The U.S. military needs to strike against Iran or its proxies in the Middle East to restore deterrence, according to the most recent former commander of U.S. Central Command.
Retired Gen. Frank McKenzie argued in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday that Tehran is no longer deterred by the U.S., which it had been after the assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad four years ago this week.
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Iran supports the Houthis in Yemen, which have carried out more than two dozen attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, disrupting the international shipping industry, Iraqi militias that have attacked U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria more than 100 times since mid-October, and they back Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, both of which are engaging in combat with Israel.
By not forcefully responding to Iranian aggression in its various forms, McKenzie argued, the U.S. emboldened that behavior, and as a result, the only way to stop it will be to act in a more damaging manner than previously necessary due to that initial inaction.
“Delaying and equivocating usually means the response needed to re-establish deterrence has to be much larger than it would have been if it had been applied in a timely manner,” McKenzie wrote. “Unfortunately, it is the U.S. that is being deterred, not Iran and its proxies. To reset deterrence, we must apply violence that Tehran understands. Paradoxically, if done earlier, this violence could have been of a far smaller and more measured scale. Indecision has placed us in this position.”
“The Iranians’ strategic decision-making is rational. Its leaders understand the threat of violence and its application. It takes will and capability to establish and maintain deterrence. We were able to reset deterrence as a result of this violent couplet. The Iranians have always feared our capabilities, but before January 2020, they doubted our will,” he said, referring to the Soleimani airstrike.
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Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who served in that role while McKenzie was CENTCOM commander, told the Washington Examiner earlier this week that the U.S. response to the Houthi attacks had been “very insufficient.”
“My view has been that we need to go after the Houthis, attack the missile sites or the drone sites where they’re being launched or where they’re being stored, and inflict some punishment on them so that we can restore deterrence,” he said. “Otherwise, the Houthis are going to continue to do what they’re doing because they face no punishment.”
