Why Not Whack-an-Iranian-Mole?

You can count on CNN to get almost everything wrong, it appears to be their contemporary business plan. For example, a recent headline:

America can’t have a whack-a-mole Iran strategy

COTTonLINE asks: Why not? We wait for an Iranian (or proxy) terror leader to gain a bit of prominence or visibility, and arrange for him to be violently dead. The mole pops up and we whack him.

Since the Soleimani hit there have been 2-3 more sudden deaths of Iranian/proxy force leaders. I’d say whack-a-mole is a reasonable metaphor for what has happened. See a hero, make a martyr.

As a policy it has much to recommend it. Deniability, for one thing. Maybe the Mossad did it, maybe the Saudis, maybe the Russians, maybe the Kurds or Assad’s minions. We aren’t the only anti-Iran user-of-force in the region.

The policy doesn’t involve masses of troops, billions in supplies and hardware. It avoids the implicit threat that if you invade a place, you have to then govern it.

To counter this policy it is possible for Iran to run a violent regime with anonymous leaders; possible but not very effective. Power is must less attractive and usable beyond face-to-face interactions if you cannot be widely seen to have it. An “anonymous hero” is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron.