I have a good idea of what motivated this presidential tweet on Wednesday.
Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq. If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 1, 2020
First off, that tweet came just an hour after Trump’s scheduled intelligence briefing. We can be confident, especially in the context of Trump’s “information” reference, that his intelligence briefing team directed his attention towards a near-term Iranian plot.
But what of the “sneak attack” reference?
That almost certainly refers to the Iranian Quds Force’s employment of Iraqi militias. Iran has recently unleashed its Iraqi Kata’ib Hezbollah proxy to conduct escalating attacks against U.S. military bases in Iraq. Two Americans were killed in one of those attacks, and others were wounded. In turn, Wednesday’s intelligence brief likely says something like: “NSA/CIA reporting leads us to assess that Iranian IRGC-controlled proxies are preparing to conduct an attack on U.S. interests in Iraq. We assess that active targeting is likely to include U.S. military forces and positions, and/or U.S. diplomatic persons and positions.”
Still, it’s not all bad news.
Iran has come to believe Kata’ib Hezbollah is its most useful deniable element for attacks against U.S. interests in Iraq. That’s because Kata’ib Hezbollah’s leader died in the U.S. strike which killed Qassem Soleimani (thus giving the group its own independent reason for attacking U.S. interests), but also because the group is a reliable Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps puppet. It knows how to follow orders.
Yet Iran must now reconsider that calculation in the context of Trump’s warning.
After all, Trump is letting Iran know that if Kata’ib Hezbollah or another group under IRGC control now attack Americans, Iran will be held as ultimately responsible. This will undermine Iran’s willingness to follow through on these planned attacks in fear of risking direct U.S. retaliation. And while that retaliation will likely become necessary at some future point, with Iran severely hit by the coronavirus, it can ill-afford an escalation showdown with the United States at this moment.
One final point: If Iran and/or its proxies do attack our interests, U.S. retaliation should be directed at targets inside Iran rather than inside Iraq.
