Politics Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people interested in governments, policies, and political processes. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
After the recent strike targeting Qassem Soleimani I am wondering why does US performs these attacks so bluntly while nowadays it is quite fashionable to deny involvement.
I assume that in order to able to deny they should rely on less sophisticated strikes which do not immediately connects the attack type to US military technology, but this should reduce the side effects.
Question: Why does US confirm conducting strikes such as the one that targeted Qassem Soleimani? Why not deny it?
The point of publicizing the action is to make it act as a deterrent for others. The modern version of gunboat diplomacy:
The results indicate that the most effective gunboat diplomacy involves a definitive, deterrent display of force undertaken by an assailant who has engaged in war in the victim's region and who is militarily prepared and politically stable compared to the victim.
Statements like the one from the Department of Defence ending with
This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.
make that pretty obvious.
There's also the home US audience to be provided with clear victories/actions in response to the Iranian ones, presented as justice. Trump called Suleimani "the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world", other Republicans called him an "evil bastard who murdered Americans". The US public very much believes in retributive justice and this seems to extend to an international context.
Iran gives a case study in why you would want to do so covertly. First, despite having a few allies, Iran is mostly a pariah in the international community. Most major UN states have complied with various sanctions levied against it. Antagonizing said states by openly engaging in acts of aggression simply provides fodder for further punishments.
America is a superpower, and reacting covertly to what are obviously challenges to its power in Iraq is actually more dangerous than responding decisively. As long as the administration feels that it can justify such attacks to the international community, the benefits outweigh the costs. When America was locked in struggle with the USSR during the Cold War, overt aggression was more costly, so conflict usually occurred via proxy actors (Cuba, Afghanistan, etc.).
For some, escalating conflict with Iran is the point.
The US still conducts deniable operations.
This strike was about sending a message: the US has undergone a fundamental change of doctrine.
They will leverage their supreme technological advantage to target the regime in Iran (and other states), rather than engage in long-running proxy wars. They will target the people directing attacks and threats on Americans and their assets, rather than the foot soldiers.
And the US wants the message sent by the attack to be as loud and clear as possible. Denying involvement would only muffle and confuse the message.
There is also a pragmatic reason too (which you allude to) - only a handful of nations have the technology to target a moving vehicle with such accuracy. A denial would be easily seen for what it was, and the US would look weak (not to mention a liar).
And a different strike method (eg. poisoning, sniper) would have necessarily involved substantially more risk to US assets.
The US is not signatory to the International Criminal Court so it has less concern about war crimes prosecution. See for example Iran has a 'shockingly strong' war-crimes case against Trump over Soleimani's killing — and it could win.
You punch a bully in the face to let the rest of the bullies know you're not going to be bullied. There is a time and place for diplomacy. Responding to an embassy attack that killed an American citizen is neither the time nor the place.
