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Word salad with all caps

Peak wingnut was a lie.

I personally stopped the public option…

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Not all heroes wear capes.

What fresh hell is this?

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Also, too.

How has Obama failed you today?

‘Forty-two’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

The Math Demands It!

The revolution will be supervised.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

This is a big f—–g deal.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Wetsuit optional.

I showered with Rahm and all I got was this shitty blog.

This is how realignments happen…

Naturally gregarious and alpha

Hot Air and Ill Informed Banter

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

We still have time to mess this up!

Nevertheless, she persisted

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Iran

Iran Is Far From A Nuclear Weapon

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I’ve been writing this now since 2012 or earlier, but reporters and editors don’t care to learn about the uranium supply line and the processes that form it into a nuclear weapon. Or they like sensationalized clicks better. So here it is again.

The IAEA defines what it calls a “significant quantity” of enriched uranium as 25 kg of U-235 in enriched uranium. That’s approximately enough for a nuclear weapon, although it varies with the weapon design. The IAEA needs an arbitrary number like that for reporting on its inspections. It’s a quick rule of thumb. (If you click that link, you’ll see others writing about it in 2012.)

Because the United States has withdrawn from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, Iran nuclear agreement), Iran has been ramping up its production of low-enriched uranium. That’s a few percent of U-235. You need 90% or more to make a nuclear weapon.

Yesterday, the IAEA’s latest report on Iran was released, with numbers, and oh boy now the reporters and editors can show us they can divide!

The low-enriched uranium that Iran has produced contains more than 25 kg of U-235. It would have to be further enriched to produce bomb-grade uranium. Then it would have to be formed into the proper shapes and explosives and electronics added to make it into a bomb. One bomb. One bomb would have a slight deterrent effect, but it’s not good for much else. In fact, announcing it for that deterrent effect would simultaneously paint a target on Iran.

I’ve seen two headlines this morning that ignore all that in favor of whipping up war fever. It doesn’t help that there are think tanks pushing this line, and that the Trumpies have been working with them hand in glove.

So here they are:

Business Insider: Iran has stockpiled enough uranium to produce a nuclear weapon in the latest sign Trump’s strategy has ‘failed miserably’. The last part is right, anyway.

New York Times: Iran Crosses a Key Threshold: It Again Has Sufficient Fuel for a Bomb. At least their subhead is better: So far, the evidence suggests that Iran’s recent actions are calculated to pressure the Trump administration and Europe rather than rushing for a bomb.

There’s no doubt Iran could build a bomb if they wanted to. The fact that they signed on to the JCPOA and that they haven’t built one is good evidence that they don’t want to. Let’s not convince them otherwise.

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Cowards in Academicals

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Babson College, previously known to me primarily as a center of Isaac Newton fandom in the Boston area, has shown all the moral courage and commitment to discourse one would find in a pail of slops.

The backstory: First, Trump announced that he might target Iranian cultural sites in any escalating conflict.

Cowards in Academicals 1

Cowards in Academicals

In response, Babson’s director of sustainability, Asheen Phancy, mused on the Book of Faces that perhaps Iran’s ruler should counter by tweeting out “a list of 52 sites of beloved American cultural heritage that he would bomb.”

That bit of snark got picked up by a Boston bro-sports site that likes taking aim at what it calls SJWs — bro-code for people who think beating on the poor or structural racism are bad things.  From there it got into more mainstream news outlets (where have we seen this game before?) and from there, as The Boston Globe reports, “within 48 hours he was suspended and then lost his job.”

The apologia for the move:

[a consultant for the Association of G(overning Boards of Universities and Colleges] Larry Ladd said colleges have to look out for the rights of the students, faculty, and employees, but also must ensure that the institution’s reputation and culture are protected. If Babson officials thought that Phansey’s post ran counter to its values, it had good reason to fire him, Ladd said.

“He had a right as an individual to make the post; he doesn’t have a right to have a job with an employer that doesn’t like that,” Ladd said.

IOW: the firing is (likely) legal, but that don’t make it right.

Babson ain’t commenting yet.  But as something of a Newton guy, I’ll note that for a college founded by someone obsessed with Sir Isaac, my man Izzy wouldn’t have survived long if his college had not been willing not to notice his anti-Trinitarian views (not to mention his very odoriferous alchemy lab tucked against the wall of the Trinity College chapel.  This is cowardice, plain and simple, and another tiny surrender to the forces of thug-tyranny in our culture.

Feh.

In that vein, the Twitter thread that begins with this:

“I study genocide. It’s been a theme in my academic endeavours for nearly 30 years. More accurately, I study the conditions in the lead up to genocide, be they cultural, social, political, economic, etc… 1/n”

has left me…even less happy…

And prince that I am, I choose to share such sweetness and light with all of y’all.

Open thread.

Images: (The pretty illusion) Jan Both, Ruins by the Sea, before 1652

(Reality) Imperial War Museum Collection Ruins at Ypres in the Sunlight, 3rd Battle of Ypres, (Passchendaele) 1917.

 

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Annals Of Lawlessness

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This is the new normal in Trump’s America:

An Iranian student planning to attend Northeastern University was removed from the country overnight Monday in defiance of a court order, his lawyer said, and a federal judge said Tuesday there was nothing that he could immediately do.

And in case you are wondering exactly what threat the fearsome Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein Abadi, 24 years old, posed to the United States…consider this:

According to the legal filing, Hossein Abadi was admitted to Northeastern for the 2018-2019 academic year and submitted his visa application in 2018. After a background check that took nearly a year, the State Department issued Hossein Abadi a student visa last week, the petition says.

HE HAD A VISA.

The US State Department, not exactly a hotbed of radical Islamic activism, granted him one after an exhaustive inquiry.  And still, CBP agents stopped him at Logan, and then defied a federal judge’s order not to deport him until a hearing could be held. They lied to the judge about the deportation, asserting that he was being kept in the country when he was already on an Air France flight to Paris.

Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said Hossein Abadi had been put on an Air France flight out of Logan late Monday night. It was not immediately clear why he Hossein Abadi was removed in spite of the judge’s emergency order that he be detained here and brought to court Tuesday morning.

It’s pretty fucking clear, I’d say: CBP agents, operating under the accepted lawlessness that flows to and through their organization from the Oval Office on down, don’t see themselves as bound by anything so 2016ish as the rule of law.

What adds to my fury is this:

“There seems to be some history of CBP ignoring district court orders, which should concern the court,” Doyle said during the hearing. She asked that Hossein Abadi be returned to the US, but the judge said there was little he could do now that the student was gone.

“I don’t think they’re going to listen to me,” Stearns said.

How about starting by holding every agent involved, and their supervisors, in contempt. Throw them in jail. Fine the shit out of them. I’m sure that Barr’s “Justice” Department will pry them loose fast enough, but put at least a little bit of consequences into the equation.

Annals Of Lawlessness

This is why Trump — and every Republican in elected office everywhere in this country — needs to go. The spectacular corruption and egregious crimes grab the headlines, but it’s the daily acts of cruelty, and the brick-by-brick destruction of US governance in every domain that will leave us bereft.

Salt their fields.

Image: Unknown artist, Shoki (The Extermination of Evil), 12th century.

 

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What Is This “Re-Establish Deterrence” They Keep Talking About?

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I have a short piece up at Inkstick Media. It’s short enough that I won’t quote it here, except to say that I have found the claims that the Trump administration killed Qassem Soleimani to “re-establish deterrence” annoying in multiple dimensions.

Besides, Inkstick is a new enterprise, trying to make this stuff more understandable, and I support that goal. If you like what I write here, you’ll probably like Inkstick. Go ahead, give them some clicks!

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Bloomberg Reports That the “US Probes If Russia Targeting Biden in 2020 Election Meddling”: YA THINK?!?!?!!?!?!

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Today in water is wet reporting:

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are assessing whether Russia is trying to undermine Joe Biden in its ongoing disinformation efforts with the former vice president still the front-runner in the race to challenge President Donald Trump, according to two officials familiar with the matter.

The probe comes as senior U.S. officials are warning that Russia’s election interference in 2020 could be more brazen than in the 2016 presidential race or the 2018 midterm election.

Part of the inquiry is to determine whether Russia is trying to weaken Biden by promoting controversy over his past involvement in U.S. policy toward Ukraine while his son worked for an energy company there.

YA THINK?!?!?!?!

As I delineated way back in September when The New York Time‘s Ken Vogel was peddling his agitprop about Hunter Biden and Vice President Biden with a “I’m just asking questions here…” smirk, the Russians started this disinformation and agitprop based influence campaign against Vice President Biden in 2014. Because they thought that he was likely to run for president in 2016 and they were starting their campaign to dirty up every potential candidate tied to President Obama’s administration and that administration’s actions regarding Russia.

The RIA-Novosti, a Russian state backed news outlet, excerpt that Paula Chertok reported on back in May 2019 and posted above is from May 2014. It also includes allegations against Hunter Biden, Vice President Biden, and then Secretary of State Kerry’s step-son. There was informed speculation in 2014 that both Vice President Biden and Secretary Kerry were considering presidential runs in 2016. This initial piece of agitprop and disinformation, casually placed in a Russian state backed news media article, forms the basis for the Black PSYOP that I’ve delineated and written about here over the past several months. A disinformation and agitprop laundry that includes the Republican members of Congress, especially those involved in the impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives, members of the US Senate, and Rudy Giuliani’s OANN documentary.

There can be no doubt that Russia is not just continuing its political warfare campaign, as part of Putin’s undeclared war against the US, leveraging information warfare, cyber operations, and other active measures in 2020 to effect the 2020 campaign, but that the bullshit story about the Bidens and Ukraine is central to it. It is nice to see that both the news media and the US Intelligence Community are now focused on this reality, but it is unfortunate that they are late to the game.

Open thread!

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Iran Fires On US Airbase

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Things are still happening. Here’s a selection of tweets.

I’ll add more in the comments as they show up.

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The Levantine Problem Set: Some Light(ish) Reading

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Bill Arnold in the comments to BettyC’s earlier post asked for some short reading about Iran. While they’re no longer posted on an outward facing website at USAWC, I’m attaching the three cultural assessments I did on 1) the Syrian Civil War, 2) Iran and Hezbullah, and 3) Iraqi sectarian violence. These were all done between spring 2013 and spring 2014. They are unclassified open source cultural assessments prepared by my office, when I had an office, at USAWC in support of various US Army and DOD elements that were dealing with these issues. They’re a bit dated now, for instance, Ahmedinijad is no longer Iran’s president, but they should provide what Bill is looking for.

USAWC_Culture_Ops_Syria_Brief_Final

USAWC_Culture_Report_Iran_Hezbullah_Shia_Near_Abroad_Final

USAWC_Cultural_Operations_Report_Politicization_of_Iraqi_Identity_Final

You can also find my article about the strategic complications of Iran’s human geography at this link. This was published by The Modern War Institute at West Point in August 2018 and is rooted in earlier work I had done for US Army and DOD elements.

Update at 9:05 PM EST

Figured I’d add one more. This is the preliminary write up – just the facts ma’am style – of the tribal history and social study I designed, directed, oversaw, and conducted in central Iraq in 2008. This initial write up was produced at the request of the senior State Department official who ran our brigade combat team’s embedded provincial reconstruction team. I gave him a courtesy briefing of what we’d been finding and he asked if I could write it up ASAP as he wanted to send it back to the Secretary of State as soon as possible. I have no idea if it ever got to Secretary Rice. Regardless, here you go.

HTT_Mada’in_Oral_History_Findings_BCT_Release

There will be a test later…

Open thread!

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Iran’s Action On The Nuclear Agreement

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A lot of claims are flying around about Iran’s actions with regard to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Some things are not yet clear. Here’s the official statement and interpretation by Mehr News:

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, in the fifth step in reducing its commitments, discards the last key component of its operational limitations in the JCPOA, which is the “limit on the number of centrifuges.”

As such, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear program no longer faces any operational restrictions, including enrichment capacity, percentage of enrichment, amount of enriched material, and research and development.

From here on, Iran’s nuclear program will be developed solely based on its technical needs.

Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA will continue as before.

If the sanctions are lifted and Iran benefits from its interests enshrined in the JCPOA, the Islamic Republic is ready to return to its commitments.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) is obliged to take the necessary steps and arrangements in coordination with the President.”

US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled Washington out of the JCPOA in May 2018, and reimposed “toughest ever” sanctions against the Islamic Republic in defiance of global criticism.

In response to the US unilateral move, as well as the European signatories’ failure to safeguard Iran’s economic interests in the face of US sanctions, Tehran rowed back on its nuclear commitments step-by-step in compliance with Articles 26 and 36 of the JCPOA, but stressed that its retaliatory measures will be reversible as soon as Europe finds practical ways to shield the mutual trade from the US sanctions.

As a first step, Iran increased its enriched uranium stockpile to beyond the 300 kilograms set by the JCPOA.

In the second step, Tehran began enriching uranium to purity rates beyond the JCPOA limit of 3.76 percent.

In the third phase, after the Europeans failed to meet a 60-day deadline to meet Iran’s demands and fulfill their commitments under the deal, Iran started up advanced centrifuges to boost the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium and activated 20 IR-4 and 20 IR-6 centrifuges for research and development purposes.

In November, Iran began injecting gas into centrifuges at the Fordow plant as part of its fourth step away from the JCPOA under the supervision of the IAEA.

Iran will continue to cooperate with IAEA inspections. This is important, because it keep us informed of what is happening in Iran’s nuclear complex. Iran remains within the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which is their commitment not to build nuclear weapons.

Worth requoting from above:

If the sanctions are lifted and Iran benefits from its interests enshrined in the JCPOA, the Islamic Republic is ready to return to its commitments.

This has been Iran’s position all along. They have acted in a measured and predictable way. In fact, they have done less than they might have; a number of experts expected today’s announcement to be that they were enriching uranium up to 20% U-235, which would have been worse than that they are removing limits on numbers of centrifuges.

There are fine points that are still not clear, like what will happen to the Arak reactor and to the international cooperation they have been participating in to convert their nuclear installations to peaceful use.

Here are the initial tweets in a couple of threads from people involved in the negotiations and implementation of the JCPOA. Worth reading in full.

 

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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Iran’s Response: Unconventional and Most Likely Embarrassing

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Cole muses:

Given the asymmetry in the types of military power between the US and Iran, as well as the ability to wield it, Iran’s response to yesterday’s strike that killed Suleimani and Muhandis, and tonight’s strike near Taiji (Taiji is where Abu Ghraib is for those wondering about where Taiji is – it is the northernmost of the agricultural districts, or qadas, that ring Baghdad and separate Baghdad Province from the surrounding provinces), will undoubtedly be unconventional. But it is important to keep in mind that an unconventional response doesn’t mean an unconventional use of military power. The Iranians, like all states, have other elements of national power that they can leverage and use to respond. We refer to these elements of national power as the DIME-FIL (Diplomatic, Informational, Military, Economic, Financial, Intelligence, and Legal). The Iranians also have a well developed and effective cyber operations capacity. And the cyber domain, the tools used to operate effectively in it, and the cyber operations themselves are all very effective ways of utilizing the non-military forms of power.

As we consider what the Iranians might do, we need to move beyond the low hanging fruit of attacks by their proxies on US and our Coalition partners in the region. Or attacks on the petroleum sector in our regional partners that would spike oil and gas prices. I’m not suggesting these won’t happen, I’m sure there will be some of them, but these are obvious and we can plan for them, to manage them, and to mitigate them. There are also less obvious targets and less obvious weapons and tools that the Iranians can use to strike back.

This past fall DHS, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Arlington, VA Police Department participated in a table top simulation, dubbed Operation Blackout, focusing on the 2020 election. They were the Blue Team (the good guys). The opposing force, or Red Team (the bad guys), were a group of white hat hackers. The Red Team were not permitted to hack the actual election in the simulation, they couldn’t hack machines, voting systems, anything like that. So what did they do? They hacked everything else. And, as a result, within the simulated world of the exercise they created so much chaos that martial law was declared by the person on the Blue Team playing the president in the exercise and the 2020 election, within that notional world, was cancelled. You can read the Red Team’s write up of the exercise here.

In early 2018 I prepared a strategic analysis on Russia’s active measures campaign. I wrote:

Putin’s cyberwarfare has also targeted actual American infrastructure. Russian for cover officials have been tracked mapping US critical physical infrastructure, such as the communication and power transmission grid. This was in support of a cyberwarfare campaign to infiltrate and compromise another important American center of gravity: the US power generation and transmission grid. Putin’s ability to weaponize information and the platforms where American’s get their information combined with his ability to bring down all or portions of the US power grid should have every national security professional very, very, very worried. Putin’s cyberwarriors have already tried to create a response through planting false social media stories of actual fake news reports about a foreign terrorist attack on the US energy sector, an ebola outbreak, and a riot in response to a police shooting. All of which never happened. Imagine what happens when Putin starts turning parts of the US power grid off during extreme weather events while at the same time he’s spreading disinformation made to look like actual news reports or official municipal, state, and/or Federal responses to the disaster he’s created. This is the threat we face.

Now imagine what happens when the Iranians start doing the things that I described above or creating the type of chaos that the Red Team created in the 2020 election simulation. And not in or just in New York or DC or LA or Seattle or Miami or Atlanta or Chicago, but in more suburban and rural areas. In red states that have no where near the state and local capabilities to respond. Imagine what happens when they hack into banks and the financial service sector and start stealing financial information and manipulating the markest. Imagine what happens when they release the Signals Intercepts they have of US elected and appointed officials, as well as those of people running major corporations or the news networks and newspapers.

And this is where the embarrassment comes in. If you want to strike back at the President, you do so in a way that gets under his skin. Skin that he demonstrates daily on his Twitter feed is exceedingly thin. The President is noted for spending hours speaking to world leaders, his outside advisors and friends on an unsecured phone from the White House residence each night, or from one of his properties when he goes to Mar a Lago or plays golf at his clubs, presents a target rich environment all on his own. The Iranians have a target rich environment given the President’s well documented poor Op-Sec and Info-Sec practices. The Iranians have a target rich environment given Rudy Giuliani’s poor Op-Sec and Info-Sec practices. The Iranians have a target rich environment because Jared Kushner communicates with Muhammed bin Salman on WhatsApp, which is  not secure. The Iranians have a target rich environment in the largely wide open US information and cyber domains. And they have the ability to exploit weaknesses in those domains to leverage power, other than military power, across the DIME-FIL. And they will leverage those capabilities to wage an unconventional war against the US and one of the strategic objectives will be to embarrass the President. And that embarrassment will be both an end in itself and done to goad him into badly overreacting out of anger, which will then provide the Iranians with further opportunities to wage their unconventional campaign.

Open thread!

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And A Lagniappe…

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The AP is reporting another US drone strike in Iraq:

Another airstrike almost exactly 24 hours after the one that killed Soleimani hit two cars carrying Iran-backed militia north of Baghdad, killing five people, an Iraqi official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. The Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces confirmed the strike, saying it targeted one of its medical convoys near the stadium in Taji, north of Baghdad. The group denied any of its top leaders were killed.

I hope that every American in Iraq is taking really good care of their personal security; they are all targets now.

And I really hope against hope that the millions of Iraqis and Iranians in the crossfire don’t get further grief added to the tally of misery they’ve experienced for decades now.

And A Lagniappe...

And finally, I’ll note that war when pursued by sober and prudent leaders, who define their goals, identify strategy and tactics that can plausibly lead to those ends, and enact an ongoing process that can deal with what happens when any plan makes contact with the opposition is still a wasteful, tragic, destructive and always contingent and hugely risky proposition.

And then there is the GOP, and the whole feckless troupe of Trumpanzees.

Fuck.

Here’s a John Prine song that seems way too on point today:

 

Image: Peter Paul Rubens, Massacre of the Innocents, between 1611 and 1612

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Breaking: The US Has Struck Against the Iranian Militia In Iraq Killing Both Ktaib Hezbullah’s Leader and Quds Force Commanding General Qassem Suleimani

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I cannot emphasize enough how significant this is! Major General Suleimani was not just Iran’s point man in Iraq, he was also coordinating Iran’s proxy forces in Syria and Lebanon. When Suleimani arrived in Syria in 2013 he took control of the theater on behalf of Iran, its Syrian client Assad, and Assad’s other benefactor Putin, which is what initially turned around the fortunes of Assad’s forces. Suleimani was, arguably, the best strategist in the region who was native to the Middle East. Dexter Filkins wrote a long profile of him in 2013 for The New Yorker.

Reuters is now reporting that the US is responsible for the strike that killed Suleimani and Muhandis.

What we don’t know yet, what we will not know until they inform us through their actual response, is what the response from Iran will be. For that we have to wait.

Update at 8:50 PM EST

As I’ve now had a bit of time to digest the news, here’s a bit more developed initial analysis:

My initial take regarding the killing of Suleimani is that this decapitates Iran’s capabilities in the Twelver Shi’a sphere of influence they were trying to build from Iran through Iraq and Syria into Lebanon in the short term. Suleimani was their theater commander, specifically coordinating the proxies in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. It is also my professional opinion that he was the best strategist in the region who was native to the region. So a major blow to Iran’s, as well as their proxies, immediate capability. Suleimani was also very powerful back in Iran. There were mutterings he might succeed Khameini as Supreme Leader despite not being an ayatollah.

This strike will also enrage the Iranians and provide the Iranian government with an internal opening for influence and propaganda to rally support for the Iranian state among a domestic Iranian population that may be wavering. So it will likely retard reform in general and attempts at democratization in specific in the short to medium term. Especially if there is immediate Iranian response and/or escalation to today’s attack and a US response to Iran’s actions that can be used by the Iranian government to reinforce its standing with the Iranian people.

Finally, I don’t see why anyone in the Iranian government would talk to anyone in the US government at this point while the current administration is in place. The President, his senior officials, and surrogates have made it clear that they really aren’t interested in talking. Last week Putin announced  that he’s not going to go along with the sanctions regime against Iran any longer, which further reinforces to Iran that they don’t need to talk to us as they have Putin to leverage as a patron. I also expect that Iran will sell their oil to the Chinese because Xi could care less about our sanctions. There is no way to squeeze the Iranians economically as the government is impervious to the pain and has ways to sell its oil to ease that pain. You can find my take on why making war in Iran would be strategic malpractice unless we were prepared for total war and even then it isn’t a good idea at West Point’s Modern War Institute.

Open thread!

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The Assault on US Embassy Baghdad Has Ended. For Now…

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Over the past couple of days Iranian backed Shi’a militia in Iraq, which describe themselves as Islamic Resistance, have attacked the heavily fortified US Embassy in Baghdad in what appears to be an attempt to besiege or occupy it or parts of it. It is important to keep in mind that US Embassy Baghdad is a large and heavily fortified compound. Perhaps the most heavily fortified diplomatic compound that we or anyone else has anywhere. The damage that was done by Ktaib Hezbullah and Nujabaa was largely done to buildings and structures around the perimeter. That doesn’t make the assault on the facility any less frightening or dangerous for the US diplomatic and Interagency personnel that live and work within the fortified embassy.

The Washington Post’s Baghdad Bureau’s Mustafa Salim is now reporting that the assault and attempted siege or occupation is over.

There are two outstanding questions: 1) what happens now? and 2) why did this happen. To answer the first, the quick reaction forces of the 100 Marines that were sent midday yesterday and the initial quick reaction companies from 82nd Airborne Division that were mobilized shortly after that are en route. The 3rd Brigade Combat Team/82nd Airborne Division (3BCT/82ndABN – the Panther Brigade) is the US’s designated rapid reaction brigade, but it is partially deployed to Afghanistan right now, so it is unclear just how much of the BCT is available if they have to deploy an entire brigade combat team. I would also expect the State Department’s Regional Security Officer (RSO) is conducting crisis action and contingency planning, as well as wargaming scenarios with his or her staff, as well as with counterparts from the Department of Defense. I expect that a Non-combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) contingency plan is being prepared in case the assault on the embassy is restarted.

The second answer is provided by Salim:

What Salim is reporting is that the Iranian theater leadership decided that the US was responsible for the emerging Iraqi displeasure with the Iraqi government, its ties to Iran, and to Iran’s presence and actions in Iraq. This displeasure also appears to once again be breaking along tribal and sectarian lines. One of the major ongoing problems in Iraq that leads to instability is not just the tribal or sectarian divide, but the divide between the Iraqis that never went into exile and the Iraqis that did and came back. Especially those Iraqi Shi’a that went into exile in Iran, came back, and have been running the government since the US’ Coalition Provisional Authority empowered them to form the majority coalitions in successive governments. I spent almost six months conducting between 40 to 50 interviews with both Sunni and Shi’a tribal and religious leaders (often the same people as many sheikhs are also imams) across central Iraq in the summer and fall of 2008. With the exception of some of the sub-sheiks or sheiks of very small, rural tribes, all of the sheikhs and imams I interviewed, including and often especially the Shi’a ones, made it very clear that they did not like and did not trust the Shi’a political leaders that went into exile in Iran and had been empowered by being given control of the Government of Iraq (GOI). It was during this time that then Prime Minister Maliki, leading a coalition government with a Shi’a majority made up of leaders, like Maliki, who had gone into exile in Iran, began to telegraph that he was going to move against the Sawha (Awakenings movement) and Sons of Iraq (the tribal militias we were training and partnering with). These tensions have never been resolved, have begun to bubble over again, and Iran decided it was a threat to its influence in Iraq and needed to change the narrative. And the collateral damage from the retaliatory air strike this past week provided the Iranians with the opening they needed.

Now we wait to see if cooler heads can and will prevail.

Open thread!

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A Few Thoughts on the Attack on the Saudi Oil Facility

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While we all wait to actually see something that resembles actual evidence, as opposed to speculation and assertions, of who is responsible for Saturday’s attack on the Saudi oil facility, I think there are several things to keep in mind. The first is that the administration in general and the President, the Secretary of State, and the US Special Representative for Iran do not have any real credibility in any of their public statements. You will undoubtedly remember that all three of them went all in on Iran being responsible for the two rounds of tanker attacks in port in the UAE and just underway off the UAE’s coasts earlier in the summer. You’ll notice that those assertions were not only quickly contested by the ship owners and the UAE. And you have also probably noticed that all three stopped talking about them shortly after the initial round of public bluster. So until or unless someone with some credibility comes out and provides some verification that the Iranians actually conducted Saturday’s attack on the Saudi refinery, all assertions from the administration should be taken with a very large grain of salt. And this goes even more for anything the Saudis state publicly, as well as the Israelis. Both Muhammad bin Salman and Bibi Netanyahu have their own reasons for wanting to place the blame for this on Iran. And both would really like the US to fight Iran for them to the last American Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine, DOD and Service civilian, and contractor. Is it possible that Iran is responsible? Yes it is. What we don’t know right now is how plausible or probably it is.

What I think is going to happen here is that the President will bluster a bit more on Twitter or in press gaggles about Iran, though, apparently, the Special Representative has told Congressional staffers that the President is still open to engagement with Iran. So I expect that we’ll see a replay of what happened with the two rounds of tanker attacks from this past summer. Several days of Presidential bluster on Twitter and in press gaggles about Iran being responsible and what the US could do, followed by the Secretary of State and the US Special Representatives trying to both back up the tough talk, while doing whatever it is they’re doing. If no evidence is actually ever presented, or contrary evidence comes out, then the whole thing will just be dropped.

I do not think we’re going to see a US military response. A one off strike, either lobbing a couple of missiles or a US Air Force or Naval aviation strike, would be both tactically and strategically pointless. All it would do is rally the just attacked Iranian populace to support the Iranian government. As I’ve written about here, as well as in more professional publications, an invasion of Iran would be strategic malpractice. Moreover, as I’ve written about here and elsewhere, we simply do not have the military resources right now to actually increase our military operational tempo, let alone add a third theater of war to the Afghan and Iraqi ones we are already operating in. And there’s another reason an American response is unlikely: this wasn’t an attack on Americans or American infrastructure. As far as we know so far from the reporting, no Saudis were hurt or killed. Certainly no Americans were. So any attack on Iran here would not be justifiable, it would be preemptory. Not that I think the President or the Secretary of State actually care about such things as Just War Theory. It is also hard to convince Americans to support going to war to protect Saudi oil refineries, so even the domestic politics of this would be a very difficult needle to thread.

There’s a final dynamic at work here that I think is very important, which is that the Iranians are in control of this situation, not the President, not the Secretary of State, not Muhammad bin Salman, and not Bibi Netanyahu. They also have the President’s number. They know he doesn’t want to actually get into any more wars in the Middle East and Central Asia and, in fact, wants to get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible. They also don’t give a damn about the Trump Doctrine. The Iranians have no desire to treat the President fairly and from their perspective they’ve gotten nothing but “or else” from the US for over 40 years, with, perhaps, the exception of how President Obama treated them in the run up to and during the JCPOA negotiations. The open ended “or else” threat of the Trump Doctrine is a hollow threat for Iran. As a result, the Iranians are actually calling the shots here, not the President or anyone else. Whether the President, Secretary Pompeo, the Special Representative for Iran, or anyone else advising them recognizes this reality is something I cannot speak to.

Finally, for those looking for other resources, both subject matter experts and reporters, on the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iran, I recommend the following.

Open thread!

A Few Thoughts on the Attack on the Saudi Oil FacilityPost + Comments (70)

The President’s Operational Security Failure

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I want to just follow on to Cheryl’s post about the President’s operational security failure on Twitter earlier today. What the President did today, despite his standing outside the White House and saying to a reporter that he had a right to tweet out the imagery, was not declassification of the geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) imagery that he tweeted out. If that had been the case, then the original classification markers would be visible, they’d be struck through, and there would be a time and date stamp along with standardized language that the imagery had been declassified as of X time today. Instead, as you can see in the image in Cheryl’s post, there is a black rectangle in the upper left hand corner, which is most likely covering the classification code. In this case that is most likely TS/SCI/NOFORN – Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information/No Foreign Distribution. Though it could just as easily be UNCLASS/FOUO  – Unclassified/For Official Use Only. We know some of the provenance of the GEOINT the President tweeted, because everyone in the Intel Community began scrambling to cover their tuchases, which the President had exposed and hung way out the window for everyone to see. The President received the imagery during a briefing earlier today.

What Cheryl described is clearly what happened here. The President had someone on his staff, most likely his caddie Dan Scavino, who is currently serving as the Assistant to the President-Director of White House Social Media Communications and tweets as/for the President, bring an unsecure smart phone into a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) and take a picture of this classified information so he could tweet it out. Whomever took the picture, either at the President’s direction or their own initiative because they realized what they were doing was sketchy, placed a black bar over the classification markings, then loaded the image up so it could be tweeted out. Bringing an unsecure phone into a SCIF and taking pictures of anything in the SCIF is the type of thing that gets one suspended, one’s clearance stripped, and one prosecuted for stealing classified information.

As I stated above, this is not actually declassification. Here’s Brad Moss, whose law practice focuses on national security, clearance, and classification issues:

So what we have here is data spillage (emphasis mine):

Data spillage is the transfer of classified or sensitive information to unaccredited or unauthorized systems, individuals, applications, or media. A spillage can be from a higher level classification to a lower one. The data itself may be residual (hidden) data or metadata. Spillage may result from improper handling of compartments, releasability controls, privacy data, or proprietary information.The trend towards increased information sharing has weakened access controls, giving users without a need-to-know access to large volumes of sensitive or classified data. Malware that propagates via removable media has increased the risk of large data transfers outside the network. The risk of data spillage is a problem largely because of inadequate end user security awareness, unmanageable networks, and poorly implemented data policies.

The bigger issue is that anyone who has a clearance (hello!) and encounters this information (hello!) is, unlike the President, potentially liable for accessing compartmented information that they do not have a need to know. Unlike the President, no one else in the US has an Office of Legal Council memo from 1973 that places them above the law.

If you’re wondering how this could be the case, how someone with a clearance who was just scrolling through Twitter, reading Balloon Juice, or watching the news when this comes up can get in trouble, but the President can just put classified information out there, claim he has the right to do it, even if it hasn’t been formerly and properly declassified, and he faces no jeopardy and the rest of us with clearances do, it is because THE RULES WERE NOT CONCEIVED OF AND WRITTEN WITH THE CURRENT PRESIDENT IN MIND!!!!! NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM!!!! The assumption was, based on historic performance of previous presidents, that NO FUTURE PRESIDENT WOULD BE THIS STUPID AND CARELESS!!!!

As Cheryl indicated, what the President tweeted out was the good stuff. No one is supposed to know we have that good of resolution wherever and whenever we want. And because the Iranians and others – friends and foes alike – know when the test failed, combined with the shadows and other static imagery in the GEOINT, they’ll be able to work out where we were looking from.

This is not just a major Operational Security (OPSEC) failure by the President, it is also a major counterintelligence (CI) breach by the President.

As we have been since November of 2016, we are off the looking glass and through the map!

Open Thread!

* Just a quick note, because I was actually getting caught up on the news shortly after the President tweeted this out, I saw it. I then sent an email to my company’s security officer to inform him that I’d seen data spillage, that it was inadvertent, and provided the context. This was done to cover myself.

The President’s Operational Security FailurePost + Comments (111)

Rise And Kill First! Israel Strikes Iranian Military and Militia Targets in Syria

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If a man comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first.

— Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakoth

Rise and kill first is adapted from a saying in The Babylonian Talmud, quoted above, that provides the self defense justification if someone breaks into one’s home to kill them. It is also considered to be an unofficial motto, at least, of Israel’s security services, specifically its assassination teams. Which is also the focus and title of Ronen Bergman’s excellent history of Israel’s targeted assassination program. So it should be no surprise that Bibi quotes it in his tweet from earlier today announcing Israeli strikes against Iran’s Quds Force, other Iranian military and militia elements, and, based on some reports, Hezbullah militia elements. It is Bibi’s way of trying to ground what he is doing in Judaic law, which lends an element of religious warfare to today’s strikes, as well as within Israel’s history of striking before it can be struck. And I have no doubt that the Iranians received both of the messages Bibi was transmitting with the final sentence in that tweet.

The closeness of today’s strike to Israel’s upcoming election has not gone unnoticed by Bibi’s unauthorized biographer Anshel Pfeffer.

I’ve seen references on social media that Israeli drones have been brought down over Beirut by Hezbullah, but it isn’t a trusted source so take it as RUMINT for the time being. Noga Tarnopolsky has reported that the Israeli Air Force is flying extended/extra combat air patrols and that the Iron Dome missile defense system has been activated in the north of Israel, including the Golan Heights.

As was the case the last several times that Netanyahu ordered strikes, remember he is both the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister, the question will be whether for the time being these are one and done strikes or they begin a pattern of either Iranian-Israeli tit for tat and escalation or if cooler heads prevail. Given that Bibi is fighting not just for his political life, but to be able to leverage his control of the Israeli government to make the investigations into him and the charges against him go away, I would expect to see more strikes. Especially because the Iranians know this. And they know they can provoke him into attacking to prove he’s the best choice in the upcoming Israeli elections to keep Israel safe. The Quds Force commander, Major General Qassem Suleimani, is the best strategist indigenous to the region. I think he’s trying to goad Bibi into overreacting. Into doing something so over the top, so strategically risky that it backfires and blows back not just on Bibi, but also on Israel and Bibi’s US patron: the President. If this is, indeed, Suleimani’s strategy, then it is a risky one. But also one for the potential for great reward.

This could, and likely will, get much worse before it gets better.

Open thread.

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