Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This is Overwatch, a podcast presented by the Institute for the Study of War. I'm Jacob Taylor.
A recent Iranian missile attack into northern Iraq indicates the growing threat Tehran poses to the U.S. and its partners in the Middle East. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps fired 12 short-range ballistic missiles into Erbil, Iraq on March 13, targeting an alleged Israeli intelligence site near the construction of the new U.S. consulate.
Nicholas Karl, the Iran team lead at AEI's Critical Threats Project, joins this episode to discuss Iran's strategic calculus in this context. Nicholas, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for having me. So can you tell us a bit more about this attack? What details do we have? Sure. So Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps fired around 12 short-range ballistic missiles at Erbil, the city in northern Iraq, on March 13th. And
The Iranians at the time of the attack claimed that they meant to strike what they alleged was a strategic Israeli intelligence center in northern Iraq. And from there, U.S. and Iranian media diverged on exactly how the attack played out. According to U.S. media, the attack actually struck a residential area and caused no casualties, while Iranian media reported that there were three Israelis dead and seven wounded.
Why do you think Iran conducted this attack? We are currently considering a few different hypotheses for what strategic objectives the Iranians were likely pursuing when they decided to launch these ballistic missiles across the border into Iraqi territory. And there's three that come to mind most immediately. Two of them relate to Israel.
Firstly, Iran and Israel have been locked in a regional conflict for many years now that has intensified in various ways over the past year as Iran has continued its extraterritorial operations and expanded its nuclear program. And so part of Iran's calculus here may have been to attack and retaliate against Israel for various operations the Israelis have conducted over against Iran over the past couple of months.
In addition, Iran may have sought to damage and disrupt any kind of Israeli intelligence network that the Iranians think may be active within northern Iraq. And then finally, the Iranians also likely sought to advance their longstanding campaign to expel American forces from the Middle East. This objective was probably secondary to the first two, but the strike interestingly did hit
somewhat near the construction site of the new U.S. consulate in Erbil. And so the Iranians likely sought this missile in part to be a message to the United States of the threat that American forces are under while stationed in the Middle East. I'd like to go through each of those hypotheses individually. First off, you mentioned that this attack could have been intended to deter Israel. Deter Israel from doing what, at least in the Iranians' minds?
Sure. So Iranian media very quickly claimed in the immediate wake of the attack that the IRGC sought to retaliate against Israel for a few different operations that the Israelis have conducted against Iran over the past couple of months. So firstly, on March 7th, the Israelis had conducted an airstrike near Damascus, Syria, that killed two IRGC colonels stationed there.
And in addition, on February 13th, there have been more recent reports that the Israelis launched a drone attack from Iraqi territory into Iran that destroyed an Iranian military facility that housed a bunch of drones itself.
So again, all this is part of this regional escalation pattern and cycle of violence that has been ongoing between Iran and Israel for some time now. And so the attack was a direct retaliation for some of the more recent operations against Iran. And by the way, Iran has conducted many attacks against Israel that likely prompted the initial wave of Israeli attacks. I should caveat that.
So the Iranians conducted this missile strike in order to establish some kind of deterrence against Israel and send a message to Tel Aviv that a lot of these operations against Tehran do bear a cost.
Now, I realize this is a muddy information space as far as determining, for example, what exact Israeli activity exists in northern Iraq and what the Iranians may or may not be aware of, where they might be wrong. What does Iran's claims of Israeli activity in northern Iraq tell us about Iranian intentions or concerns?
The internal thinking in the Iranian leadership. Right. So Iranian political and military leadership for many months now have been very emphatic that they have anxieties over what they believe is some kind of Mossad network operating in northern Iraq.
There is, of course, no way to determine whether there's even any remote validity to these assertions. However, it is clear upon examining the Iranian media environment that this is very clearly at the forefront of a lot of Iranian authorities' minds. And so they often argue that
Israel uses this intelligence network in Iraq to facilitate a lot of their operations against Iran, be it sabotage and assassinations within Iran itself or things such as the February 13th drone attack in which Israel launched a series of drones against an Iranian military facility.
So the missile strike in targeting a – again, what the Iranians claimed was a strategic intelligence center of Mossad, it meant to begin to disrupt whatever kind of network the Iranians think may be there. Of course, again, it's unclear as to whether they actually hit anything remotely close to what they wanted to. Got it. And so then your third hypothesis is that this attack was –
who is directed at sending a message to the United States, presumably with the goal of getting U.S. leaders to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq. Can you elaborate on that point? Absolutely. One of Tehran's highest strategic objectives is expelling American forces from the Middle East. The Iranians have pursued this campaign in a lot of different ways over the past couple of years, and especially since the January 2020 killing of Qasem Soleimani.
The primary way in which the Iranians have pursued this campaign is by using their proxies in Iraq and Syria to conduct rocket and drone attacks against U.S. positions there, and thereby killing or threatening to kill U.S. service members. The logic here is that Iranian leaders believe that by slowly maintaining some kind of low-level military pressure against U.S. forces—
It will gradually erode Washington's political will to sustain these forward deployments in the Middle East. And eventually, keeping American forces in the Middle East may become so politically untenable that an American president decides to withdraw.
And I would add, by the way, that it was the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that likely reaffirmed this longstanding Iranian expectation that low levels of insurgent pressure against the U.S. will eventually compel us to withdraw. So I want to make sure I understand. These missile strikes...
are not the first time that Iran has tried to use violence to push the US out of Iraq, obviously. But they are the first time that they have used these types of ballistic missiles in that endeavor? That's correct. The Iranians have, as you noted, used a variety of different tools of force against the United States over the past couple of years in order to compel us to leave. Those have primarily been
rocket and drone attacks conducted by Iranian proxies. It's not typically the case that we see the Iranians launching ballistic missiles from their territory into other sovereign states in order to pressure the United States. However, this attack is part of another interesting trend that we've observed in how Iran pursues its regional strategy over the past couple of years.
Since 2017, the Iranians have launched at least eight missile attacks abroad for a bunch of different reasons. They have at times used their missile arsenal, which is the largest in the Middle East, to target ISIS positions in Syria.
Sometimes they have used these missiles to attack Kurdish militants active in northern Iraq. They have used their missiles to attack Saudi Arabia, particularly their Abqaiq crude processing plant in September 2019. There was the attack against the US Al-Assad airbase in January 2020. And so all of this is meant to emphasize that missiles have become an increasingly prominent component to how Iran pursues its external objectives.
With all that said, the Iranians have historically not used their missiles as part of their campaign to expel the United States from the Middle East. The closest they've come is when they conducted, as I noted a moment ago, the missile attack against the U.S. Al-Assad Air Base in January 2020. However, the objective there was primarily to retaliate against
for the U.S. killing Qasem Soleimani that same month. Now, all of that being said, does Iran's increasing use of missiles concern you? Absolutely. It's important to keep in mind, by the way, that up until 2017, the last time that Iran had conducted a missile strike abroad was 2001.
So the fact that we've seen, again, at least eight missile strikes abroad since 2017 in a relatively short span of time, I think it's reflective of Iranian leadership's growing confidence in their missile capabilities and their eagerness to increasingly incorporate their missile arsenal into their regional strategy. And what do you think this attack means for the United States and perhaps that broader strategy of using missiles mean for the United States?
I think it's critical to keep in mind that concluding a nuclear agreement with Iran in Vienna is not going to diminish the threat that Tehran poses to U.S. forces as well as our partners within the Middle East. Iran is going to continue its campaign to try and expel the U.S. from the region, and it may even go so far as to kill some American service members in the months and years ahead.
I would emphasize actually to you that the commander of the IRGC as well as his chief of staff have both publicly reiterated and reaffirmed their commitment to trying to force the US from the region as recently as January 2022. And in addition, Tehran is also going to continue trying to pressure the United States as part of its regional conflict with Israel.
Iranians over the past couple of months have increasingly struck U.S. positions in retaliation for Israeli activities. So, for example, the Iranians conducted two drone attacks against U.S. positions in recent months, once in September 2021 and another in October 2021. Both were attacks that the Iranians claimed were again in retaliation for Israel. So all this is to say that
There remain reasons that the Iranians are likely to conduct kinetic operations against the United States, and the conclusion of some kind of nuclear agreement is not going to erase that threat. So do you have a recommendation for what the U.S. ought to do in response? I think most importantly and most immediately, the Biden administration needs to rethink how it is going to go about establishing deterrence vis-a-vis Iran. And we
We cannot allow the fear of derailing or perhaps being blamed for derailing the Vienna nuclear talks to prevent us because we need to take the necessary measures to protect our forces in the region, which are continuing, by the way, to fight ISIS and work with critical U.S. regional partners. Nicholas Karl, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your expertise. Thanks so much. Thank you for listening to this episode of Overwatch.
We look forward to your feedback on this episode and previous ones. Visit www.understandingwar.org to learn about ISW's work and to sign up for our mailing list.