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New York Times – Opinion

The Case for Killing Qassim Suleimani

The strike was justified and legally sound.

By Tom Cotton
Mr. Cotton is a Republican senator from Arkansas.

Jan. 10, 2020

Major General Qassim Suleimani in October.

Credit… EPA, via Shutterstock

Last week, our military and intelligence services brought justice to Qassim Suleimani,
Iran’s terror mastermind. President Trump ordered General Suleimani’s killing after
months of attacks on Americans by Iran’s proxy forces in Iraq. These attacks
culminated in a rocket strike that killed an American and wounded others, then the
attempted storming of our embassy in Baghdad. The first attack crossed the red line
drawn by the president last summer — that if Iran harmed an American, it would face
severe consequences. The president meant what he said, as Mr. Suleimani learned the
hard way.

Mr. Suleimani’s killing was justified, legal and strategically sound. But the president’s
critics swarmed as usual. After the embassy attack, a Democratic senator ​declared​ that
the president had “rendered America impotent.” Some Democrats then pivoted after
the Suleimani strike, calling him “reckless” and “dangerous.” Those are the words of
Senator Elizabeth Warren, who also described Mr. Suleimani — the leader of a State
Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization plotting to kill American troops
— as a “senior foreign military official.” Senator Bernie Sanders ​likened​ America’s
killing of a terrorist on the battlefield to Vladimir Putin’s assassination of Russian
political dissidents.

Some Democrats seem to feel a strange regret for the killing of a monster who
specialized in killing Americans. The linguist his proxies killed on Dec. 27, Nawres
Hamid, was merely his last victim out of more than 600 in Iraq since 2003. His forces
have instigated attacks against our troops in Afghanistan. He plotted a (foiled)
bombing in Washington, D.C., and attempted attacks on the soil of our European allies.
He armed the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon with rockets to pummel the Jewish
state of Israel. And he was greeted moments before his death by a terrorist responsible
for the bombing of our embassy in Kuwait in 1983.

Some of the president’s critics will concede that Mr. Suleimani was an evil man, but
many complain his killing was unlawful. Wrong again. He was a United
States-designated terrorist commander. As I have been briefed, he was plotting further
attacks against Americans at the time of his death.​ ​The authority granted to the
president under Article II of the Constitution provides ample legal basis for this strike.
Furthermore, those who accept the constitutionality of the War Powers Act should
recall that Congress’s 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force very
much remain in effect and clearly cover the Suleimani operation. This will be a relief to
the Obama administration, which ordered hundreds of drone strikes using such a legal
rationale.

American forces are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government, and they have
every right and authority to defend themselves. This legal act of self-defense was not
only proportionate — it was targeted and brilliantly executed, causing essentially no
collateral damage.

So the killing was justified and legally sound. It was also strategically sensible. If Iran’s
anemic response on Tuesday is any indication, the Suleimani strike has already
restored deterrence — and our troops in the region are safer for it. To put it simply, the
ayatollahs are once again afraid of the United States because of this bold action, which
is forcing them to recalculate their odds. In 2019 alone, Iran’s violent provocations
included mining ships in the Strait of Hormuz, downing an American drone and
threatening the global economy by striking Saudi oil facilities. President Trump chose
restraint at the time but promised ferocious retaliation in the event of American
casualties. The mullahs must have thought that he was bluffing. Now they’re compelled
to face the reality of America’s vast overmatch of their forces.

The weeks and months ahead will tell whether the Islamic Republic is successfully
deterred — but it has been deterred in the past, for example, when Ronald Reagan sank
much of the Iranian Navy in 1988. (It has never successfully been appeased, and
President Barack Obama’s attempts to buy off Iran with his nuclear deal only fueled the
regime’s imperialism and regional campaign of terror.) Iran is not 10-feet tall. In fact,
it’s a weak, third-rate power.

Because of this administration’s maximum-pressure campaign, the regime manages an

economy trapped in a deepening depression. To remain in power, it must mass murder
its own people, which it did as recently as November. If maximum pressure is
maintained, the ayatollahs will eventually face a choice between fundamentally
changing their behavior or suffering economic and social collapse. They may also
choose to lash out in a desperate bid to escape this logic, perhaps by making a break for
a nuclear bomb. Such impulses must be deterred or, if recklessly pursued, halted with
swift and firm action, as the president promised on Wednesday.

This tough-minded approach is not a distraction from America’s competition with

more serious adversaries like China and Russia, who watch our actions closely in the
Gulf for signs of commitment and resolve. Our long-term challenge with China, in
particular, directly involves the Middle East’s energy resources, to which access
remains critical for our allies in the Indo-Pacific, and indeed for China itself —
regardless of important strides in America’s domestic energy production.

The future of our Iran policy is a critical part of our success in the global competition
that will determine the character of this century and the safety of the American republic
within it. And recent events have shown we are up to the task.
Opinion

John Kerry: Diplomacy Was Working Until

Trump Abandoned It
The president put us on a path toward conflict and turmoil with Iran.

By John Kerry
Mr. Kerry was secretary of state under President Barack Obama.

● Jan. 9, 2020

Al Drago for The New York Times

President Trump says that on his watch, Iran will never be allowed to have a ​nuclear
weapon​. But if he had wanted to keep that promise, he should have left the 2015 Iran
nuclear agreement in place. Instead, he pulled the United States out of the deal and
pursued a reckless foreign policy that has put us on a path to armed conflict with Iran.

After Mr. Trump authorized the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani last week, Iran
announced it was no longer obligated to follow the agreement, which had reined in its
nuclear ambitions, and it launched ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases housing
American troops, to little effect. Adding to the turmoil, the Iraqi Parliament ​approved a
largely symbolic resolution​ to expel American troops who have been fighting the
Islamic State.

Though Mr. Trump has since walked back from the brink of war, I can’t explain the
chaos of his presidency as it lurches from crisis to crisis, real or manufactured. The
president ​has said​ he “doesn’t do exit strategies.” Clearly he doesn’t do strategies,
period.

This moment was nothing if not foreseeable the moment Mr. Trump abandoned the
2015 agreement, which was working, and chose instead to isolate us from our allies,
narrow our options in the region and slam shut the door to tackling additional issues
with Iran through constructive diplomacy.

Now the drone strike that eliminated General Suleimani has almost certainly nailed
that door shut. President Trump had the right to jettison an agreement he disliked. But
we’re witnessing the consequences of that heedless act in a region that is today
significantly more volatile than when his administration began in 2017. Strategies have
consequences — and so does the lack of a strategy.

Let’s get one straw man out of the way. General Suleimani was a sworn, unapologetic
enemy of the United States, a cagey field marshal who oversaw Iran’s long strategy to
extend the country’s influence through sectarian proxies in the region. He won’t be
mourned or missed by anyone in the West. Occasionally, when American and Iranian
interests aligned, as they did in fighting ISIS, we were the serendipitous beneficiaries of
his relationships and levers, as were the Iraqis. But this was a rare exception.

That underscores the tragic irony of Mr. Trump’s decision to abrogate the nuclear
agreement: It played into General Suleimani’s hard-line strategy by weakening voices
for diplomacy within the Tehran regime. What Iranian diplomat would be empowered
by a skeptical supreme leader to explore de-escalation with a country that broke its
word on a historic agreement and then, in their words, “​martyred​” arguably Iran’s
second most powerful figure?

Presidents make lonely, difficult decisions about the use of force to protect our interests
— usually with the solace of knowing at least that diplomacy had failed. The tragedy of
our current plight is that diplomacy was succeeding before it was abandoned.

In 2013, I sat down with Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, for the first
meeting between our countries’ top diplomats since the 1979 revolution and hostage
crisis. Iran at the time had enough enriched material for eight to 10 nuclear bombs and
was two to three months from being able to build one.

Two years later, after intense negotiations, we had an agreement that would be signed
by seven nations and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. Diplomacy had
achieved what sanctions alone had not: Iran couldn’t have a nuclear weapon during the
life span of the agreement; and if it cheated, the world was resolved to stop it.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry, left, with the Iranian foreign minister,
Mohammad Javad Zarif, right, in 2013.Credit...Jason Decrow/Associated Press
What did we turn over to President-elect Trump in 2017? Iran was in compliance with
the nuclear agreement. Our allies were united with the United States. There were no
missile attacks on United States facilities. No ships were being detained or sabotaged in
the Persian Gulf. There were no protesters breaching our embassy in Baghdad. Iraq
welcomed our presence fighting ISIS. And Iran would be unable to move toward a
nuclear weapon without our knowing it through inspections authorized by the
agreement.

None of our allies thought the work was over after the deal was struck. But we had laid
a foundation of diplomacy from which other issues might be addressed. In 2016, we
defused deep disagreements with Iran over prisoners and averted conflict when
American sailors inadvertently entered Iranian waters and were detained by Iranian
forces. We were working with allies to deepen sanctions on Iran for its involvement in
Yemen, its transfer of weapons to Hezbollah and its actions in Syria, its human rights
violations, its threats against Israel and its ballistic missile program.

The nuclear agreement would have been justified if it did nothing more than prevent
Iran from building a bomb. But it also created opportunities for the United States to
bring pressure on Iran on other issues. President Trump could have built on that, with
the luxury of knowing that the urgent, immediate nuclear threat had been put back in
the bottle.

We know what Mr. Trump did instead. He put his disdain for anything done by the last
administration ahead of his duty to keep the country safe. He alienated our allies. He
recklessly rushed ahead without any strategy. We have been left with an incoherent
Iran and Iraq policy that has made the region more dangerous and put Americans at
greater risk.

After the president ignored Rex Tillerson and James Mattis, his first secretaries of state
and defense, who argued that we should stay within the agreement, he found a new
secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who tweets video of Iraqis celebrating the killing of
General Suleimani — eerily reminiscent of 2003, when Iraqis were spotted celebrating
the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. It was fantasy then and it is fantasy now to believe
this bodes well for our relations with Iraq, as Parliament’s vote on American forces
underscores.

We are left to ponder another paradox: To assure allies that his decision was not rash,
Mr. Trump will have to call on hard information from the very intelligence community
he has cheerfully attacked for three years.
Mr. Trump’s foreign policy requires an unreliable regime in Tehran to behave
reasonably in order to save Mr. Trump from himself. This is the tragic failure of his
abandonment of diplomacy.

We have too often forgotten that the United States should never go to war on a lark, for
a lie or a mistake. We have also seen the divisions over Vietnam and Iraq tear at the
fabric of life in our country. Yet now, young Americans are again worrying that they
might have to die because their political leaders did not exhaust or even explore, but
rather abandoned the possibilities of diplomacy.

Our diplomacy should not be defined by bluster, threats and brinkmanship, tweets or
temper tantrums, but by a vision for peace and security addressing multiple interests of
the region.

John Kerry, a former Democratic senator and candidate for president, was secretary of
state from 2013 to 2017.