theatlantic--2020-01-06--The Atlantic Politics Daily: It’s Beginning to Look Like 2003

My colleague Peter Nicholas has reported on how Trump has been quietly cultivating relationships with GOP lawmakers .
With less than a month before the Iowa caucus officially kicks off the 2020 primary , the pack of Democratic presidential contenders once again descends on the state .
Joe Biden has been called the national frontrunner for much of the race , even as he ’ s lagged behind some rivals in Iowa .
Bu there ’ s another force pulling voters into Biden ’ s orbit : His old-school vision to make America nice again , my colleague Elaine Godfrey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidates this year crumbled further with Julián Castro ’ s departure from the race .
But Castro looks to be returning to the campaign trail in another capacity : He endorsed Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and could act as her surrogate-in-chief in Iowa if she ’ s held up in Washington with an impeachment trial .
Rose McGowan speaks on the first day of Harvey Weinstein ’ s sexual-assault trial in New York .
1 .
“ To substitute 1619 as America ’ s true founding not only centers one original sin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sin that was also abhorrent and consequential : the genocide and subjugation of indigenous North Americans.
” Both conservatives and Trotskyite leftists have pounced to criticize The New York Times ’ 1619 Project , which focuses on slavery as America ’ s founding sin .
This heated debate should encourage readers to consider that the project ’ s reframing of America ’ s founding leaves too much out , Conor Friedersdorf argues .
2 .
“ Either President Donald Trump ’ s victory will shatter expectations and academic theories , or his defeat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reelection after being impeached .
Or won reelection but lost the popular vote again .
Or been older than 70 ( as Trump is ) .
Or been female ( Warren ) , or gay ( Pete Buttigieg ) , or Jewish ( Bernie Sanders ) .
The point of all these factoids ?
That this election year will once again test the country ’ s collective understanding of electoral politics and break every so-called rule , Derek Thomspon writes .
To become a parent in the age of unchecked climate change is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world that is becoming more unlivable each day .
But that ’ s a simplistic way to think .
Jedediah Britton-Purdy , father of an infant , writes in this moving reflection : “ The world is good , for all the bad in it—a good place .
And you are good : full of joy , born innocent .
But you are not good for the world .
When you do all the things you will do—work , play , love—you will be breaking down its systems , making it unlivable .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , personally , can do about it.
” What kind of welcome is that ?
It is a truthful one , at least , but it raises more questions .
What does it mean to teach a child to live in a time of perennial crisis , always in the shadow of loss ?
I think about trying to teach him love and wonder first , before he inevitably learns fear .
Today ’ s newsletter was written by Saahil Desai , an associate editor on our Politics team and Christian Paz , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Shan Wang , who oversees newsletters .
You can reply directly to this newsletter with questions or comments , or send a note to politicsdaily @ theatlantic.com .
Your support makes our journalism possible .
Subscribe here .

Our staff writer David Graham argues that the Iran crisis reeks of the run-up to the Iraq War. Plus: The fans of Joe Biden’s make-America-nice-again vision.
It’s Monday, January 6. In today’s newsletter: A crash landing into 2020. Plus: Reactions to this new study on economic distress and opioids abuse complicate the narrative of America’s opioids epidemic.
*
« TODAY IN POLITICS »
Iranians burn U.S. and Israeli flags as they gather to mourn the death of Qassem Soleimani. (NAZANIN TABATABAEE / WANA VIA REUTERS
January 2020 will be defined by three I’s: Iran, impeachment, and … the Iowa caucus. Here’s where things stand on each.
On Iran
Since U.S. forces, at the order of President Donald Trump, killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani last week, Americans of all ages have braced for the heightened possibility of outright war (the teens are processing with memes).
The prospect of war in the Middle East; an administration with hazy justifications for its actions; a president who doesn’t seem to know a whole lot about foreign affairs: The Iran crisis reeks of the run-up to the Iraq War, David Graham argues.
But Soleimani’s record as a terrorist kingpin has been well-known since at least the administration of George W. Bush. So why did Trump decide to kill him now?
On Impeachment
Impeachment has been functionally in hibernation, but it’s set to awaken this month for the Senate trial. That outcome looks to be as preordained as ever: Republicans are showing no signs are bucking the president, and not just because they’re fretting the wrath of his base.
My colleague Peter Nicholas has reported on how Trump has been quietly cultivating relationships with GOP lawmakers.
On the Iowa Caucuses
With less than a month before the Iowa caucus officially kicks off the 2020 primary, the pack of Democratic presidential contenders once again descends on the state.
Joe Biden has been called the national frontrunner for much of the race, even as he’s lagged behind some rivals in Iowa. Bu there’s another force pulling voters into Biden’s orbit: His old-school vision to make America nice again, my colleague Elaine Godfrey reported.
The most-diverse-ever slate of presidential candidates this year crumbled further with Julián Castro’s departure from the race. But Castro looks to be returning to the campaign trail in another capacity: He endorsed Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and could act as her surrogate-in-chief in Iowa if she’s held up in Washington with an impeachment trial.
—Saahil Desai
*
« SNAPSHOT »
(Jeenah Moon / Reuters)
Rose McGowan speaks on the first day of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual-assault trial in New York.
*
« IDEAS AND ARGUMENTS »
(Arsh Raziuddin)
1. “To substitute 1619 as America’s true founding not only centers one original sin, chattel slavery, over an earlier sin that was also abhorrent and consequential: the genocide and subjugation of indigenous North Americans.”
Both conservatives and Trotskyite leftists have pounced to criticize The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which focuses on slavery as America’s founding sin. This heated debate should encourage readers to consider that the project’s reframing of America’s founding leaves too much out, Conor Friedersdorf argues.
2. “Either President Donald Trump’s victory will shatter expectations and academic theories, or his defeat will.”
No president has ever won reelection after being impeached. Or won reelection but lost the popular vote again. Or been older than 70 (as Trump is). Or been female (Warren), or gay (Pete Buttigieg), or Jewish (Bernie Sanders). The point of all these factoids?
That this election year will once again test the country’s collective understanding of electoral politics and break every so-called rule, Derek Thomspon writes.
*
« EVENING READ »
(The Atlantic)
Hello, World
To become a parent in the age of unchecked climate change is to consciously bring a child into a world that is becoming more unlivable each day. But that’s a simplistic way to think. Jedediah Britton-Purdy, father of an infant, writes in this moving reflection:
“The world is good, for all the bad in it—a good place. And you are good: full of joy, born innocent. But you are not good for the world. When you do all the things you will do—work, play, love—you will be breaking down its systems, making it unlivable. And there is very little that you, personally, can do about it.” What kind of welcome is that? It is a truthful one, at least, but it raises more questions. What does it mean to teach a child to live in a time of perennial crisis, always in the shadow of loss? I think about trying to teach him love and wonder first, before he inevitably learns fear.
*


The Kumbaya Candidate

So far , at least , Biden ’ s appeal seems to be working .
He has been polling as the national front-runner for most of the race , though in Iowa , he ’ s polling on par with Senator Bernie Sanders and former South Bend , Indiana , Mayor Pete Buttigieg .
The 77-year-old is dominating the primary field among black voters , and a recent New York Times/Siena College Poll in six key swing states showed that Biden is the Democrat who fares best in matchups with Trump .
Biden has pitched himself as the candidate who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not only get along , but actually work together .
“ Our politics has gotten too ugly , too mean , too divisive , ” Biden told the crowd in Fairfield .
“ With this president out of the way , we in fact can begin to change the dynamic.
” He knows Republicans ; he ’ s friends with them .
“ You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends … you are seeing the talk , even the dialogue is changing , ” Biden said at a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from progressives that he was being unrealistic .
His stump speech is a long and gentle meander through a forest of feel-good-isms .
Biden talks about “ decency ” and “ honor ” and “ restoring the soul of America.
” At the event in Fairfield , Biden recalled his mother ’ s old saying about not “ denigrating people , ” getting a laugh from rally attendees when he described how she would wash his mouth out with soap when he used profanity .
Everyone in the audience is referred to as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when he ’ s feeling especially passionate , his voice wobbles in an old-timey way , like he ’ s George Bailey defending the Building and Loan to the hateful Mr. Potter .
Read : What Joe Biden can ’ t bring himself to say Biden ’ s fans get almost misty-eyed when they talk about his time in the Senate and in the Obama administration , where he cultivated relationships with Republican lawmakers .
“ He knows so many of those people , ” Patty Miller , a teacher , told me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expects Biden to bridge the partisan divide in Washington as president .
“ When he ’ s elected , and things settle down—things will have to settle down—then I think he will.
” Paul Gandy , a Fairfield lawyer who said Biden is one of three candidates he is considering , told me that he ’ d expect Congress to work much more effectively with Biden as president : “ I ’ d look for him to do what he says he ’ s going to—which is build consensus , reach across the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , have conversations with Republicans and independents , and move the nation forward.
” While it ’ s possible that Democrats could win both the White House and the Senate in 2020 , Biden ’ s critics claim that it ’ s impossibly naive to imagine that a Republican-held Senate would be eager to work with a Democratic president .
Perhaps no one should know that better than Biden himself : The Obama presidency , during which he was vice president , was marked by historic Republican obstruction , with the GOP-led Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many of the president ’ s judicial and Cabinet nominees .
It culminated in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ’ s holdup of Judge Merrick Garland ’ s nomination to the Supreme Court .

Many of Joe Biden’s fans are all in on his vision to bring Democrats and Republicans together—no matter how unrealistic it may be.
Outside the faux-barn event space in Fairfield, Iowa, the sky was foggy black, and rain had turned the long gravel driveway to mush. But despite the weather, several dozen Iowans showed up on the Saturday before New Year’s to hear from the man they believe offers a bright beam of sunlight for these rainy times.
What’s attracting these supporters to Joe Biden are his rose-colored glasses. The central allure of the former vice president’s campaign—the promise undergirding it all—is that he can unite a historically polarized nation, one whose divisions may now be further amplified by the crisis with Iran.
Biden has repeatedly suggested that, as president, he’d get members of both parties working together again to churn out legislation. Earlier this week, Biden even said that he’d consider choosing a Republican running mate. His is a gauzy vision of a bipartisan America, one that has led progressives to dismiss Biden as a naive old man yearning for a return to a past that never was. But some voters want to go back in time too. “He’d bring the country together a lot more than it is,” said Melinda Johnson, who lives in Fairfield and plans to caucus for the first time next month for Biden.
The dominant narrative says that Biden is a formidable force in 2020 because of his supposed electability—the confidence Democratic voters have that he is capable of beating Donald Trump in a head-to-head contest. But his vision of a post-Trump America was an even bigger factor for the voters I spoke with in Iowa. These supporters care about winning, but they also believe that a Biden presidency really would lessen the anger and vitriol in American politics, bringing about a return to decency and civility. Fundamentally, his voters’ sentiments underscore the choice many Democrats think they have to make in the 2020 election: Should they push for a post-Trump revolution, or simply a return to normalcy?
So far, at least, Biden’s appeal seems to be working. He has been polling as the national front-runner for most of the race, though in Iowa, he’s polling on par with Senator Bernie Sanders and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. The 77-year-old is dominating the primary field among black voters, and a recent New York Times/Siena College Poll in six key swing states showed that Biden is the Democrat who fares best in matchups with Trump.
Biden has pitched himself as the candidate who can ensure that Republicans and Democrats will not only get along, but actually work together. “Our politics has gotten too ugly, too mean, too divisive,” Biden told the crowd in Fairfield. “With this president out of the way, we in fact can begin to change the dynamic.” He knows Republicans; he’s friends with them. “You will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends … you are seeing the talk, even the dialogue is changing,” Biden said at a campaign event last spring, drawing criticism from progressives that he was being unrealistic.
His stump speech is a long and gentle meander through a forest of feel-good-isms. Biden talks about “decency” and “honor” and “restoring the soul of America.” At the event in Fairfield, Biden recalled his mother’s old saying about not “denigrating people,” getting a laugh from rally attendees when he described how she would wash his mouth out with soap when he used profanity. Everyone in the audience is referred to as “folks,” and sometimes, when he’s feeling especially passionate, his voice wobbles in an old-timey way, like he’s George Bailey defending the Building and Loan to the hateful Mr. Potter.
Read: What Joe Biden can’t bring himself to say
Biden’s fans get almost misty-eyed when they talk about his time in the Senate and in the Obama administration, where he cultivated relationships with Republican lawmakers. “He knows so many of those people,” Patty Miller, a teacher, told me in Fairfield when I asked whether she expects Biden to bridge the partisan divide in Washington as president. “When he’s elected, and things settle down—things will have to settle down—then I think he will.” Paul Gandy, a Fairfield lawyer who said Biden is one of three candidates he is considering, told me that he’d expect Congress to work much more effectively with Biden as president: “I’d look for him to do what he says he’s going to—which is build consensus, reach across the aisle, pass legislation in the Senate, have conversations with Republicans and independents, and move the nation forward.”
While it’s possible that Democrats could win both the White House and the Senate in 2020, Biden’s critics claim that it’s impossibly naive to imagine that a Republican-held Senate would be eager to work with a Democratic president. Perhaps no one should know that better than Biden himself: The Obama presidency, during which he was vice president, was marked by historic Republican obstruction, with the GOP-led Senate filibustering a slew of bills and ignoring many of the president’s judicial and Cabinet nominees. It culminated in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s holdup of Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Nor is it immediately clear what kind of bipartisan compromises legislators could actually make, because Democrats and Republicans are moving further and further apart on their top priorities. Health-care costs, an issue that ranks as the No. 1 priority for Democratic voters, doesn’t even register in the top five for Republicans, according to the Pew Research Center. And two-thirds of Democrats list climate change as a top concern, compared with 21 percent of Republicans. Such wide gulfs can’t be bridged simply with better relations between the two parties.
But Biden, on the campaign trail, doesn’t spend a lot of time talking about policy. And his supporters I talked with certainly aren’t all that focused on it. They’d love to scroll through Twitter without seeing angry rants from the president. They yearn for a four-year period where they can safely ignore the goings-on in the White House (a desire that’s likely been heightened by the developments with Iran). A President Biden would “get back to the real issues in government, not ridiculous things,” Sandy Stever, a health-care worker, told me at the event in Fairfield. “Like, why are we building walls? That sort of thing.” Simply by winning in 2020, Biden would be “restoring U.S. standing in the world … he could do that immediately,” said 71-year-old Susanna McCann, who is considering caucusing for him.
Read: Joe Biden is Schrödinger’s candidate
Other candidates, like Buttigieg, make similar appeals to unity and bipartisanship. But unlike Biden’s supporters, Buttigieg’s fans tend to voice particular policy priorities, such as their desire to create a “public option” to compete with private health insurance. It’s as though Biden is running in a completely different primary race than his Democratic opponents. While most of the other candidates are deeply enmeshed in a war of ideas—debating the merits of Medicare for All and free public college and a wealth tax on the ultra-rich—Biden’s main appeal to voters has been his summoning of a few particular sensations: nostalgia, stability, civility.
“I would really hope he’d restore a feeling of decency in the country,” Becky Shrek, a Fairfield resident, told me when I asked her what she’d want to see from a Biden presidency. “Basically, that’s it.”
This desire for kumbaya exposes the stark difference in how Democratic voters view the 2020 election. For many, especially those in the left flank of the party, Donald Trump is a symptom of a much larger problem in American politics—one that calls for new leadership and major structural reforms of the country’s economic and political systems. “If the best Democrats can offer is business as usual after Donald Trump, Democrats will lose,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told supporters at a rally in New Hampshire on Thursday. But others see Trump as the key obstacle to the nation fulfilling its potential.
At the end of his speech in Fairfield, Biden asked the voters in attendance to consider three questions before the caucus in February: Which Democratic candidate is most likely to beat Trump in November? Which of them is best positioned to help down-ballot candidates win? And which candidate can work with Republicans in Congress to “get things done”?
But there’s another question Biden didn’t ask that he may as well have: Do Democrats want a brand-new kind of politics—or something closer to the pre-Trump status quo?


theatlantic--2020-01-04--It Wasn’t the Law That Stopped Other Presidents From Killing Soleimani

This fear wasn ’ t because of America ’ s long-standing prohibition of “ assassination , ” forged during the Cold War to check the excesses of the CIA .
Successive administrations since September 11 have interpreted this ban narrowly , arguing that singling out an individual for death on the battlefield doesn ’ t really count .
The ban arose in response to covert CIA plots to , for example , kill Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar during peacetime—essentially , attempting to kill because of political differences , not in wartime self-defense , said Matthew Waxman , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Columbia University and served in the Bush administration .
The Obama administration used the term targeted killing for strikes on terrorist leaders in overseas battlefields—arguing that they fell under a right to self-defense in an ongoing war against al-Qaeda .
Not everyone is convinced .
“ These killings can not be distinguished from unlawful assassination , ” Mary Ellen O ’ Connell , a professor at Notre Dame Law School , told me .
The Soleimani killing would be no more or less legal in this context than that of a nonstate leader @ @ @ @ @ @ @ general , in uniform , for a state .
If you subscribe to the idea that targeting an individual combatant in self-defense isn ’ t the same as an assassination , then Soleimani is fair game—provided you credit Trump ’ s claim that Soleimani was plotting “ imminent and sinister ” attacks against Americans .
A State Department official on a phone call with reporters noted , “ Assassinations are not allowed under law.
” But the official argued that this wasn ’ t one .
“ The criteria is : Do you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to launch a military or terrorist attack against you ?
Check that box .
The second one is : Do you have some legal means to , like , have this guy arrested by the Belgian authorities or something ?
Check that box , because there ’ s no way anybody was going to stop Qassem Soleimani in the places he was running around—Damascus , Beirut .
And so you take lethal action against him.
” If you believe targeted killings is a sanitized term for assassinations , which have become normalized in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ illegal , then targeting Soleimani is a war crime , especially since there ’ s no formal state of war between the United States and Iran .
“ Preemptive self-defense is never a legal justification for assassination , ” O ’ Connell said .
“ Nothing is .
The relevant law is the United Nations Charter , which defines self-defense as a right to respond to an actual and significant armed attack.
” Two administrations sidestepped this debate when it came to Soleimani , not as much for legal or moral reasons as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this conflict have opted for other forms of confrontation , from proxy fights to sabotage to cyberattacks to sanctions , but they didn ’ t kill each other ’ s generals .
Now that barrier has been shattered , leaving the world to await Iran ’ s next move in a game with suddenly higher stakes .
From the Iranian perspective , it doesn ’ t much matter whether the U.S. administration considers Soleimani ’ s death an assassination or not .
He ’ s still a dead general .

Just about nobody in Washington wants to defend Qassem Soleimani—even if they condemn his killing. He was a terrorist kingpin; he destroyed the lives of countless people across an entire region for more than a decade; he had Syrian, Iraqi, Yemeni, Lebanese, and American blood on his hands. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy slammed what he called an assassination as he tweeted, “Soleimani was an enemy of the United States. That’s not a question.” Representative Eliot Engel, the Democratic chair of House Foreign Affairs Committee, decried the lack of consultation with Congress; he also called Soleimani “the mastermind of immense violence, suffering, and instability.” Much of the litany of Soleimani’s crimes through two presidential administrations prior to Donald Trump’s is well-known.
So why kill him now?
George W. Bush did not target him during the height of the Iraq War, when Iranian-supplied roadside bombs and Iran-backed militias were killing hundreds of American troops. By 2011, that toll had reached more than 600 and Barack Obama was the president; he too declined to hit the general. But at some point Trump, who came into office vowing to pull the United States out from Middle Eastern wars, decided to cross a line two war-president predecessors feared breaching.
This fear wasn’t because of America’s long-standing prohibition of “assassination,” forged during the Cold War to check the excesses of the CIA. Successive administrations since September 11 have interpreted this ban narrowly, arguing that singling out an individual for death on the battlefield doesn’t really count. The ban arose in response to covert CIA plots to, for example, kill Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar during peacetime—essentially, attempting to kill because of political differences, not in wartime self-defense, said Matthew Waxman, who directs the National Security Law Program at Columbia University and served in the Bush administration. The Obama administration used the term targeted killing for strikes on terrorist leaders in overseas battlefields—arguing that they fell under a right to self-defense in an ongoing war against al-Qaeda.
Not everyone is convinced. “These killings cannot be distinguished from unlawful assassination,” Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, told me.
Andrew Exum: Iran loses its indispensable man
The Soleimani killing would be no more or less legal in this context than that of a nonstate leader just because he worked as a top general, in uniform, for a state. If you subscribe to the idea that targeting an individual combatant in self-defense isn’t the same as an assassination, then Soleimani is fair game—provided you credit Trump’s claim that Soleimani was plotting “imminent and sinister” attacks against Americans. A State Department official on a phone call with reporters noted, “Assassinations are not allowed under law.” But the official argued that this wasn’t one. “The criteria is: Do you have overwhelming evidence that somebody is going to launch a military or terrorist attack against you? Check that box. The second one is: Do you have some legal means to, like, have this guy arrested by the Belgian authorities or something? Check that box, because there’s no way anybody was going to stop Qassem Soleimani in the places he was running around—Damascus, Beirut. And so you take lethal action against him.”
If you believe targeted killings is a sanitized term for assassinations, which have become normalized in the drone-war era but are no less illegal, then targeting Soleimani is a war crime, especially since there’s no formal state of war between the United States and Iran. “Preemptive self-defense is never a legal justification for assassination,” O’Connell said. “Nothing is. The relevant law is the United Nations Charter, which defines self-defense as a right to respond to an actual and significant armed attack.”
Two administrations sidestepped this debate when it came to Soleimani, not as much for legal or moral reasons as for strategic ones. The two sides of this conflict have opted for other forms of confrontation, from proxy fights to sabotage to cyberattacks to sanctions, but they didn’t kill each other’s generals. Now that barrier has been shattered, leaving the world to await Iran’s next move in a game with suddenly higher stakes. From the Iranian perspective, it doesn’t much matter whether the U.S. administration considers Soleimani’s death an assassination or not. He’s still a dead general.
Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic representative and former CIA analyst focused on Shia militias, said in a statement that she’d seen friends and colleagues killed or hurt by Iranian weapons under Soleimani’s guidance when she served in Iraq. She said she was involved in discussions during both the Bush and Obama administrations about how to respond to his violence. Neither opted for assassination.
“What always kept both Democratic and Republican presidents from targeting Soleimani himself was the simple question: Was the strike worth the likely retaliation, and the potential to pull us into protracted conflict?” she said. “The two administrations I worked for both determined that the ultimate ends didn’t justify the means. The Trump Administration has made a different calculation.”
Read: The Soleimani assassination is America’s most consequential strike this century
Trump-administration officials have so far declined to specify what exactly prompted that calculation, though Trump said Soleimani was planning to attack American diplomats and military personnel. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told some reporters that “the risk of inaction exceeded the risk of action,” according to The Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe.
The risks of action in other cases have restrained the U.S. from targeting military leaders—for instance, to hold on to the possibility of negotiations, or out of the belief, in Murphy’s words, that “such action will get more, not less, Americans killed.” But action is not unprecedented. “We have [in the past] gone after very, very senior military leaders; usually that would be kind of in the course of an ongoing war,” Waxman told me. During the Iraq War, a congressionally authorized state-on-state conflict, U.S. troops had a “deck of cards” of top most-wanted figures, including senior leaders in Saddam Hussein’s armed forces. During World War II, the U.S. killed the Japanese admiral who plotted the attack on Pearl Harbor.
But in both of those cases, the United States was in a formal state of armed conflict. More recently, as the U.S. has focused on fighting nonstate terrorist organizations, it has also gone after the leadership of those groups. Though Iran has since May staged a series of violent attacks against U.S. allies and interests in the region—culminating, in the past two months, in rocket attacks against U.S. or allied bases in Iraq and the death of an American contractor—no formal war has been declared. And when Soleimani was killed, he died on the soil of a U.S.-allied country, whose government then condemned the attack.
The State Department official conceded the risks in the background call with reporters. “We cannot promise that we have broken the circle of violence,” the official said. But without Soleimani, the official said, “if we do see an increase in violence, it probably will not be as devilishly ingenious.”


theatlantic--2020-01-04--The Blueprint Iran Could Follow After Soleimani’s Death

Tabatabai said that the only historical U.S. actions she could think of that approached the level of provocation of the Soleimani killing were American support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s , the U.S. military ’ s downing of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988 , and the suspected U.S.-Israeli Stuxnet cyber campaign against Iran ’ s nuclear program under George W. Bush and Barack Obama .
U.S. support for the Iraqis may have played a role in Iran supporting militants who launched deadly attacks on the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the shoot-down of the Iranian plane was a mistake and apologized for the incident , which perhaps contributed to Iran ’ s restrained response .
And the Stuxnet attack was difficult to attribute definitively , though Tehran did react by beefing up its offensive cyber capabilities .
Graeme Wood : Two questions to ask now that Qassem Soleimani is dead Now the United States has taken out arguably the second-most-powerful figure in Iran , and has claimed responsibility for the killing publicly and boastfully .
In the 40 years of conflict between the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never come before .
And that ’ s why , despite such a long track record , it ’ s so hard to predict what will happen next .
What is predictable is that Iran will seek to exact revenge , and that it will aim for elements of surprise that will throw the United States off balance .
Just because Iran wants to avoid a direct war with the United States doesn ’ t mean its response to Soleimani ’ s killing won ’ t be fierce .
The fear of that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kept previous U.S. administrations from striking Soleimani when they had the chance .
The former U.S. official Ilan Goldenberg , who has forecast what war with Iran could look like , foresees Iran breaking free of the remaining restraints on its nuclear-weapons program .
He also expects Tehran to green-light “ all-out conflict ” by Shiite militias in Iraq against American forces , diplomats , and personnel in Iraq ; Hezbollah attacks against Americans in Lebanon and targets in Israel ; rocket attacks on international oil assets or U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ potentially even terrorist attacks in the United States and around the world .
The counterterrorism analyst Charles Lister anticipates intense violence in Syria and Iraq that will pressure the United States to withdraw militarily from both countries , while the Middle East expert Jon Alterman thinks cyber warfare is coming .
“ The entire world will need to be on high alert for months or ( more likely ) years , ” he writes .
As Richard Haass , the president of the Council on Foreign Relations , noted on Thursday , war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gulf War or the Iraq War , will be fought across the region and perhaps the wider world against an array of civilian , economic , and military targets .
There ’ s a reason U.S. allies in the region , no fans of Iran and Soleimani , have reacted with considerable foreboding to this week ’ s developments .
The Saudis , for example , have urged “ self-restraint ” to avert “ unbearable consequences , ” while the Israeli government has expressed muted approval for the operation while bracing for Iranian @ @

The Iranian government’s swift pledge to avenge the Trump administration’s killing of its infamous military commander Qassem Soleimani, and the U.S. government’s deployment of thousands of additional troops to the Middle East and urgent call for Americans to leave Iraq, has left a distinct impression: that some fearsome Iranian retaliation is coming any minute and that it could quickly spiral into an all-out war between the United States and Iran that would surpass the horror of the Iraq War.
But that’s not exactly how Iran operates. The U.S. and Iran have been locked for the past four decades in a shadowy, shape-shifting struggle—what the historian David Crist memorably termed a “twilight war”—and Iran has tended to follow a certain blueprint: compensate for its inferior military capabilities relative to the United States by waging wide-ranging proxy warfare that stops short of direct conflict, allows it to maintain plausible deniability, and is carefully calibrated to advance Iranian interests at a low cost and with minimal risk.
The Iranians “don’t lash out,” Ariane Tabatabai, a scholar at the Rand Corporation who has studied Iran’s military doctrine, told me. “I suspect whatever will happen—and there’s no doubt in my mind that there will be a response”—won’t be some knee-jerk action to appease a domestic audience but will instead reflect a “more strategic, more careful, planned approach,” she said. “That’s going to keep us on our toes for the foreseeable future.”
Iran’s way of war is informed by the recognition that while it is a major regional power, it is no match for America militarily. According to the Global Firepower ranking, which the United States leads, Iran has the 14th-most-powerful military in the world, in between Brazil’s and Pakistan’s. The Iranians have a nuclear program but no nuclear weapons yet. They have a ballistic-missile program but no long-range missiles that can reach the United States. Iran has decent relations with Russia and China but no stalwart great-power allies; as one of the world’s most isolated countries, it does not have many allies at all. And while the Iranians have 523,000 active-duty forces and another 350,000 reserves, which is nothing to scoff at, their conventional military is hobbled by aging equipment, international sanctions, and restrictions on arms imports.
Tehran’s solution has been to engage with the United States asymmetrically, including influence operations and, more recently, cyber activities. At the forefront of this effort has been the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and especially its Quds Force unit, which Soleimani commanded. The IRGC has exploited internal conflicts and weak states in the Middle East, cultivating proxy forces—such as Shiite militias in Iraq, Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon—that serve as a kind of alliance network to rival America’s regional alliances.
In a recent analysis, the International Institute for Strategic Studies noted that Iranian leaders have concluded that their most potent weapon is their “sovereign capability to conduct warfare in battlefields across the Middle East through third parties,” which “has encountered no effective international response but has consistently delivered Iran advantage without the cost or risk of direct confrontation with adversaries,” which could endanger the Iranian regime.
Read: The Soleimani assassination is America’s most consequential strike this century
Indeed, a list recently compiled by the Congressional Research Service of 20 Iran-related terrorist attacks or plots against the U.S. and its allies since the 1979 Islamic Revolution shows that nearly all were carried out by proxies such as Hezbollah, by the IRGC, or by Iranian intelligence. Be it the 1996 bombing of a U.S. military housing facility in Saudi Arabia or the deaths of hundreds of American troops at the hands of Shiite militias during the Iraq War, the details and extent of Iran’s involvement in harming the United States are often sketchy.
This pattern has continued with Iran’s reaction to Donald Trump’s decision in May 2018 to withdraw the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal and to reimpose sweeping sanctions on Tehran. After a year-long period of calculated restraint in Tehran came mysterious attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and a shoot-down of an unmanned U.S. drone in June (the latter of which the Iranians uncharacteristically admitted to carrying out), a murky attack on Saudi oil facilities in September, and a rocket barrage by an Iran-backed Iraqi militia that killed an American contractor in December, leading to the latest surge in tensions.
Tabatabai said that the only historical U.S. actions she could think of that approached the level of provocation of the Soleimani killing were American support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, the U.S. military’s downing of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988, and the suspected U.S.-Israeli Stuxnet cyber campaign against Iran’s nuclear program under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. U.S. support for the Iraqis may have played a role in Iran supporting militants who launched deadly attacks on the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. But the Reagan administration claimed that the shoot-down of the Iranian plane was a mistake and apologized for the incident, which perhaps contributed to Iran’s restrained response. And the Stuxnet attack was difficult to attribute definitively, though Tehran did react by beefing up its offensive cyber capabilities.
Graeme Wood: Two questions to ask now that Qassem Soleimani is dead
Now the United States has taken out arguably the second-most-powerful figure in Iran, and has claimed responsibility for the killing publicly and boastfully. In the 40 years of conflict between the two countries, such a moment has never come before. And that’s why, despite such a long track record, it’s so hard to predict what will happen next. What is predictable is that Iran will seek to exact revenge, and that it will aim for elements of surprise that will throw the United States off balance.
Just because Iran wants to avoid a direct war with the United States doesn’t mean its response to Soleimani’s killing won’t be fierce. The fear of that blowback is, in fact, what kept previous U.S. administrations from striking Soleimani when they had the chance.
The former U.S. official Ilan Goldenberg, who has forecast what war with Iran could look like, foresees Iran breaking free of the remaining restraints on its nuclear-weapons program. He also expects Tehran to green-light “all-out conflict” by Shiite militias in Iraq against American forces, diplomats, and personnel in Iraq; Hezbollah attacks against Americans in Lebanon and targets in Israel; rocket attacks on international oil assets or U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; and potentially even terrorist attacks in the United States and around the world. The counterterrorism analyst Charles Lister anticipates intense violence in Syria and Iraq that will pressure the United States to withdraw militarily from both countries, while the Middle East expert Jon Alterman thinks cyber warfare is coming. “The entire world will need to be on high alert for months or (more likely) years,” he writes.
As Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, noted on Thursday, war with Iran, in contrast to the Gulf War or the Iraq War, will be fought across the region and perhaps the wider world against an array of civilian, economic, and military targets. There’s a reason U.S. allies in the region, no fans of Iran and Soleimani, have reacted with considerable foreboding to this week’s developments. The Saudis, for example, have urged “self-restraint” to avert “unbearable consequences,” while the Israeli government has expressed muted approval for the operation while bracing for Iranian retaliation.
Tabatabai noted that Washington, like Tehran, has traditionally been careful to not take actions that would bring it into direct conflict with the Iranians, and added that she’s been surprised by the brazen actions each country has taken in recent weeks. (Less than 24 hours after the Soleimani killing came yet another surprise: more air strikes against Shiite militias in Iraq.) The twilight war has been brought into more daylight than ever before, and the big question is whether the rules of the past four decades still apply.


theatlantic--2020-01-04--The Other Reason Republicans Won’t Cross Trump

Last July , King took his 11-year-old granddaughter to the White House to watch Trump sign a health-care bill for the first responders to the September 11 terrorist attacks .
After the ceremony , Trump scribbled his spiky signature on the speech he had just delivered ; gave it to the girl ; “ put on this angry , stern look ; and said , If I find this on eBay tonight , I ’ m coming after you , ” King recalled .
“ He ’ s down-to-earth , easygoing , friendly , ” King told me of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can be pretty profane about this guy or that .
I have to remind myself that I ’ m with the president of the United States , but I feel like I ’ m back on the street corner in Queens.
” When he ’ s in Trump ’ s company , he added , it ’ s like being with “ a stand-up comic and raconteur.
” I asked King whether his affection for Trump played a role in his no vote on impeachment .
“ I voted against Bill Clinton ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hard [ for me ] to vote against Trump ’ s .
To me , impeachment is the last possible weapon that should be used.
” Still , he said of Trump ’ s overtures : “ It does have an impact.
” Courting Congress is a part of the job that some presidents relish—others , not so much .
Clinton was a natural schmoozer .
King recalled watching the Super Bowl in the White House one year at the former president ’ s invitation .
President George W. Bush tried a similar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his few first weeks in office , Bush invited Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts to the White House for a screening of the movie Thirteen Days , which depicts how former President John F. Kennedy , the senator ’ s older brother , defused the Cuban missile crisis .
At the time , Bush needed Kennedy ’ s cooperation in passing his signature education initiative , No Child Left Behind .
It ’ s unclear whether the bonding session made a difference , but he got it : Kennedy helped engineer the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little appetite for glad-handing .
As he seemed to see it , especially at the start of his presidency , mere reason—the facts and merits of an issue—was the path toward bipartisan compromise .
In 2013 , when Obama spoke at the annual White House Correspondents ’ Association dinner , he told the crowd that people often asked him why he didn ’ t spend more time doting on Congress .
Why don ’ t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell , they ’ d ask .
“ Really ?
” Obama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Why don ’ t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell ?
” Fundamentally , Trump ’ s relationships with Congress are transactional .
He works at them continually : One Republican lawmaker , who requested anonymity to speak candidly , told me they turned down requests from Trump to join him at events simply because they had already spent so much time with him and had other things to do .
Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched the impeachment proceedings in late September , Trump has dialed up the charm .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ all-Republican entourage when he attended Game 5 of the World Series on October 27 : Senators David Perdue of Georgia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina .
( Over repeated rounds of golf and meetings since taking office , Trump has defanged Graham , who once called him a “ nut job.
” Now Graham is one of the president ’ s closest allies .
He got a private briefing on the Iran strike while golfing with Trump in Florida earlier this week—a courtesy that doesn ’ t seem to have been extended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump showed up for an Ultimate Fighting Championship match at Madison Square Garden on November 2 , he was accompanied by Representative Kevin McCarthy of California , the House minority leader , who along with Scalise was pivotal in locking down the unanimous GOP vote opposing impeachment .
The next week , when Trump went to watch the football game between the University of Alabama and Louisiana State University , his guests in the luxury box included another potential juror in the impeachment trial , Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama .

If President Donald Trump is booted from office, the catalyst looks certain to be the November election, not impeachment. The Senate has yet to convene an impeachment trial, and the recent killing of an Iranian general could further complicate lawmakers’ timing. But with a GOP firewall in the chamber holding firm, Trump’s acquittal seems preordained, even though plenty of Republicans appear uneasy about his behavior. When I’ve asked them whether there was anything wrong with Trump’s phone call pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, the answers are often evasive. “Oh, the call was very—I think it was well received by President Zelensky,” Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, a top House Republican, told me.
How has the president avoided a rebellion within his own party? No doubt congressional Republicans fear Trump because of his unshakable grip on the party’s base. That’s long been the case. But there’s another reason they’ve shielded him from impeachment: He’s wooed Republicans who can protect his interests, cultivating relationships with them in ways that are not always visible or understood. So much of Trump’s presidency seems like a jagged break from history. Yet when it comes to reaching out to his own party, his method isn’t all that different from that of his predecessors—and it’s helping him survive the biggest domestic crisis of his presidency.
An impeachment wildcard is the military strike Trump ordered against the Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani. Americans tend to rally behind a president facing looming national-security crises, and lawmakers take cues from voters. That could help strengthen Trump’s impeachment advantage within his party, and even Democrats from conservative states might be more sympathetic to the president in a Senate trial if Trump is overseeing an armed conflict with Iran.
An overture from Trump is something Republican lawmakers can’t easily spurn. They need him. An Economist/YouGov survey from November showed more Republicans believe that Trump is a better president than was Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, who won the Civil War and emancipated the enslaved. Lincoln, the first Republican president. Lincoln, who delivered the Gettysburg Address before Twitter came along and perfected the art of presidential communication.
“This should tell you everything you need to know,” Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a prominent Trump critic, told me. “When national polling shows that these folks think that Donald Trump was a better president than Abraham Lincoln, you know this is fucked up.”
Read: All about that base
Risky as it is for Republicans to buck Trump politically, Trump has built personal ties with key members of Congress that have cemented their loyalty. Read Trump’s Twitter feed or listen to his rallies, and he comes off as an unhappy man, filled with grievances and self-obsessed. But that scabrous persona isn’t what he necessarily shows Republican lawmakers, nor is it what they care to see. “Trump has been extremely good at taking care of the parochial interests of members of Congress, and they appreciate that,” former Republican Representative David Jolly of Florida told me, adding that he’s discussed the president with his former colleagues. “I talked to one member who said, I wish he wouldn’t do these things, but privately, he’s a really nice guy and he’s really good to me.”
Representative Peter King of New York is an illustrative case of a lawmaker Trump has reached out to. An independent-minded Republican who announced in November that he was retiring from Congress, King broke with his party 20 years ago and voted against impeaching President Bill Clinton. His district on Long Island isn’t necessarily Trump country: It went for Barack Obama twice before flipping for Trump in 2016. King is the sort of lawmaker whose vote Trump can’t take for granted.
And the president hasn’t, wooing him from the start: King told me that in the summer of 2017, Trump invited him aboard Air Force One as the president traveled to Long Island to give a speech about the gang MS-13. That proved to be a fateful trip. On the flight back to Washington, Trump ousted Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and replaced him with then–Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. Aboard the plane, the president confided in King about the move, asking for his thoughts on Kelly.
Last July, King took his 11-year-old granddaughter to the White House to watch Trump sign a health-care bill for the first responders to the September 11 terrorist attacks. After the ceremony, Trump scribbled his spiky signature on the speech he had just delivered; gave it to the girl; “put on this angry, stern look; and said, If I find this on eBay tonight, I’m coming after you,” King recalled.
“He’s down-to-earth, easygoing, friendly,” King told me of his interactions with the president. “He can be pretty profane about this guy or that. I have to remind myself that I’m with the president of the United States, but I feel like I’m back on the street corner in Queens.” When he’s in Trump’s company, he added, it’s like being with “a stand-up comic and raconteur.”
I asked King whether his affection for Trump played a role in his no vote on impeachment. “I voted against Bill Clinton’s impeachment and it’s not hard [for me] to vote against Trump’s. To me, impeachment is the last possible weapon that should be used.” Still, he said of Trump’s overtures: “It does have an impact.”
Courting Congress is a part of the job that some presidents relish—others, not so much. Clinton was a natural schmoozer. King recalled watching the Super Bowl in the White House one year at the former president’s invitation. President George W. Bush tried a similar approach, with uneven success. In his few first weeks in office, Bush invited Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts to the White House for a screening of the movie Thirteen Days, which depicts how former President John F. Kennedy, the senator’s older brother, defused the Cuban missile crisis. At the time, Bush needed Kennedy’s cooperation in passing his signature education initiative, No Child Left Behind. It’s unclear whether the bonding session made a difference, but he got it: Kennedy helped engineer the bill’s passage.
Obama had little appetite for glad-handing. As he seemed to see it, especially at the start of his presidency, mere reason—the facts and merits of an issue—was the path toward bipartisan compromise. In 2013, when Obama spoke at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, he told the crowd that people often asked him why he didn’t spend more time doting on Congress. Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell, they’d ask. “Really?” Obama said, as the audience laughed. “Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?”
Fundamentally, Trump’s relationships with Congress are transactional. He works at them continually: One Republican lawmaker, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told me they turned down requests from Trump to join him at events simply because they had already spent so much time with him and had other things to do.
Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched the impeachment proceedings in late September, Trump has dialed up the charm. Two potential jurors were part of his all-Republican entourage when he attended Game 5 of the World Series on October 27: Senators David Perdue of Georgia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. (Over repeated rounds of golf and meetings since taking office, Trump has defanged Graham, who once called him a “nut job.” Now Graham is one of the president’s closest allies. He got a private briefing on the Iran strike while golfing with Trump in Florida earlier this week—a courtesy that doesn’t seem to have been extended to other congressional leaders.) When Trump showed up for an Ultimate Fighting Championship match at Madison Square Garden on November 2, he was accompanied by Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, who along with Scalise was pivotal in locking down the unanimous GOP vote opposing impeachment. The next week, when Trump went to watch the football game between the University of Alabama and Louisiana State University, his guests in the luxury box included another potential juror in the impeachment trial, Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama.
Perhaps Trump’s most important relationship on Capitol Hill is with McConnell. There isn’t much warmth between them—Trump scorned McConnell’s judgment in 2017—but the collaboration has proved mutually valuable. He’s focused on one of the senator’s pet projects: stocking the federal courts with conservative judges. And Trump appointed McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as his transportation secretary, and in an administration marked by endless churn, she’s held the job from the beginning.
McConnell is now helping shepherd Trump through impeachment. It’s largely up to McConnell how Trump’s Senate trial could unfold, and the two have talked often about impeachment. Though at times the president has suggested he wants full vindication in a trial, complete with witnesses and tough cross-examination of his accusers, McConnell favors a streamlined trial that dispenses with the impeachment articles quickly. Trump seems ready to go along.
Read: Trump will happily settle for an acquittal
One bit of advice he’s given Trump, Senate aides told me, is to stave off defections by not antagonizing potential jurors. So far, Trump has listened. In October, he called Senator Mitt Romney of Utah—his most vocal GOP critic in the chamber—a “pompous ass,” but he has kept quiet in recent weeks. He even invited Romney to the White House in late November for a lunch discussion that touched on impeachment. Another person in attendance was Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican who faces a difficult reelection battle and could potentially peel off and vote for impeachment.
Executing a strategy—any strategy—is something Trump’s chaotic White House has had trouble pulling off. Maybe the difference here is that his presidency itself is at stake. In any case, it seems to have worked: he’s hewed to a conventional playbook, corralling lawmakers and building the durable alliances necessary to beat back impeachment.
With Republicans bolted to Trump—out of fear, affection, or, with Iran, potential political necessity—the drama seems played out, absent any surprise defections. Inside the White House, some officials insist they’ve already moved on—and that was even before the strike. “A month from now,” one Trump-administration official told me, impeachment “will be in the dustbin of history.”


theatlantic--2020-01-03--Trump Cultivated His Own Credibility Crisis on Iran

Typically , when the U.S. is threatened—as the Trump administration says it was with an “ imminent ” Soleimani-planned attack—voters have tended to stand behind the president .
George W. Bush ’ s approval rating jumped about 40 points , reaching 90 percent , in the days after the September 11 terrorist attacks , according to Gallup .
( The good feeling didn ’ t last : As Bush ’ s Iraq War soured , so did his approval rating , though he won a second term . )
His father , George H. W. Bush , enjoyed 74 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Middle East following the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ’ s invasion of Kuwait .
( Two years later , Bush lost his reelection bid to Bill Clinton . )
Trump , though , is a unique case .
His approval rating has never cracked 50 percent in Gallup surveys , and experts on the presidency have rated him the most polarizing chief executive in history .
Trump ’ s handling of the crisis will test the reflexive loyalty Americans show in such fraught times .
It ’ s not at all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s base , people will trust his motivations , especially when he ’ s under serious political pressure .
He is up for reelection in November , and he ’ s facing a potential impeachment trial in the Senate .
Tweets he sent out years ago show that he ’ s well aware a president ’ s popularity spikes in wartime : In 2011 , a year before Obama won reelection , Trump claimed , “ In order to get elected , Obama will start a war with Iran.
” Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tensions with Iran to suit his own needs , deliberate preparation be damned .
They see a “ wag the dog ” scenario—the term for presidents who manufacture overseas crises to divert attention from embarrassments at home .
Representative Ilhan Omar , a Democrat from Minnesota , tweeted , “ So what if Trump wants war , knows this leads to war and needs the distraction ?
” She went on to say , as other Democrats have , that Congress should intervene and stop him from escalating the situation any further .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Michigan and a former CIA analyst who served in both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations , said in a statement that the U.S. has long considered what to do about Soleimani-led attacks on its forces .
Both administrations concluded that a strike against him wasn ’ t worth the risk of retaliatory action pulling the U.S. into a “ protracted conflict , ” Slotkin said .
Americans woke today to a foreign-policy landscape that seemed forever changed , more ominous than at any point in Trump ’ s presidency .
Scenarios @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an Iranian counterattack on a U.S. embassy somewhere in the Middle East ?
Then possibly a U.S. reprisal , followed by another Iranian assault—a steady ratcheting toward a shooting war ?
But the country didn ’ t get much reassurance or a clear-eyed message about what had just happened and what to expect .
Among his tweets recounting the praise he ’ s gotten for killing Soleimani , Trump revealed he ’ s still stuck on impeachment and his own political survival .
He posted a video of Representative Russ Fulcher , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the House floor in his defense , in which the congressman said he would tick off Trump ’ s crimes and misdemeanors .
Then Fulcher stayed silent .
That sight gag , in between messages of support for the killing , is what the 45th president wanted his countrymen to see as they anxiously watched the news and wondered whether war was looming .

Updated on Friday, January 3, 2019, at 3:37 p.m. ET.
More so than any other president in the modern era, Donald Trump has made his administration a one-man spectacle. He hires and fires officials on impulse, demonstrating at every turn that the people under him are disposable and he’s the only figure who counts. Should the conflict with Iran escalate into a hot war, Trump will be the one who needs to sell Americans on the idea that it is necessary and prepare them for the sacrifice and bloodshed the nation must endure.
Yet by virtue of his own repeated misstatements and distortions, Trump arrives at this perilous moment at a decided disadvantage: He can’t assume people will accept what he says as true, because millions have concluded it never is.
Trump faces the gravest foreign-policy crisis of his tenure at a time when his credibility has been shredded. It’s not yet known how Iran will respond to the killing yesterday of its military leader Qassem Soleimani, but the country is already vowing “harsh” revenge. A conflict that has been escalating steadily on Trump’s watch is at risk of erupting into an armed confrontation. In times of war, commanders in chief need people’s trust, but for large swaths of the population, Trump hasn’t earned it. As Samantha Power, who was the ambassador to the United Nations under former President Barack Obama, tweeted this morning: “This is where having credibility—and having a president who didn’t lie about everything—would be really, really helpful.”
Read: Killing Soleimani was worse than a crime
Independent fact-checkers have painstakingly documented Trump’s untruths. The Washington Post keeps a running tally and reports that Trump’s false and misleading claims are coming with growing frequency, now topping 15,000 since the start of his presidency. While Americans celebrated the holidays, their president used his Twitter account to share misstatements both petty and serious. In an act of spite, he suggested, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had cut his seven-second cameo from a Canadian broadcast of the movie Home Alone 2. Trump tweeted that he was the one who passed a program giving veterans the option of seeing a private doctor. And he said the Obama administration had made him the target of a “coup.” Each of those claims is false.
Now Trump is using that same Twitter feed, launchpad of so many baseless attacks and conspiracy theories, to convince his countrymen that he was right to target Soleimani in a drone strike and that he acted preemptively to deter Iranian aggression.
Compounding his credibility problem is a desiccated national-security team. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, might be leaving soon to campaign for a Senate seat in Kansas. His longtime defense secretary, James Mattis, resigned last year and was replaced only this summer. His national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, has been in place just a few months—the fourth person to hold the title in three years.
Trump has demeaned and discarded multiple officials and cast doubt on their intelligence findings. During the House impeachment proceedings, Trump sought to discredit longtime foreign-policy experts working for his administration who testified that he had attempted to pressure Ukraine into digging up dirt on his political rival Joe Biden. Though he’s now touting intelligence that Iran was poised to launch more attacks on U.S. interests, the president might have undermined his own case by repeatedly questioning the intelligence community’s competence. In a memorable press conference during his 2018 summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Trump accepted his claim that Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016 elections, repudiating what his own agencies had unanimously found.
Trump’s first public response to the strike suggests that he will try to summon patriotic feeling to rally Americans to his side. After the news broke, he tweeted a picture of an American flag. This afternoon, he gave a brief televised statement at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida. His tone was in some ways conciliatory: He said he does not want “regime change” in Iran. But he also warned Iranian leaders that he is prepared to retaliate against future aggression. “We took action last night to stop a war,” he said. “We did not take action to start a war.” Trump left the room without taking questions from reporters.
Typically, when the U.S. is threatened—as the Trump administration says it was with an “imminent” Soleimani-planned attack—voters have tended to stand behind the president. George W. Bush’s approval rating jumped about 40 points, reaching 90 percent, in the days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, according to Gallup. (The good feeling didn’t last: As Bush’s Iraq War soured, so did his approval rating, though he won a second term.) His father, George H. W. Bush, enjoyed 74 percent approval in 1990 after he sent troops to the Middle East following the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. (Two years later, Bush lost his reelection bid to Bill Clinton.)
Trump, though, is a unique case. His approval rating has never cracked 50 percent in Gallup surveys, and experts on the presidency have rated him the most polarizing chief executive in history. Trump’s handling of the crisis will test the reflexive loyalty Americans show in such fraught times. It’s not at all clear that, outside of Trump’s base, people will trust his motivations, especially when he’s under serious political pressure. He is up for reelection in November, and he’s facing a potential impeachment trial in the Senate. Tweets he sent out years ago show that he’s well aware a president’s popularity spikes in wartime: In 2011, a year before Obama won reelection, Trump claimed, “In order to get elected, Obama will start a war with Iran.”
Trump’s critics suspect that he’s inflaming tensions with Iran to suit his own needs, deliberate preparation be damned. They see a “wag the dog” scenario—the term for presidents who manufacture overseas crises to divert attention from embarrassments at home.
Read: Qassem Soleimani haunted the Arab world
Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, tweeted, “So what if Trump wants war, knows this leads to war and needs the distraction?” She went on to say, as other Democrats have, that Congress should intervene and stop him from escalating the situation any further. Representative Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan and a former CIA analyst who served in both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations, said in a statement that the U.S. has long considered what to do about Soleimani-led attacks on its forces. Both administrations concluded that a strike against him wasn’t worth the risk of retaliatory action pulling the U.S. into a “protracted conflict,” Slotkin said.
Americans woke today to a foreign-policy landscape that seemed forever changed, more ominous than at any point in Trump’s presidency. Scenarios for what comes next seemed grim: an Iranian counterattack on a U.S. embassy somewhere in the Middle East? Then possibly a U.S. reprisal, followed by another Iranian assault—a steady ratcheting toward a shooting war? But the country didn’t get much reassurance or a clear-eyed message about what had just happened and what to expect. Among his tweets recounting the praise he’s gotten for killing Soleimani, Trump revealed he’s still stuck on impeachment and his own political survival. He posted a video of Representative Russ Fulcher, a Republican from Idaho, delivering a speech on the House floor in his defense, in which the congressman said he would tick off Trump’s crimes and misdemeanors. Then Fulcher stayed silent.
That sight gag, in between messages of support for the killing, is what the 45th president wanted his countrymen to see as they anxiously watched the news and wondered whether war was looming.


theatlantic--2020-01-03--The Soleimani Assassination Is America’s Most Consequential Strike This Century

Unlike bin Laden or Baghdadi , Soleimani had the power and resources of an entire state at his back—and open support at high levels of the government in the state where he was killed .
Both bin Laden and Baghdadi died in hiding and on the run ; Soleimani traveled openly in the region where his forces operated .
“ It ’ s one thing to kill someone who is considered a terrorist by everyone , including the host country , ” Abbas Kadhim , the director of the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council , told us .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ someone who is designated as a terrorist by the U.S. but not by the host country—Iraq , in this case.
” “ General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region , ” the Defense Department statement said , declaring Soleimani responsible for a series of attacks on U.S.-led coalition bases over the past several months—including one in late December that killed an American contractor .
“ We know that the intent of this last attack was , in fact , to kill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , said at a press conference yesterday morning , noting that about 100 U.S. military personnel were at the attacked compound in December , in addition to about 200 contractors .
“ Thirty-one rockets aren ’ t designed as a warning shot.
” That strike prompted U.S. strikes against five targets in Iraq and Syria where an Iranian-backed militia , Kataib Hezbollah , was operating .
The leader of that militia , Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis , who also served as an adviser to Soleimani , was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Earlier yesterday , Defense Secretary Mark Esper had told reporters that he fully expected Iranian retaliation for the strikes on Kataib Hezbollah , but that the U.S. might act preemptively , and Iran wouldn ’ t like the results .
Now further retaliation from the Iranian side seems all but inevitable , even if what form that will take is unclear .
Further U.S. responses may be equally inevitable .
“ They will strike back .
Just a question of target , ” Reuel Marc Gerecht , a senior fellow at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advocates for a hard-line policy toward Iran , told us .
“ This ends any possibility of nuclear negotiations.
” Phillip Smyth , a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who studies Iran ’ s military forces and their proxies , called the attack on Soleimani the most important decapitation strike America has ever launched , because it ’ s against a state-backed entity “ totally different than ISIS or al-Qaeda.
” “ We are talking about the core leadership of a transnational Iranian-led network , ” he told us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of fighters throughout the region and were old hands—true believers .
These were the people who were creating the future for Iran 's imperial project.
” ( The Islamic State is believed to still have perhaps 14,000 to 15,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria , and had no territory left by the time Baghdadi was killed in October . )

The U.S. attack against the top Iranian general will have far greater repercussions than the killings of al-Qaeda and ISIS leaders.
Of the most feared terrorist leaders the United States has hunted and killed this century—from Osama bin Laden to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—no death ever had the significance of the one America just dealt. The killing of Iran’s Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, in a U.S. strike yesterday in Baghdad wasn’t just the targeted assassination of a state military leader. It marked a dangerous new chapter in a roiling region Soleimani has helped shape for more than a decade, and moved the U.S. and Iran’s cycle of proxy violence and sabotage closer to outright war.
President Donald Trump did not immediately claim victory as he did for the death of Baghdadi in October. The president instead tweeted out a single image of an American flag as early reports of Soleimani’s demise circulated. The Defense Department confirmed that the U.S. military had killed Soleimani on Trump’s orders.
Soleimani has been called “the most powerful general in the Middle East today,” and the mastermind behind a strategy of backing sympathetic proxies in Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon to secure influence and attack Iran’s enemies. Through the summer and fall of 2019, as the Trump administration ramped up its financial pressure campaign on Iran after leaving the nuclear deal, Soleimani’s forces or their proxies were blamed for attacks on oil tankers near the Persian Gulf, rocket volleys against American interests in Iraq, the shoot-down of an American drone, and a strike on an oil facility in Saudi Arabia.
Unlike bin Laden or Baghdadi, Soleimani had the power and resources of an entire state at his back—and open support at high levels of the government in the state where he was killed. Both bin Laden and Baghdadi died in hiding and on the run; Soleimani traveled openly in the region where his forces operated. “It’s one thing to kill someone who is considered a terrorist by everyone, including the host country,” Abbas Kadhim, the director of the Iraq Initiative at the Atlantic Council, told us. “It’s another thing to kill someone who is designated as a terrorist by the U.S. but not by the host country—Iraq, in this case.”
“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the Defense Department statement said, declaring Soleimani responsible for a series of attacks on U.S.-led coalition bases over the past several months—including one in late December that killed an American contractor. “We know that the intent of this last attack was, in fact, to kill” Americans, Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a press conference yesterday morning, noting that about 100 U.S. military personnel were at the attacked compound in December, in addition to about 200 contractors. “Thirty-one rockets aren’t designed as a warning shot.”
That strike prompted U.S. strikes against five targets in Iraq and Syria where an Iranian-backed militia, Kataib Hezbollah, was operating. The leader of that militia, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who also served as an adviser to Soleimani, was reported killed alongside the Quds Force commander.
Read: Iran loses its indispensable man
Earlier yesterday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper had told reporters that he fully expected Iranian retaliation for the strikes on Kataib Hezbollah, but that the U.S. might act preemptively, and Iran wouldn’t like the results. Now further retaliation from the Iranian side seems all but inevitable, even if what form that will take is unclear. Further U.S. responses may be equally inevitable.
“They will strike back. Just a question of target,” Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which advocates for a hard-line policy toward Iran, told us. “This ends any possibility of nuclear negotiations.”
Phillip Smyth, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who studies Iran’s military forces and their proxies, called the attack on Soleimani the most important decapitation strike America has ever launched, because it’s against a state-backed entity “totally different than ISIS or al-Qaeda.”
“We are talking about the core leadership of a transnational Iranian-led network,” he told us. “They controlled tens of thousands of fighters throughout the region and were old hands—true believers. These were the people who were creating the future for Iran's imperial project.” (The Islamic State is believed to still have perhaps 14,000 to 15,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria, and had no territory left by the time Baghdadi was killed in October.)
Read: Everyone is getting sucked into the Iran morass
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, of which Soleimani’s Quds Force formed the expeditionary wing, has, however, been labeled a terrorist group by the Trump administration, Smyth noted, and the IRGC networks Soleimani controlled included “numerous groups that the U.S. had labeled as terrorist entities.” Despite being state-directed, these groups “use terrorism—and have used it more effectively.” They are far more powerful, Smyth added, than al-Qaeda or ISIS ever were.
This distinction will be especially important in the days to come—because it underlines how dangerous the response from Iran and its proxies could be. Ilan Goldenberg, who worked on Iran in the Defense Department under President Barack Obama, speculated on Twitter that the response might involve escalation in Iraq or missile attacks on U.S. regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
U.S. soldiers who fought in the Iraq War have bitter memories of Soleimani and the bloodshed he unleashed in the country. Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican who served in Iraq, said in a statement that Soleimani “got what he richly deserved, and all those American soldiers who died by his hand also got what they deserved: justice.” Seth Moulton, a Democrat in the House of Representatives and an Iraq War veteran who has been a vocal critic of Trump’s Iran policy, issued a statement late Thursday night calling Soleimani “an enemy of the United States with American blood on his hands.”
Yet, like others in his party, Moulton worried where Soleimani's assassination might lead: “The question we’ve grappled with for years in Iraq was how to kill more terrorists than we create. That’s an open question tonight as we await Iran’s reaction to Donald Trump’s escalation, which could ignite a regional war, with still no strategy from the Administration.”


theatlantic--2020-01-01--In Iraq, the U.S. Gets Hit Where It Hurts

While Trump and other U.S. officials have accused Iran of orchestrating the storming of the U.S. embassy compound , the extent of the Iranian government ’ s involvement remains unclear .
What is clear is that at least some of the demonstrators were aligned with Tehran-supported Iraqi militia groups , including Kataib Hezbollah , which the Trump administration says was behind a rocket attack on U.S. personnel in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk several days ago that killed an American contractor .
The U.S. military then retaliated by conducting air strikes against Kataib Hezbollah ’ s bases along the Iraq-Syria @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leading to Tuesday ’ s protests .
Read : The problem with a host country failing to protect its embassies The attack on the U.S. embassy has placed Trump in a vulnerable position in part because it raises questions about his performance as commander in chief , which is perhaps what prompted his ally in the Senate , Lindsey Graham , to try to preempt criticism on Tuesday by declaring that in sending Apache helicopters and more marines to secure the diplomatic facility , the president had “ put the world on notice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Benghazis on his watch . ''
As the situation at the embassy stabilized , Trump similarly tweeted that “ our great Warfighters ” and “ the most lethal military equipment in the world ” had been “ immediately rushed to the site , ” making his response “ the Anti-Benghazi !
” ( He wrote all this , perhaps prematurely , while protesters are still camped out around the embassy .
He also interspersed it , “ just for a little change of pace , ” with a retweet about ultimate fighting .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mark Esper announced that the U.S. would deploy about 750 additional troops to the region in the coming days .
The incident will also pile pressure on Trump because the protesters , who have vowed to remain at the embassy until all American troops and diplomats depart Iraq , are in a sense pushing against the open door of Trump ’ s resistance to being there in the first place .
The heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Iraq , the largest American diplomatic facility in the world , is a $ 750 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the U.S. military intervention to “ liberate ” Iraq .
Trump has condemned George W. Bush ’ s decision to invade the country and vowed to end America ’ s endless wars there and elsewhere in the Middle East .
The Trump administration , in fact , proposed major staff cuts at the embassy in Baghdad only weeks before it came under assault .
While Trump hasn ’ t yet reacted to this episode by announcing the withdrawal of the 5,000 U.S. troops still in the country to fight the Islamic State or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presence there , others have responded by pointing to the exits .
The drama at the embassy “ should be the final straw in our long occupation of Iraq , ” said Benjamin Friedman , the policy director at the think tank Defense Priorities , which advocates for more military restraint in U.S. foreign policy .

When Iranian student revolutionaries seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and took dozens of American diplomats hostage, it destroyed U.S.-Iranian relations and ruined Jimmy Carter politically. When Islamist militants attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in 2012, killing several Americans including the U.S. ambassador, it became the rallying cry for Republicans (including Donald Trump and his current secretary of state, Mike Pompeo), who accused Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of malpractice in their handling of national security.
So when hundreds of supporters of Iranian-backed militias breached the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday—setting fires and chanting “Death to America” as American diplomats huddled inside and the compound’s sirens howled—it was more than another spasm of unrest in the course of America’s ill-fated engagement in Iraq. It was a geopolitical gut punch to the Trump administration, conjuring the ghosts of the Iran hostage crisis and Benghazi debacle. And it was a striking reminder (as if we needed another) of just how dangerous the showdown between Iran and the United States has become as it has morphed from a narrow dispute over Trump withdrawing the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal into a series of broader confrontations across the Middle East.
While Trump and other U.S. officials have accused Iran of orchestrating the storming of the U.S. embassy compound, the extent of the Iranian government’s involvement remains unclear. What is clear is that at least some of the demonstrators were aligned with Tehran-supported Iraqi militia groups, including Kataib Hezbollah, which the Trump administration says was behind a rocket attack on U.S. personnel in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk several days ago that killed an American contractor. The U.S. military then retaliated by conducting air strikes against Kataib Hezbollah’s bases along the Iraq-Syria border and killing 25 militia members, leading to Tuesday’s protests.
Read: The problem with a host country failing to protect its embassies
The attack on the U.S. embassy has placed Trump in a vulnerable position in part because it raises questions about his performance as commander in chief, which is perhaps what prompted his ally in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, to try to preempt criticism on Tuesday by declaring that in sending Apache helicopters and more marines to secure the diplomatic facility, the president had “put the world on notice” that “there will be no Benghazis on his watch." As the situation at the embassy stabilized, Trump similarly tweeted that “our great Warfighters” and “the most lethal military equipment in the world” had been “immediately rushed to the site,” making his response “the Anti-Benghazi!” (He wrote all this, perhaps prematurely, while protesters are still camped out around the embassy. He also interspersed it, “just for a little change of pace,” with a retweet about ultimate fighting.) Later on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced that the U.S. would deploy about 750 additional troops to the region in the coming days.
The incident will also pile pressure on Trump because the protesters, who have vowed to remain at the embassy until all American troops and diplomats depart Iraq, are in a sense pushing against the open door of Trump’s resistance to being there in the first place. The heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Iraq, the largest American diplomatic facility in the world, is a $750 million testament to the colossal disaster that was the U.S. military intervention to “liberate” Iraq. Trump has condemned George W. Bush’s decision to invade the country and vowed to end America’s endless wars there and elsewhere in the Middle East. The Trump administration, in fact, proposed major staff cuts at the embassy in Baghdad only weeks before it came under assault.
While Trump hasn’t yet reacted to this episode by announcing the withdrawal of the 5,000 U.S. troops still in the country to fight the Islamic State or a drawdown of America’s diplomatic presence there, others have responded by pointing to the exits. The drama at the embassy “should be the final straw in our long occupation of Iraq,” said Benjamin Friedman, the policy director at the think tank Defense Priorities, which advocates for more military restraint in U.S. foreign policy.
Read: The flash point between America and Iran could be Iraq’s militias
As Graham tells it, the U.S. message to Iran and its proxies in recent days has not been that it is ready to retreat. Instead, it’s been that “President Trump, unlike President Obama, will hold you accountable for threats against Americans and hit you where it hurts the most.” But the protests at the U.S. embassy illustrate that Iran and its affiliates can also hit the United States where it hurts most.
That’s what’s so perilous about the fallout from the U.S. exit from the nuclear deal. From Iran’s shooting-down of an American drone in June to its attack on Saudi oil facilities in September to the march on the U.S. embassy this week, hostilities between Washington and Tehran have threatened to escalate out of control even though in theory neither party wants to be drawn into a war. They haven’t been yet, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be. On Tuesday, underscoring this danger, Trump tweeted that Iran would “pay a very BIG PRICE” for what occurred at the embassy. (After clarifying that this was a “Threat,” not a “Warning,” he wished everyone a “Happy New Year!”)
As the Trump administration continues to apply “maximum pressure” on Iran through economic sanctions and other measures in an effort to compel Tehran to strike a new nuclear agreement and curb its aggression in the Middle East, the protesters at the American embassy in Baghdad just served their own sort of notice: The United States doesn’t have a monopoly on pressure.