Impeach and remove

When it comes to intelligence, like with so much else, President Donald Trump likes big names. It’s this focus on celebrity, headlines, and immediate gratification — versus substance, impact, and consequences — that so often motivates him. Partly because of this, as a senior CIA counterterrorist manager, my team and I often struggled in persuading the president to recognize the most important threats. Now, with the killing of Qassem Soleimani, I worry that while Trump got a big name and lots of headlines, the long-term impact on U.S. strategic interests was not fully considered.

At CIA, I saw this play out more than once. Trump’s obsession in focusing resources against Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza is one example of the president’s preference for a “celebrity” targeted killing versus prioritizing options that could prove better for U.S. security.

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The president responded in similar fashion with ISIS, as his public comments after Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death show. Although U.S. efforts to target key ISIS leaders and operatives had preempted what might have been any number of devastating terrorist attacks, the president’s lack of familiarity with their names made such efforts, and their accomplishments, less consequential to him. As the commander-in-chief, of course, the president’s preferences are tied to his own political risk versus gain calculus, and this is not always aligned with the views of the Intelligence Community. It was not lost on us working the issue that the president pressed hardest for results in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections.

That brings us to where we are today. As commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Soleimani was a big name. In the president’s mind, killing Soleimani could have seemed like an opportunity to make himself the commander-in-chief willing to do what no one else would risk. Again, it appears to have been more about Trump, and the potential for headlines, rather than the intelligence.

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While I can’t rule out reporting suggesting CIA Director Gina Haspel supported the Soleimani strike, it would be rather uncharacteristic and incongruous for her to endorse an action that the press similarly reported she advised would prompt Iran to unleash its ballistic missiles against the 5,000-plus U.S. troops deployed in Iraq.

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I do not debate we had intelligence regarding any number of prospective attacks Iran was facilitating through proxies in Iraq, and elsewhere. But don’t we always? The Iranians design potential operations at various degrees of lethality and provocation, some of which they will execute, others to put aside for a rainy day. It’s what they do. The reality is that the U.S. government would have been legally bound to warn the public of a threat against an American embassy.

  Douglas London @ Just Security

Well, you'd think they'd at least have to notify the embassies that were supposedly being targeted. Did they do that?

Intelligence assessments on the anticipated escalatory paths Iran would follow in response to kinetic U.S. retaliatory measures have been consistent and well briefed to every president. The surprise wasn’t that the Iranians escalated, but that they pulled their punches to minimize casualties and provide an off ramp to further escalation.

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Soleimani’s death will be a great loss to Iran, and provides justice for the vast blood he has spilled over the years, but the operations he shepherded will not die with him. Iran is not done, but will return to the clandestine arena where operating asymmetrically levels the playing field with the U.S. I expect that the Intelligence Community has told the president as much, or would have, if he bothered to solicit and value its input. Instead, the president’s decision to kill Soleimani reflects his propensity to play a good hand badly and respond from ego rather than pragmatism and the country’s best interests.