Iran vs. Trump: Suleimani’s Legacy, and Khamenei’s Ambitions

The supreme leader and Trump may well end the long-running, region-defining clash. We just don't know yet quite how.

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Editor’s Note: We are pleased to bring you this comprehensive and authoritative two-part analysis of Donald Trump and Iran, written by Reuel Marc Gerecht. Gerecht is a widely published author, with regular contributions to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, The Atlantic and The Weekly Standard. He’s a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and one of the country’s leading experts on Iran and its Islamic revolution. The first part, “The Coming Collision,” examined the incentives the Iranian regime has to continue its confrontational approach to the United States and President Donald Trump. In the analysis below, “The Fallout,” Gerecht looks at the death of Qassem Suleimani, the regime’s internal challenges, the consequences of the Obama nuclear deal, and what we might expect from the coming collision with the Islamic Republic.

Part II. The Fallout

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, appears to believe that the massive public turnout for funeral processions honoring Qassem Suleimani, shows that the revolutionary spirit, Iran’s “divine power … the love, the loyalty, and the resistance of the Iranian nation,” is strong. The United States targeted Suleimani in an early-January attack in Iraq, pointing to the Iranian general’s role in past and—the Trump administration credibly argued—future attacks on Americans, their interests, and their allies. Leaked internal deliberations among senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guards after the 2009 pro-democracy Green Movement was crushed and disconcerted commentary among clerics and members of parliament after the 2017 provincial demonstrations certainly suggest that the theocracy’s frontline guardians have had doubts about the “love” of the Iranian people. 

What Khamenei doesn’t see or refuses to admit: Suleimani was sui generis. He was the last charismatic figure of the Iranian revolution. The hundreds of thousands who came out to pay their respects probably weren’t in the streets because the regime had coerced them to be there. The mullahs have missed numerous opportunities to orchestrate mass rallies in their favor after big, sometimes violent, protests against the theocracy. The early Islamic Republic loved such gatherings to show popular support. After 2009, the clerical regime avoided these marches, surely because it was uncertain about the loyalty of the middle and lower classes. Massive crowds can overwhelm, and the Iranian security services are neither that large nor that mobile. (The regime remains hesitant to use local police and Basij units, which are far more numerous, against the denizens of their own neighborhoods.)  

Yet with Suleimani it was different. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

    The lesson of Suleimani’s death is that Trump acts arbitrarily (some say randomly or irrationally). The danger to irrational people is sometimes they do the opposite of what you expect.

    I suspect Khamenei won't attack unless he's doggone sure Biden will win, and that his attack will ensure that.

    I'll add that, as an academic, I've worked with many Iranians, and in general, find them pleasant to work with. They also consistently say very little about government or theirs.

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  2. Token Liberal

    How to avoid war? We can negotiate like the Obama administration, possibly leading to war because we were not tough enough. Or we can go with maximum pressure like this administration, possibly leading to war through aggression and misread intentions. Or more dramatically, the specter of Munich in 1938 verses Iraq in 2003 (or the start of WWI if you prefer). Iran is a determined foe, and all the choices are fraught. As the generals like to say, the enemy gets a vote.

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    Kev_WDE

    Good stuff. Looking forward to Part 2.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Pat Riot

      This *is* part 2. Part one was linked above.

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    Pat Riot

    "They stopped what had been the most successful case of foreign blackmail in American history."

    And that was a mistake. The way I read this, here are our two options with Iran:

    1. Bribe them.

    2. Let them get a nuke.

    Everything else is unrealistic. We're not going to war with Iran and the Iranians surely know that. The first option is better since we have an infinite supply of money to throw at them.

    And the author here loses me when he says that Trump "scares" Iran's leaders: why would they be afraid of an easily manipulated idiot? I think the author has let his disdain for Obama and his policies swing him optimistically to an (albeit tortured) pro-Trump place. The conclusion of this article logically contradicts the part before it: the author is correct that the situation is intractable since there's zero political appetite in the US for war with Iran on any side. There's no escaping that fundamental logic.

    The solution with Iran is to pay them off in ways that eventually brings them to a Rights-supporting pro-American place. There's no guarantee that will work, only guarantees that anything else will *not* work.

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      DougCLE

      I don’t know, Pat - I think one of the reasons Trump is scary to our enemies is what makes him so scary to the rest of us. You don’t know what he’s going to do from one day to the next. He might be easy to manipulate - though there’s an entire unemployment office in DC dedicated to aides who thought they had him figured out - but that only helps you if you are the one manipulating him.

      Even an aggressive leader, like Reagan or W., is a known quantity that you can plan your day-to-day dictator-ing around. But Trump might lob a missile at you, just one day after having one of his “perfect conversations” with you, just because of something he read that morning in a Tweet. That’s scary, moreso for them even than it is for us, and it is one of the few upsides I see to his personality.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Pat Riot

        I watched what Trump does *carefully* as does our enemies. I have predicted basically 100% of Trump's moves in their basic principles. Lots of people were fretting about Trump wanting to go to war with Iran while I put my money on Trump backing down exactly how he did.

        Trump cannot afford to lose even a few percentage points of popularity, and any military adventure could easily cost that.

        Our foreign enemies don't get their intelligence from Rachel Maddow, and they don't respond to political bluster. They don't think that because Trump acts like a criminal it must mean he's dangerous. Trump knows that Americans--especially his base--don't want anything messing up their good times (or now, making the bad times even worse) so they have zero appetite for war.

        And Trump's firings were from people who were disloyal--and probably several who *did* figure it out and quit or just willfully defied him. Rex Tilllerson obviously figured Trump out: there's not much to understand.

        Yes, tactically, Trump could make what amounts to an occasional impulsive move like the assassination. That doesn't "scare" the Iranian leaders in any strategic way, and to be sure Iran is in a *stronger* strategic position *after* that attack for all of the reasons the author here mentioned: they have hard proof that Trump will absolutely back down from any escalation.

        Reagan and W. were strong because a) the US public still lived in a Cold War stance and was ready for military adventures abroad; and b) they were both very popular leaders with approval ratings to spare if necessary. Both were adept at rallying the *whole* country and not just the exact number required to win the Electoral College.

        Iran won't "October surprise" us with anything because the best case scenario for them is another four years of Trump.





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      Logical

      Iran is 100x more rational than Pakistan. So option 2 ain't bad; will save us money.

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  5. Terry Sexton

    This two-part article on Iran might be the best thing The Dispatch has published so far. Very balanced and insightful. Wishful thinking and good intentions will not make Tehran less of a threat to peace and stability. Tough choices and sustained, resolute engagement in the region will be required.

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    Kevin Johnson

    Fascinating stuff. Thanks for the deep dive. It is especially useful to see analysis which avoids simply attacking the “hawks” or “doves” in favor of laying out that there are no good options.

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