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Remains of the vehicle containing Qassem Soleimani after the airstrike, January 3, 2020, image via Wikimedia Commons
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,863, January 1, 2021
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Moments before Donald Trump leaves the White House, Iran may attempt to avenge the assassinations of Qassem Soleimani and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. The Gulf States are ready and awaiting US protection.
On January 20, 2021, President Donald Trump is scheduled to leave the scene and perhaps even the stage of history, but Iran remains. Its leaders took heavy blows from Trump during his tenure, but worst of all is the way he humiliated them in the eyes of the world. The ayatollahs held out despite everything Trump threw at them, but their honor was trampled on. For that there is no forgiveness or forgetfulness.
And January 3, 2021 is the first anniversary of the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the legendary figure who gave the Iranian leadership the ability to effectively take over the Arab countries. His assassination over the US drone strike left a void that his successors have struggled to fill. Iranian leaders will not take Soleimani’s assassination in stride without seeking a form of revenge that suits their level of importance.
Also died, in November 2020, the father of Iran’s military nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Tehran claims that Israel was responsible for this “crime”, that it also expects a revenge operation that the Iranian regime has no choice but to carry out.
I expect Iranian leaders to mount an impressive military operation on January 19 in Soleimani’s name, and possibly Fakhrizadeh as well, one that will restore his lost honor and long-standing regional bully status.
The Iranian revenge operation will not be carried out from Iranian soil but from two, possibly three, of its satellite states: Yemen, Iraq and Syria, so as not to directly frame Tehran (certainly not in the eyes of the president-elect of the United States, Biden). and demonstrate Iran’s control over those countries despite long-standing American and Israeli efforts to thwart it. The operation will be carried out by “local liberation forces”, that is, local Shiite militias orchestrated by the Quds Force, which was Soleimani’s tool. It can reasonably be assumed that Iranian “advisers” will be present and active at missile and drone launch sites that may (again) target the US Embassy in Baghdad and US military bases in Iraq and Syria, and possibly also in Saudi oil facilities (as in September 2019), as well as oil facilities in the UAE and Bahrain, to highlight the inability of their new ally, Israel, to protect them from their large, strong and respected neighbor.
Why on January 19? Because that will be a day before Trump’s departure from the White House. It will not have time to launch any serious retaliation against Iran.
If Iranian leaders are really aiming to mount such an operation, the intelligence agencies of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel probably know. That’s probably why we’ve seen an increase in the US presence in the Gulf in recent weeks. In just one month, the US sent three B-52 bombers to the region, as well as a nuclear submarine and two missile battleships. An Israeli submarine also reportedly departed for the region. On December 18, the United States Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Mark Milley, visited Israel and met with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Gantz, and Chief of Staff Kochavi. After the meeting, Gantz said: “We will act in partnership with any scenario on the Iranian front. We will work together to address our common threats in order to preserve stability in the Middle East together with our allies. “
On December 20, the US embassy in Baghdad was hit with rocket bombardment. The US administration said Tehran was behind the attack, which used Iranian-made rockets. Three days later, it was reported that US security organizations would soon present Trump with various possibilities for retaliation without starting a war.
On December 24, Trump issued a dire warning to Tehran that it would be responsible for any attack against an American citizen or soldier, even if carried out by a Shiite militia, and asked Iranian leaders to “think it through” before instigate such an attack. On December 25, it was reported in Israel that the IDF had been put on alert due to a possible American attack on Iran before Trump left the White House.
Israel fears an attack on its infrastructure facilities such as the attack on the Saudi oil facilities. Such an attack could come from Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon or Syria. This concern may explain the operations in Syria in recent weeks that have been attributed to Israel. The IDF spokesperson told the Saudi Elaph website that Israel is closely monitoring Iran’s movements in Iraq and Yemen and has information on missiles and drones that Tehran is secretly developing and building in those countries.
The states of the Arabian Peninsula are divided into three distinct groups: Yemen and Qatar, which are Iranian satellites and serve it in every possible way; Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, which fear a confrontation that will make them a target for Iranian missiles; and Oman and Kuwait, who sit on the fence and try to reconcile between the United States and Iran to save the combustible region from a war that would have no winners, only losers.
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are in a very delicate and complex situation. On the one hand, they fear a US or Iranian operation that could cause enormous damage to the oil industry, tourism and the remarkable economic stability they have built over decades. On the other hand, these states certainly do not want Iran to regain the power it exercised until four years ago, a power that would translate into diplomatic and military pressure from Tehran that would make them puppets of the ayatollahs and force them to submit to Iranian political dictates ( for example, cutting or freezing relations with Israel and the United States and eliminating their military and perhaps even economic presence).
There is also no enthusiasm in Jerusalem for a possible conflagration in the Gulf that could spread to Israel in the form of a missile offensive from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Yemen. Warnings have also recently been heard from the Houthis in Yemen, who control the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the southern gateway to the Red Sea through which much of the world’s (and Israel’s) maritime traffic passes.
To keep its allies safe from an Iranian revenge strike, Washington presumably will not launch a military strike against Iran from any of the countries in the region, should it launch an attack. The B-52s, the strategic bombers of the United States, will take off for their mission in Iran from bases in the United States or from the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Additionally, the United States has submarines and battleships in the region, including aircraft carriers and destroyers. It is capable of attacking Iran and its proxies at any time without involving its allies, and perhaps without even considering their positions.
On the eve of 2021, the temperature in the Gulf region is rising despite the winter. It is likely to reach boiling point at the end of Trump’s term.
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This is an edited version of an article published in Makor rishon on December 29, 2020.
Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a Senior Research Associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He served for 25 years in IDF military intelligence specializing in Syria, Arab political discourse, Arab media, Islamic groups, and Israeli Arabs, and is an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups.
