(Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, center, attends a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Revolutionary Guard commanders in Tehran, Iran, September 18, 2016. As Saudi Arabia holds a naval drill in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, Soleimani, a powerful Iranian general was quoted, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2016, by the semi-official Fars and Tasnim news agencies as suggesting the kingdom's deputy crown prince is so "impatient" he may kill his own father to take the throne. While harsh rhetoric has been common between the two rivals since January, the outrageous comments by Soleimani take things to an entirely different level by outright discussing Saudi King Salman being killed.
- President Donald Trump's war of words with Iran escalated into a new dimension on Thursday, with Iran's Major-General Qassem Soleimani threatening to destroy everything that Trump owns.
- There's no way Soleimani can actually get that done, and experts say he's just bluffing.
- Iran's military would get totally wiped in a war against the US, but Iran has many other ways it can, and does, hurt the US.
- But Iran can't act up now, because it's trying to win some good press before the US reimposes sanctions, so that other countries may look favorably on them and continue to buy their oil.
President Donald Trump's war of words with Iran escalated into a new dimension on Thrusday, with Iran's Major-General Qassem Soleimani threatening to destroy everything that Trump owns.
After Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told Trump he could expect the "mother of all wars" if the US fought with Iran, Trump shot back an all-caps tweet threatening the country with a historically epic beat down.
Iran's infamous general, Qassem Soleimani, who leads Iran's foreign military ventures as part of an outfit the US calls a supporter of terrorism, was not amused.
"As a soldier, it is my duty to respond to Trump's threats. If he wants to use the language of threat, he should talk to me, not to the president," Soleimani said, according to Reuters.
"You know that this war will destroy all that you possess. You will start this war but we will be the ones to impose its end. Therefore you have to be careful about insulting the Iranian people and the president of our Republic," Soleimani told Iran's Arabic language Al Alam TV.
"You know our power in the region and our capabilities in asymmetric war. We will act and we will work," he said.
Soleimani, who's known as "the shadow commander," is one of the Middle East's most feared commanders as the leader of the Quds Force, the special forces unit of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard that runs paramilitary operations in what experts believe is dozens of countries.
While Soleimani does command a capable military and Iran's prowess in asymmetric war, or non-conventional fighting like guerilla war via militias and cyber attacks, is well established, a number of experts contacted by Business Insider saw this as little more than a bluff.
Not only is Iran far from taking military action against the US, it's very far from being able to inflict the kind of damage Soleimani described.
Iran's outmatched, but far from stupid
Fars News Agency Photo via USNI News
Iran's fast attack craft, the type repeatedly used to harass US Navy ships.
"There are basically two ways to fight the US military: Asymmetrically and stupid," former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster once said.
"Iran's military has some numbers, they really makes a big sh0w out of its navy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the missiles it has," Emily Hawthorne, a Middle East analyst at Stratfor told Business Insider. "But compared to its rivals in the gulf, and of course to the US, Iran knows it would conventionally be fighting a losing battle if it picked a fight with the US."
So instead of a stupid fight that would quickly see Iran's forces crushed and humiliated, Iran will likely opt for asymmetric attacks and proxy battles in any escalation with the US.
Houthi militants in Yemen harassing Saudi oil tankers to the point where it shut down oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The US intelligence community holds that Iran supports and to some degree directs these militants, and Hawthorne said that Iran would likely look to hurt the US by hurting its allies via proxies like the Houthis.
If Iran's navy outright attacked the US or another allied navy, it would find itself swiftly and soundly defeated. Instead, Iran "clings to plausible deniability" through its network of militias around the region. In Yemen, Iran has the Houthis. In Lebanon, Iran-backed Hezbollah keeps Israel in its crosshairs. Syria and Iraq hold a patchwork of Iranian-backed militias.
The US has around 2,000 troops in Syria, but confronting them has proven a losing battle for Iran's 70,000 or so fighters in the country time and time again.
Iran has cyber capabilities that could hobble US or allied infrastructure to kick up dust during a fight. Iran's military could mine the regional waterways and launch small fast-attack craft on suicide runs against massive US Navy ships.
While the massive might of the US military would eventually crush Iran's smaller, weaker forces, they could impose tremendous cost through asymmetric attacks in attempt to bleed US forces by a thousand cuts.
Iran has its hands tied
Raheb Homavandi/Reuters
As Iran awaits the US re-imposition of sanctions on its oil exports on November 4, Iran is desperate to "maintain a perception that it is a good actor to increase the possibility that the international community would back them up" and continue to buy their oil in the face of sanctions, Aniseh Bassiri Tabriz, a Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told Business Insider.
The US unilaterally withdrew from the Iran deal that promised relief from sanctions without convincing its European allies to follow suit. Now, before the European countries have picked a side, Iran hopes to win them over with a period of relative clam.
Soleimani is the IRGC's "security principal is to fight against any kind of hegemonic behavior in the region," said Tabriz. "They have to give the perception that whatever the US is going to do against Iran, they're going to defend themselves."
But for now, Soleimani's tough talk appears a mere threat.