterrence, not about war,” Shanahan said, arguing that the aircraft carrier and B-52 bomber deployments had persuaded Iran to back off. “We have deterred attacks based on our re-posturing of assets, deterred attacks against American forces.”
Earlier in the day, Shanahan described the Iranian threat as “on hold.” Asked by reporters to clarify, Shanahan said, “There haven’t been any attacks on Americans. I would consider that a hold.”
‘A VERY DANGEROUS GAME’: In an interview on CNN, Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, accused the United States of waging economic war on Iran and said its deployment of more military assets was a risky strategy.
“Iran is not interested in escalation. We have said very clearly that we will not be the party to begin escalation, but we will defend ourselves,” Zarif told CNN’s Fred Pleitgen. “Now having all these military assets in a small waterway is in and of itself prone to accident, particularly when you have people who are interested in accidents. So extreme prudence is required, and we believe that the United States is playing a very, very dangerous game.”
Zarif also indicated Tehran is in no mood to negotiate with President Trump, who has said Iran can give him a call anytime it wants to make a deal.
“We are not willing to talk to people who have broken their promises,” Zarif told CNN. “What the United States is saying is that we make a deal, whatever we can get you in the negotiations through the deal is fine, whatever we cannot get you we’ll come back to try to get you. This is not the way serious countries deal with each other. The United States may be used to doing that with clients, but they cannot do that with Iran.”
RELATED: Washington Examiner: Mattis says diplomacy is key to solving tensions between the United States and Iran.
Good Wednesday morning and welcome to Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense, written and compiled by Washington Examiner National Security Senior Writer Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) and edited by Kelly Jane Torrance (@kjtorrance). Email us here for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list. And be sure to follow us on Twitter: @dailyondefense.
HAPPENING TODAY: President Trump is scheduled to sit down this morning with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other congressional Democrats. The ostensible purpose of the meeting in the White House Cabinet Room is to discuss “infrastructure investment.”
But the sit-down comes as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says congressional leaders are close to a two-year deal to lift spending caps and raise the debt ceiling, which would clear the way for passing a budget by the Sept. 30 deadline and avoid the return of the dreaded sequester that has kept Pentagon officials awake at night.
“A negotiated agreement with the House Democrats is the best of three alternatives, the other two being arguing back and forth over the length of a [continuing resolution] for God only knows how long or a sequester, which hits defense with about a $71 billion cut at the end of the year,” McConnell told reporters early in the day, when it looked like the deal might come together within hours. A meeting to seal the deal ended without agreement yesterday, but both sides plan to meet again soon.
NEW AF SEC: President Trump yesterday tweeted his intent to nominate another woman pilot to replace outgoing Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson.
“I am pleased to announce my nomination of Barbara Barrett of Arizona, and former Chairman of the Aerospace Corporation, to be the next Secretary of the Air Force. She will be an outstanding Secretary! #FlyFightWin.”
This isn’t the first time Barrett, 68, has been considered for the position, writes our Diana Stancy Correll. Barrett, who was ambassador to Finland during the George W. Bush administration from 2008 to 2009, was nominated to serve as Air Force secretary in 2003 but withdrew her nomination. The Arizona native is a certified jet pilot and became the first civilian woman to land an F/A-18 Hornet on an aircraft carrier in the 1980s — a time when women were barred from flying fighters or bombers.
NEW START, NONSTARTER: “Absent a fundamental change in Russia’s aggressive and hostile behavior toward other countries, the extension of New START is contrary to U.S. national security interests,” argues Michaela Dodge in an analysis for the Heritage Foundation.
“New START simply does not have the power to moderate Russia’s extensive nuclear weapons program, nor its aggressive behavior, as long as Russia sees both as in its interest,” she writes. “On the strategic forces level, while requiring U.S. force reductions in all treaty categories, Russia has not had to eliminate a single deployed nuclear warhead or deployed delivery vehicle as a result of New START. In fact, Russia was below the treaty limits in two of the three categories when the treaty came into force, allowing it to build up to the treaty limits.”
JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE OFFICE: U.S. F-22 fighter jets intercepted two Russian fighter jets and four Russian bombers near the Alaskan coast Monday in a routine encounter in which the Russian planes did not enter U.S. or Canadian sovereign airspace.
The F-22s scrambled twice, first intercepting a pair of Tupolev Tu-95 bombers and then two more bombers and Su-35 fighters in a second encounter. The Russian planes were flying in the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, which extends about 200 miles from Alaska’s western coast.
PARDON PROFILE: The wife of Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, the soldier accused of the 2010 murder of a Taliban bomb-maker, doesn’t trust a military jury to do the right thing. She says there’s a “need for civilian intervention.”
“That is the only way Matt will get justice,” Julie Golsteyn told the Washington Examiner yesterday. “My husband is heartbroken that the stewardship of the institution that he loves and has given so much to service has become riddled with corruption at the highest levels.”
A pardon from President Trump “would end the eight year long nightmare,” she told my colleague Russ Read. “[W]e haven’t heard anything from the [White House], but we would be very pleased.”
Julie Golsteyn’s comments follow reports that the White House is reviewing several high-profile military criminal cases for potential pardons on Memorial Day. The Army announced last week it would take Golsteyn’s case to trial by court-martial on charges of premeditated murder.
Army prosecutors allege Golsteyn and another soldier took a suspected bomb-maker off base, killed him, and buried him. Golsteyn says he released the suspect but set up an ambush off base in the event he went toward the Taliban’s position.
AN ‘ABDICATION OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY’: The latest retired general to criticize the president’s reported consideration of pardons for U.S. troops accused or convicted of war crimes is former Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey.
“Absent evidence of innocence or injustice the wholesale pardon of US servicemembers accused of war crimes signals our troops and allies that we don’t take the Law of Armed Conflict seriously. Bad message. Bad precedent. Abdication of moral responsibility. Risk to us. #Leadership,” tweeted Dempsey, who served under President Barack Obama.
SAVE THE TRANSLATORS: Reps. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, have introduced an amendment to the Afghan Allies Protection Act that would authorize 4,000 new Special Immigrant Visas for Iraqi and Afghan translators. A similar measure has been introduced in the Senate.
While the 2019 omnibus spending bill authorized 3,500 visas, there were no additional visas authorized in last year’s NDAA, and the backlog is continuing to grow, according to congressional staffers.
“Afghan translators are vital allies in our missions in the Middle East,” said Michael Waltz, R-Fla., one of the bill’s co-sponsors and a combat veteran. “These are people who not only stood and fought with us — they died with us protecting the United States. Unfortunately, translators are far too often victimized and endangered as a result of their service while waiting for their visas. This legislation ensures visas are available to bring our allies and their families to safety.”
In a press release, Waltz said he worked with an Afghan interpreter in 2005 and 2006 who, years later, was followed from a U.S. military base to his home. “Terrorists dragged him and his family members outside their house and beheaded them for working with U.S. forces,” he said.
OVERLOOKED HEROES: The U.S. military has changed the way it thinks about heroism and that has translated into far fewer awards for valor in the American wars of the 21st century, retired Lt. Gen. David Barno and Nora Bensahel argue in their latest essay in War on the Rocks.
“We show that the number of top awards for valor in Iraq and Afghanistan has been 12 times lower than in World War II, 6.5 times lower than in Korea, and almost nine times fewer than in Vietnam,” they write in an opinion piece titled “The other stolen valor: unrecognized heroism in our recent wars.”
Barno and Bensahel point to three factors: increased professionalism that expects bravery to be part of the job, less close-quarters combat because of asymmetric warfare, and an overreaction to the over-awarding of medals during the Vietnam War. In their essay they make a number of suggestions to rectify the situation.
N. KOREA ON BIDEN: ‘A FOOL OF LOW IQ’: North Korea is firing back after Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a tyrant during a recent speech.
“It is by no means accidental that there is nonstop comment over his bid for candidacy that he is not worth pinning hope on, backed by the jeer that he is a fool of low IQ,” said a commentary in the official Korean Central News Agency today.
“He is self-praising himself as being the most popular presidential candidate. This is enough to make a cat laugh,” it said of Biden, who it accused of slandering “the supreme leadership” of Chairman Kim. “What he uttered is just sophism of an imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being, let alone a politician.”
TURKEY COMES DOWN TO THE WIRE: Turkey is approaching a June deadline to cancel its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system. CNBC reports that Turkey must decide whether it will receive its purchase of the anti-aircraft missile system by the end of the first week of June. If Ankara follows through with the arms deal, Turkey will be ousted from Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program and will not receive 100 of the fighter jets it has ordered. It will also face U.S.-imposed sanctions.
The United States is worried that using the Russian anti-aircraft missile system would jeopardize F-35 aircraft used by NATO allies. To solve the problem, America has proposed that Turkey purchase Raytheon’s U.S.-made Patriot missile defense system so it can remain in the F-35 program. It’s unlikely there’s an opportunity for an extension, and sources at the State Department said the offer is final when asked if the deadline could be pushed back.
BETO ON USE OF FORCE: In his town hall broadcast on CNN last night, Democratic presidential hopeful and former congressman Beto O’Rourke held forth on his theory of when it is appropriate to go to war.
“Only when it is absolutely the last recourse for our country. We should never put a U.S. service member’s life on the line unless it is the only thing that we can do to protect the lives of our fellow Americans,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash.
“If you think we need to enter more wars right now, now that we’re in Afghanistan and Syria and Yemen and Somalia and Iraq and a half-dozen other countries, where we are taking the lives of others and putting the lives of U.S. service members on the line, then let’s go for it,” O’Rourke said. “But if we think that we can resolve these challenges peacefully without using military force or putting our foreign policy on the backs of 19- and 20-year-old women and men in the greatest armed forces the world has ever known, then let’s pursue that.”
O’Rourke called Barack Obama the “greatest president of my lifetime, as far as I’m concerned,” and said the nuclear deal he negotiated with Iran was “an imperfect agreement, but a hell of a lot better than starting yet another war.”
The Rundown
Washington Examiner: ‘Slap in the face’: Daughter of CIA officer killed after 9/11 slams ‘American Taliban’ release
Defense News: Democrats’ Pentagon Budget Bill Would Curb Trump’s War Powers
AP: Lawmaker says Iran doesn’t want direct or proxy war with US
New York Times: U.S. Says the President Of Syria May Be Using Chemical Agents Again
Air Force Times: Why the Air Force is investigating a cyber attack from the Navy
New York Times: Trump Administration Could Blacklist China’s Hikvision, a Surveillance Firm
Bloomberg: Lockheed’s Troubled Helicopter ‘on Good Path,’ Pentagon’s Buyer Says
Forbes: Ten Reasons A U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier Is One Of The Safest Places To Be In A War
USNI News: Shipbuilders Studying Adding More Punch to Littoral Combat Ships
AFP: Britain Faces UN Defeat Over Chagos Islands
Washington Examiner: Rolling Thunder rides off into the sunset
Washington Examiner: Parents of late West Point cadet may use his sperm to produce grandchild, judge rules
We Are The Mighty: Why Mattis was obsessed with a certain day in history
Calendar
WEDNESDAY | MAY 22
9 a.m. 999 Ninth St. N.W. Center for American Progress 2019 Ideas Conference. Speakers include: Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.; Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kan.; Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif.; Gov. Michelle Grisham, D-N.M.; Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, D-Wis.; former U.N. ambassador and national security adviser Susan Rice; and former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams. capideas.org
9 a.m. 4477 Aquia Creek Ln., Fairfax. George Mason University and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association hold the 2019 Critical Issues in Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I) Symposium. Speakers include: David Sanger, author of The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age; Paul “Rusty” Thomas, program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Tactical Technology Office; and Oki Mek, chief product officer at the Health and Human Services Department’s Division of Acquisition. www.afcea.org/event
10 a.m. 2172 Rayburn. House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on “Searching for Solutions in Syria: The Trump Administration’s Strategy.” Witness: James Jeffrey, special representative for Syria engagement and special envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in the State Department. foreignaffairs.house.gov
10:15 a.m. Senate Foreign Relations Committee CLOSED hearing on “The Reconciliation Process in Afghanistan.” Witness: Zalmay Khalilzad, special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation in the State Department. foreign.senate.gov
2 p.m. 2167 Rayburn. House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee hearing on “Review of FY2020 Budget for the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Programs.” transportation.house.gov
2:45 p.m. 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. Hudson Institute discussion: “Under Pressure: The Trajectory of U.S.-Turkish Relations.” Speakers include: Svante Cornell, director of the American Foreign Policy Council’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute; Alan Makovsky, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress; Lisel Hintz, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies; and Blaise Misztal, fellow at Hudson. www.hudson.org
THURSDAY | MAY 23
9 a.m. Pentagon Briefing Room. “Change of Office Ceremony” for Rear Adm. Charles W. Brown, who takes over as U.S. Navy Chief of Information, or CHINFO.
3 p.m. 51 Louisiana Ave N.W. The National Security Institute and the Federalist Society co-host a symposium examining two questions regarding Syria policy: “Does Congress Need to Weigh In?” and “Stay In, Get Out, or Triple Down?” Speakers include: Jennifer Daskal, associate professor of law at American University; retired Maj. Gen. Charles Dunlap, executive director, Center on Law, Ethics and National Security; Jeremy Rabkin, professor of law, George Mason University; Norm Roule, former national intelligence manager for the Iran office of the DNI; and Dana Stroul, the Washington Institute. nationalsecurity.gmu.edu
FRIDAY | MAY 24
11 a.m. 214 Massachusetts Avenue N.E. Heritage Foundation event: “How Actual F-35A Pilots Assess the Aircraft.” Featuring JV Venable, senior research fellow for defense policy, and Thomas Spoehr, director of the Center for National Defense. Livestreamed at www.heritage.org.
MONDAY | MAY 27
All day. Memorial Day federal holiday. Daily on Defense will not be published on this day as America honors the memory of those who have given their lives fighting the nation’s wars.
THURSDAY | MAY 30
1:30 p.m. 1152 15th Street N.W. Center for a New American Security “Fireside Chat” on the FY 2020 defense budget with David Norquist, performing the duties of the deputy secretary of defense. Moderated by Susanna Blume, senior fellow and deputy director, CNAS’s Defense Program. www.cnas.org/events
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Our biggest focus at this point is to prevent Iranian miscalculation. We do not want the situation to escalate. This is about deterrence, not about war. We’re not about going to war.”
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, after briefing members of Congress on the threat from Iran to U.S. troops and diplomats in the Middle East.
