The Two-headed Iranian State

Jim Webb had served as a Marine Corps officer in Vietnam, then went on to become Secretary of the Navy and to precede Tim Kaine as Senator from Virginia. Webb has written an opinion piece in the Washington Post that is critical of the US approach to Iran.

How did it become acceptable to assassinate one of the top military officers of a country with whom we are not formally at war during a public visit to a third country that had no opposition to his presence? And what precedent has this assassination established on the acceptable conduct of nation-states toward military leaders of countries with which we might have strong disagreement short of actual war — or for their future actions toward our own people?
— Jim Webb, “When Did It Become Acceptable to Kill a Top Leader of a Country We Aren’t Even at War With?“, 9 Jan 2020.

I object to the connotations bundled into characterizing the killing of Soleimani as assassination, but let it ride for now.

Webb does not limit his criticism to the Trump administration. He views the act as consistent with the US approach to Iran going back at least to 2007. At that time, the Senate passed a non-binding resolution that called on the Bush administration to designate the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRG) as a terrorist organization.

I opposed this proposal based on the irrefutable fact that the organization was an inseparable arm of the Iranian government. The Revolutionary Guards are not independent actors like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. They are part of the Iranian government’s formal military structure, with an estimated strength of more than 150,000 members. It is legally and logically impossible to define one part of a national government as an international terrorist organization without applying the term to that entire government.
— Jim Webb, loc. cit.

So were the Senators in 2007 acting like a bunch of bar-room patriots, agitating to do something about the IRG without committing resources or risking American blood? Possibly. However, Webb’s approach is unsatisfying because it does not recognize the reality of the means Iran uses to conduct its international policy.

Asymmetric Warfare

There are only two ways to fight the US: stupidly or asymmetrically.
— Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster.

The United States has enormous military resources — not limitless, mind you, but enormous. Even though we have a volunteer army, we have vast amounts of material supporting that army. We expect to achieve our objectives with reduced casualty cost through the application of abundant firepower.

I intend no disrespect to the Iranian nation and its capabilities. Iran could, if it chose policy objectives that were consistent with this goal, be a respected regional power. Nevertheless, it is clear that Iran does not have the wealth to put an army in the field and square off against the United States in conventional battle. If Iran were to attempt this, it would transcend foolish.

War is a mere continuation of policy by other means.
— Clausewitz, On War.

All the same, Iran is a nation-state and its government has its own interests and strategic objectives. Some of these interests are contrary to those of other nations, including the US. The Iranians do not just give up on interests that other nations oppose, any more than we do. Iran has and will continue to assert its recourse to violent means to achieve its ends where the state deems such means to be necessary.

America’s post-World War II history has shown that low-intensity conflicts against insurgents and small powers are far more likely to occur, and can significantly damage U.S. interests, exact an outsized toll, and give future enemies a playbook from which to work.
— Benjamin Locks, “Bad Guys Know What Works: Asymmetric Warfare and the Third Offset“, 2015

So when another entity wants to get violent with the United States, how does it go about doing this without getting pulverized? It fights asymmetrically. It does not fight by “the rules”, because the larger and more well-resourced military force is optimized to win fighting by “the rules.”

What Exactly Is the Iranian Republican Guard?

The IRG must be understood in terms of asymmetric warfare. The existence of the IRG and the way the Iranian state uses it are not going to conform to “the rules.” The IRG exists to use principles of asymmetric warfare to further the foreign policy objectives of the Islamic Republic.

In the past, people would have described the IRG as “a state within a state”, much as Soviet experts have described the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MVD-KGB. I will go further, and describe the IRG as a parallel government to that of the formal civilian government of the Islamic Republic, with both answerable to the Ayatollah and the Guardian Council.

If we were to apply Webb’s definitions and methods of analysis, the IRG would give Iran all the options and constrain our responses, which is one of the goals of conducing asymmetric warfare. We would negotiate in good faith with the Iranian civil government, only to have the IRG either nullify our agreement outright or, as a non-participating party, refuse to be bound by any obligations under it. This is the time-honored tactic known as multiple bites of the apple. It is what happens when you go to buy a car, negotiate your best deal with the salesperson, and then s/he says she has to get it approved by the sales manager.

What would happen if the United States were to declare war on the IRG? It is at least worth considering as a thought experiment. The IRG has a share of the public wealth of Iran supporting it. The IRG is, as Webb observes, a part of the military structure of the Islamic Republic. It conducts its own business independently of the foreign service answerable to the Iranian civil government and the Majlis. So what if we were to say that, while we have no animus toward the Iranian people and their duly elected civil government, the IRG hates us and we are going to hate them back with the full force American arms can bring to bear?

There is so much chaos over who is in charge of Iranian foreign affairs that Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tendered his resignation eleven months ago, only to have it rejected by the Supreme Leader. A major contributor to the chaos was Major General Quasem Soleimani, who was conducting his own foreign policy with, at the very least, the blessing of the Supreme Leader.

The current arrangement between the Supreme Leader, the civil government and the IRG works very well for the Ayatollah. There is no reason for us to play his game his way. The Iranian state is a two-headed beast; yes, it does follow that it has two faces. There is no reason for us to engage with a state using asymmetric methods in a conventional manner.