I Have a Bad Feeling About This

To use the oft-scripted Star Wars-ism, I have a bad feeling about this.

Yesterday’s assassination of Iranian General Soleimani, and, yes, it was an assassination, seems to be yet another short-sighted effort of Mr. Trump to project his toughness to the world. With the State Department decimated by Mr. Trump’s policies, both internal and external, the only voices he was exposed to were those of the right-wing media and the anti-Iranian war hawks surrounding him. Who knows, perhaps Mr. Putin also weighed in on the topic in he and Mr. Trump’s latest teleconferenced confab.

I’m sure that the sycophantic voices Mr. Trump was listening to didn’t have to speak very loudly or firmly to get Mr. Trump to pull the trigger on the drone mission and, perhaps, the opening act of a much larger, more dangerous conflagration. Mr. Trump has been spoiling for a war with Iran for years, deriding and degrading the country and its leadership whenever possible. His pathological hatred of Iran is well-documented but what isn’t known is why. What has caused this illogical brinksmanship, this dangerous game of chicken? Is it personal? Does it stem from the Obama Administration quelling some of the animus between the two countries through negotiating the nuclear deal? Was a Trump Organization deal spurned by the Tehran leadership? Is this just another example of Mr. Trump doing the bidding of his authoritarian buddies, MBS and Bibi in Saudi Arabia and Israel? Is his non-policy policy merely a way of opening the door to vast reserves of that sweet, sweet Iranian crude for his fossil fuel cronies that they’ve been pining over for decades? Inquiring minds want to know.

Obviously, the Iranian leadership has no love of the United States, nor do most of the population, by most accounts. But why would they? Under U.S. pressure for the past several decades, the country has suffered greatly. Iran’s economy has stagnated under the numerous rounds of sanctions imposed by multiple U.S. administrations. It is boxed in on all sides by U.S. allies under the constant threat of retaliation for the slightest deviation from the dictates of the U.S.-led coalition. Without access to world markets to sell its products, especially petroleum, the people have suffered greatly. The people have risen up in protest only to be suppressed, in some cases violently, by an ideologically driven regime unwilling to bend. The U.S. corporate media is then gleeful to report on the human rights violations enacted on the Iranian population by a tyrannical, despotic leadership, leading to ever more calls for economic sanctions which in turn hurt the people, leading them to even more protests and the reciprocal government crackdowns. It’s not too hard to pick up on the pattern here.

Here’s the thing, though. Despite the protests of the people and the retribution heavily visited upon those in the streets, the use of extrajudicial killing to erase a national leader and hero will NOT turn the people against the Iranian government. In fact, just the opposite will likely happen. The will of the Iranian people will be even more galvanized against the United States and its allies. Iran has a standing military of well over half a million with another 300,000 or so reserves. Despite the lack of hard currency available to the Iranian government, they have been able to keep that military well-provisioned and outfitted with Russian equipment (deals with Putin’s oligarchic cohort, perchance?). The Iranian people are very proud and independent with a long history of adversity and overcoming those challenges. When faced with a direct and sustained U.S. threat, a good percentage of the population will cleave to the motherland even more tenaciously.

How will Iran retaliate for this most recent humiliation? Who knows—and that’s the scariest part of this insane brinksmanship. What does Iran have to lose? They’ve already lost so much over the past decades. It is naïve to think that they don’t already have plans and contingencies for situations such as these. I fear that Iran will go after soft targets in the region, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Anywhere populated by who they see as U.S. allies. Shipping lanes in the surrounding waters could be especially vulnerable as previously evidenced by the seizure of oil tankers. Oil refineries are a prime target as well, as seen in the attack of a few months back that was pinned on Iran. Rocket attacks throughout the region perpetrated by Iranian-backed groups organized for times just as this could easily happen. And what about cyber attacks? Purportedly, Iran has a well-trained cyberwarfare corps with code ready to attack infrastructure throughout the world. The U.S. has a vulnerable power grid (due to the neoliberal privatization of the utilities industry and the continued rolling back of government oversight, but that’s a whole other topic) that I’m sure is a very juicy target. The news coming out this morning is that Soleimani was assassinated to stave off a whole slew of coordinated attacks set to occur throughout many locations. Chances are, those plans will now definitely be carried out and then some.

To circle back to Mr. Trump, the least informed and nuanced president in U.S. history. As the three-year ordeal of Trumpism has taught us, one merely has to look back at previous Tweets to understand the mindset of Mr. Trump. He clearly has had this idea in mind for quite some time, going back to the Obama Administration, claiming that President Obama would instigate a war with Iran to assure his reelection and shore up his poll numbers. If Mr. Trump believes that his bellicosity will somehow endear him to the rational, thinking electorate and erase the mendacities for which he is currently under investigation and has been impeached for, he is sadly mistaken. Mr. Trump’s cultish base, as evidenced on the various social media and right-wing channels, are eating this up like so much leftover Christmas candy, hailing Mr. Trump as a hero, a warrior, a savior, etc. Will they continue to laud these actions when the mass casualties begin to roll in, the price of gas skyrockets and their internet connection is disrupted by the Iranian hacking elite?

Mr. Trump has often acted the part of dictator, ordering some pretty odious, illegal and unethical things to play to his base, feed his ego and supposedly make America great again. Some of these have been carried out, some that we know about haven’t been and I’m sure that there are more that haven’t been enacted that we may never know about. Was General Soleimani a “bad guy” responsible for the deaths of innocents throughout the world and American military personnel? That has been pretty well documented. Did he deserve to be assassinated? Not so much. If we use this metric to judge who should be eradicated, doesn’t this open up many world leaders to being eliminated by drone strike, assassins’ bullets, bombs, etc.? Even our own? Like I said, I have a bad feeling about this.