Cables From The Diplomatic Frontlines - US strikes against Iran: retaliation to date, targets missed and opportunities foregone, and the delusion of leveraging Pakistan against Iran.

US retaliation against Jordan attacks.

• Back on January 28, the terrorist drone strike against the US military post at tower 22 in northeastern Jordan (not too far from Al Tanf garrison in southeastern Syria) had resulted in the death of three American servicemen.

• The organization that took responsibility for this attack - the Kataeb Hizbollah (part of the umbrella group, Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI)) - is known to be funded by the Iranian regime.

• Back then, we outline the range of the most plausible options available to Biden when it came to America’s response to the Jordan attack:

• 1) Major strike campaign against Iran and all of its (active) proxies in the region.

• 2) Limited strike campaign against Iran, and a serious campaign against Kataeb Hizbollah.

• 3) Exclusive focus on Kataeb Hizbollah (and maybe a few other groups) - Iran is spared.

• Since then, it is now clear that the mix of second and third option was taken - Once again, Iran largely avoided a direct retaliation.

• Most of the casualties were absorbed by Kataeb Hizbollah - most notably, there was a high-precision air/drone strike on a senior KH leader in Iraq.

• But on this occasion, the US response was not exclusively limited to the Iran-backed militia either.

• The foreign special forces - the Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was also targeted by the US.

• (side note: although, unlike the Suleimani air strike in January 2020, this particular campaign didn’t result in any IRGC casualties at the highest level of leadership. Naturally, and given the long run-up to the strikes, it seems unlikely the IRGC would have left too many guys sitting around at locations targeted by the US. Perhaps the slow rollout was also a deliberate tactic by the Biden campaign to provide an indirect escape route for senior leaders - avoiding further cycle of loss and escalation)

• So in that sense, Iran was targeted as a country - but not as a territory.

• Major military targets in Iran, major logistical nodes, military-industrial production sites were left unscathed: and they were left untouched just when we hear reports that Iran supplied 400 ballistic missiles to Russia (mostly, of medium range Zolfoghar and Fateh types - and this is understandable, longer-range missiles are reserved to target Israel/US bases in the region (for whenever such a need is to arise)).

• In addition, it is not clear as to what extent Kataeb Hizbollah sustained any real injury.

• Sure, few senior leaders were indeed targeted - but there is simply no good reason why the US didn’t aim to wipe them out (or at least/in practice, their organizational/logistical/military capabilities) completely.

• There was also an opportunity to launch air strikes against thousands of key Iranian military targets/military-industrial production sites.

• This (without any ground-based invasion) would have set Iran back many years, would act as a strong deterrent, and would weaken Iranian capacity to arm Russia and its regional proxies in the Middle East.

• And instead of focusing on these limited practical campaigns, some foreign policy strategists in DC are fully delusional mode - sharing wild and baseless ideas around using the Pakistan-Iran conflict to America’s advantage.

• Such baseless and muddled thinking from a few hawks that accuse the Biden administration of weakness towards Iran (and plenty of solid subject-matter is indeed there to back this up) hurts the more legitimate (and limited in scope) debates around precision air strikes to target Iran directly.

The folly and fantasy of leveraging Pakistan’s recent conflict with Iran.

• The primary (legitimate) debate and discussion around Iran strikes revolves around the nature of the US response, and what should be the ideal list of targets.

• In the meantime however, some DC-based strategists have suggested leveraging Pakistan’s recent direct clashes with Iran as an opportunity of potential new leverage against Iran.

• As in: the US is already formally de facto allied with Pakistan, and there is a huge amount of influence over Pakistan’s ruling generals - let’s push them to join us against Iran…

• (side note: so much so that there is now some credible evidence to former PM Imran Khan’s assertion that the generals essentially complied with the US pressure to remove him.)

• This is of course some real delusional thinking..

• The suggestion that Pakistan would extend/amplify its conflict and clash with Iran to gang up on them with the US, is just utter nonsense..