The case for killing Qassem Soleimani

Why Trump’s decision to target the Iranian military commander was the right call, explained by an expert.

This is the second of a two-part series examining the arguments for and against the Trump administration’s decision to kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Read the case against the targeting of Soleimani here.

Last Thursday, the Trump administration authorized a drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s paramilitary forces and one of the most powerful men in the country.

The attack has ignited a debate about whether or not it was legal and worth the risk. Previous administrations had the opportunity to take out Soleimani and chose not to, mostly because of concerns that it would lead to a series of dangerous escalations on both sides.

Dina Esfandiary, an Iran expert at the Century Foundation think tank, told Vox that the Soleimani strike was an unnecessary and extremely dangerous move that risked catapulting the two countries into a full-scale war. There’s also the possibility that Iran will accelerate its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

But not everyone feels that way, as some believe the assassination was a necessary move to deter Iran from further threatening Americans in the Middle East and around the world.

Bilal Saab, an expert at the Middle East Institute and a former Pentagon official in the Trump administration, is one of those people. So I asked him for the best case for the attack on Soleimani. I wanted to know why he thought it was the right call, why those advocating against it are misguided, and what he expects will happen next.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

(Note: I spoke to Saab just a few hours before Iran retaliated on Tuesday night by firing missiles at US military targets in Iraq. I reached back out to him after to see if Iran’s response had altered his views. His answer is included at the end.)

Alex Ward

Right off the bat: What’s the main reason for why killing Soleimani was a good idea?

Bilal Saab

You have to put this in the context of the last few months. The spate of attacks that gradually escalated, whether directly by the Iranians or sponsored by the Iranians in the Persian Gulf, leading all the way to the attack on Saudi oil fields in September, required some kind of a response by the Americans.

The US position has always been to deter the Iranians from fomenting instability in the Middle East, and from waging violent attacks against our collective interests. We’ve done none of that, and we failed in the aspect of deterrence.

Correcting that required a major shift in approach in terms of how we actually succeed at deterring the Iranians. There had to be some kind of a shocking operation against Iran that would make the regime recalculate and reconsider this campaign of violence that they’ve waged against us and our partners.

Alex Ward

You’re saying the US was overdue in sending a strong message?

Bilal Saab

Yes, in sending the strongest message: that the United States really means business in terms of the Iranians respecting certain red lines. The fact that the Trump administration took out someone who represents the face of Iran’s dangerous campaign in the region wasn’t only appropriate, it was well within the rules of the game.

The US not going after targets in Iran proper also lends further credence to the argument that this was fair game. So I’m not against the assassination, even though there are some legal questions about it.

But I do have a big worry: that taking Soleimani out should be part of a larger strategy that the administration is communicating across US government agencies and also to our partners in the region. The fact that it seems to be an isolated incident, though, is the problem.

Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

Alex Ward

Iran has already threatened to exact “revenge” on the US. Doesn’t that undercut the deterrence argument? If deterrence was supposed to stop Iran from targeting Americans or US interests, the fact that they are likely to do so again makes it seem like deterrence didn’t work.

Bilal Saab

That’s a good question, but we have to be very clear and precise about what exactly we are deterring. I am of the opinion that we were not going to be able to deter the Iranians from engaging violently against us across the board. What we’re trying to deter here is really the more egregious acts, the more provocative acts by the Iranians against us and our partners.

We’re trying to stop another attack like the one on the Saudi oil fields or having Iran close the Strait of Hormuz, those larger-scale moves that in the past were unthinkable and because the US didn’t respond. The goal, then, is to shock the Iranians and force them to recalculate what targets they choose, the severity of it, the lethality.

But we’re just not in any position to deter acts of lower-intensity violence, so we’re going after the big stuff, basically.

Alex Ward

That seems risky.

Bilal Saab

I could be proven wrong. We’ll see what happens and how the Iranians respond to this. My guess is that given the very unpredictable nature of the president’s approach towards Iran, especially after pulling off something dramatic like this, the Iranians are surely confused and shocked.

I think Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said it best recently when he said that “the game has changed.” By that I think he meant that whatever the Iranians entertained before, as far as attacking options, they can no longer go back to that menu and use it again.

I think it’s a good thing for Tehran to be perplexed and confused about what the president is capable of. They never expected him to wage such an attack against their top operative in the Middle East.

Now they’re wondering what could be next. So they’re going to be very, very careful, and they’re going to calibrate their revenge operations.

AFP via Getty Images

Alex Ward

But Iran was never likely to respond in a highly provocative way, was it? Because it’s worried about getting into a full-blown war with the US, which it would lose. So Iran was going to be conducting low-level attacks against Americans and others anyway, only now they have more incentive to do something a little more dramatic after Soleimani’s killing.

Bilal Saab

There are still some details to hammer out about how imminent the threat to Americans was or still may be. Putting that aside, what seemingly triggered Trump’s response was the killing of the American contractor in Iraq [on December 27] and the attempt at storming the US Embassy in Iraq [on December 31].

Those are American targets, and the president has been quite consistent on this: The moment our troops and personnel are at risk, or a single American dies, the US is going to lash out. We’re going to be very forceful with our response — and that’s exactly what happened.

If the Iranians are smart enough, they’ll once again go back to asymmetric warfare against our more vulnerable partners, and they’ll try to maintain plausible deniability while working through proxies. I don’t think that they would be stupid enough to really wage direct warfare against American troops in the region, given the large, conventional advantage of the US in that dynamic.

However, Iran has signaled that it’s targeting US military sites, so we’ll see if they’re going to actually follow through those threats.

Alex Ward

Whether or not Soleimani deserved his fate, was the timing — the decision to kill him now —well advised? Tensions with the US and Iran have spiked dramatically since Trump withdrew America from the nuclear deal in 2018. One could argue there was a less provocative time to do this.

Bilal Saab

Identify for me a good time where you can actually take out such a high-value person. There’s just never a “good” time. There’s always risk, but the administration calculated that the risk is worth the reward in this case. I think the administration wanted to nip this in the bud before the Iranians really do something stupid against our personnel, assets, and interests in the region.

Alex Ward

Was it worth this trouble and danger, though? Do the benefits really outweigh the costs, especially when the chance of a full-blown war rises, even if it’s still unlikely?

Bilal Saab

Once again, you have to weigh that against what the Iranians might have done had we not considered any response options. We were already on a pattern of escalation caused by the Iranians.

Now, you can go back to history and say, “We screwed up because we withdrew from the nuclear deal.” Okay, that’s fine. But at least over the past few months, we’ve seen a spate of attacks by the Iranians against us and against collective interests.

The fair assumption would have been that the Iranians would have continued along that path until they miscalculated or they overplayed their hand. I think they started doing that when [members of the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia] tried to storm the US Embassy in Baghdad.

Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images

So let’s imagine we didn’t conduct this operation against Soleimani, and then Iran still does something stupid, which forces us to respond swiftly and decisively, which also would increase the chances of a war just like what you just characterized. Would that really have been any different than this situation?

We were already on a collision course driven by incoherent US policy. That’s the bottom line here. That’s the crux of this argument. It’s not really about Soleimani. It’s not about the assassination.

It’s the fact that we do not have a coherent policy towards the Iranians that actually has an achievable end goal. Whether we had killed Soleimani or not, Iran would have miscalculated or the US would have miscalculated.

Alex Ward

There were reports that the Pentagon gave Trump other options to choose from, like bombing Iranian missile sites or ships, instead of killing Soleimani. Would those options have been more escalatory, in your mind? Especially since targeting missile sites likely would’ve meant striking inside Iranian territory, whereas Soleimani was killed while he was in Iraq?

Bilal Saab

Absolutely, I think we would be in a different ballgame. There are almost these unwritten rules of the game, that if we limit our confrontation to the region, then the chances of open-ended confrontation and all-out war wouldn’t be as high. But if we go after them directly, then this is a completely different situation.

Alex Ward

So how does this end? How do we get out of this cycle of violence?

Bilal Saab

I don’t think this ends. This is just a perpetual struggle between the two countries, and an especially tense one now with this administration. Since Iran doesn’t talk, I don’t think either side can deescalate at this point beyond just striking fear in the heart of the enemy. I’m of the opinion, and I could easily be wrong, that we have struck fear at this point, or at least forced Iran to reconsider what is permissible and what is not permissible.

Alex Ward

But, as you said, the US not having a coherent strategy against Iran could likely lead to more decades of violence.

Bilal Saab

Absolutely. In fact, you know what would deter the Iranians? A coherent policy, and we don’t have that.

What worries the Iranians most is when the US is coherent and united with our allies, when we have a firm, consistent stance and we’re together. We’ve got none of those things right now. There’s a huge gap between us and the Europeans. We also don’t sing from the same sheet of music with our own partners in the region.

Yet here we are taking out Iranian leaders without really contemplating what the next step is. How can we actually encourage Iranians, and not just force them, to come to the negotiating table? We clearly haven’t done that thinking yet.

Alex Ward

So it’s fair to say that the Soleimani killing may have had a good effect for now, but it’s obviously not enough on the whole to deal with Iran?

Bilal Saab

Yup, that’s it. That’s the ballgame.

Below is Saab’s response to the question I asked him following the Iranian strikes against the US in Iraq on Tuesday night.

Alex Ward

Did Iran’s attack change your thinking on whether killing Soleimani was a good idea or not?

Bilal Saab

Not at all. If anything, it shows the Soleimani strike worked. Iran’s attack wasn’t a major retaliation, and so they didn’t escalate the crisis. It’s pretty clear now that Trump did shock the Iranians with killing Soleimani, and we just saw that in real time.