Israel war: Here’s why Biden won’t be able to find a smoking Iranian gun
Michael Rubin
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National Security Council spokesman John Kirby tied himself in knots trying to deny any evidence of a “direct link” between Iran and Hamas. Biden aides seemingly also leaked intelligence showing key Iranian officials — they do not say whom — surprised at the operation.
The efforts to deny any evidence sufficient to tie Tehran to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust are disingenuous. Rather than exculpate an Iranian link, they simply show that almost 44 years after the Islamic Revolution, top White House and CIA officials simply have no clue as to how Iranian command and control works. Too many political appointees simply project an American way of doing things onto their Iranian adversaries and look for the type of commands American military or intelligence officials might give to conduct an operation.
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When the Iranians sponsor terrorism or act aggressively, for example, shooting down an American drone in international airspace, seizing American sailors, or having Hezbollah act against Israel, it is natural for the president to ask U.S. intelligence analysts for evidence of a direct Iranian link. In practice, this would mean signals intelligence, an intercepted phone call or radio command, for example.
When the National Security Agency or CIA cannot find any such link, too many American officials will conclude the action was rogue in its origin. President Donald Trump, for example, explained he would not retaliate against Iran for the downed drone. “I imagine someone made a mistake,” he said. “I think that it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it.”
There are two problems with the theory of rogue action. First, a deep dive into Iranian rogue behavior dating to the 1979 seizure of the American embassy shows that those responsible for launching activities dismissed as rogue are often promoted after the fact.
The second is that Iranian command and control operates differently than any other country. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is a dictator, but not in the mold of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un or late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. He is a dictator by veto. Rather than give commands and expect them to be followed, he instead defines policy redlines and gives Iranian commanders freedom to do anything that he did not expressly forbid. Often these guardrails are defined in Friday prayer sermons, a weekly Iranian equivalent of a State of the Union address.
Culturally, Iranian colonels and generals can show initiative; they need not wait for orders in the way a North Korean or Iraqi officer would. As such, there will never be a smoking gun with an intercepted communication from Khamenei, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, or Quds Force leader Esmail Qaani to a Hamas, Hezbollah, or Houthi operative. In effect, this means senior Iranian officials may have been surprised when news broke of the operation, but that is only because they had no need to approve such an operation in the first place in the manner a White House or Pentagon hierarchy would in the United States.
Previously, it was also easier to follow the money. In 1995, a Palestine Islamic Jihad terrorist killed Brandeis University junior Alisa Flatow in a suicide bombing of the bus on which she was riding. Her father Stephen sued the Islamic Republic of Iran and won his case. A key piece of evidence was a line item in the Iranian budget to support Palestinian resistance. Following its loss, the Iranian government responded not with reform, but rather by removing such line items from future budgets. That does not mean Iran no longer supports “resistance,” its euphemism for terrorism; it just means it no longer acknowledges with precision the money spent.
The point here is that it is time to stop looking for a smoking gun. Iran openly calls for Israel’s destruction. The founding statutes of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps define the purpose of the group to be “export of revolution.” In 2008, the supreme leader and the IRGC clarified this to mean support for “resistance” and insurgency. That their top clients are Hezbollah and Hamas is no secret; rather, it is a source of pride for the Iranian leadership.
To play Iran’s lawyer the way Biden, Kirby, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken now do is disingenuous. It is not sophisticated; it only reflects ignorance of the way Iran operates and plays into Iran’s doctrine of plausible deniability.
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Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.