Iranian officials are blundering as they try to counter President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign without triggering a retaliation, a congressional foreign policy leader says.
“They are actually miscalculating,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman James Risch told the Washington Examiner. “They are not properly weighing what the tolerance is for what they’re doing.”
Iran shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone early Thursday that Pentagon officials said was flying in international airspace, one week after Iranian forces detonated magnetic mines above the waterline of two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The bloodlessness of the incidents could indicate that Iran is calibrating its tactics to harm the United States without provoking a military response, but Risch suggested the country’s leaders have misjudged Trump’s posture.
“You have a president of the United States who does not want to go to war with these people,” the Idaho Republican said. “Now having said that, I’ve had lengthy conversations with him, and he is absolutely dedicated to keeping the American people safe, the American interests safe, and he knows what he has to do in his role as commander in chief.”
U.S. forces have been on alert since early May, when intelligence reports indicated that Tehran was planning attacks on American personnel in response to tightening sanctions on the regime’s oil and nuclear industries. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Iraq last month, where he reportedly delivered a warning directed at Iranian leaders that any attack that caused the death of an American would provoke Trump to retaliate.
Last week, Pentagon officials announced that Iranian forces had fired on a U.S. drone near the Gulf of Oman and Iran-backed fighters had downed a U.S. drone in Yemen earlier this month.
“Obviously, if an American gets killed, we’re in a whole new world,” a GOP congressional aide told the Washington Examiner. “But it’s not clear how much longer we can let Iran keep plucking our drones out of the sky with no response. That’s two in the last few weeks.”
Trump was ambiguous about his plans Thursday. He referred to the shootdown as a “big mistake” by Iran but allowed that a rogue official may be responsible for the incident.
“I have a feeling that it was a mistake made by somebody who shouldn’t have been doing what they did,” Trump told reporters.
Iranian leaders have taken Pompeo’s warning as a sign that attacks that don’t kill Americans would be not trigger a military response, according to some lawmakers and regional analysts.
Jonathan Schanzer, a senior vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is one. “But I think that taking out an American drone in international airspace, I think may have been perhaps just a step too far,” he told the Washington Examiner.
The incidents are intended to weaken Trump’s pressure campaign, perhaps by startling European allies and other powers into intensifying their efforts to protect the regime from the effects of U.S. sanctions.
“They’re trying to split our coalition, they’re trying to split the West,” Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee for Europe, told the Washington Examiner.
If Risch is correct that the Iranians are “miscalculating,” that may be a sign Trump’s team has failed to communicate effectively with the rogue state, according to a Democratic member of the Foreign Relations panel.
“I think it’s important that the administration communicate clearly to Congress and the American people what is our strategy, what are our red lines, and what are our off ramps,” Delaware Sen. Chris Coons told the Washington Examiner. “What’s our strategy for engaging our allies and for clearly communicating to Iran what our red lines are? I don’t think they’re clear.”
Risch maintained that words alone won’t do the job. “A lot of times words don’t mean as much as actions, and they’ve gone along for years, done the things that they do, and really caused significant damage to other countries, to our allies, and really it hasn’t been [met with] a military response,” he said. “But that just can’t go on.”
