Iran's strikes seem intended to avoid US deaths. Here's why that might be the case - CNN  

13:29 • 09.01.20
Politics

It is perhaps the most brazen attack Iran has launched against the United States in four decades of simmering covert and overt conflict.

The timing. The target. The threats of heavy retaliation already "locked and loaded," as President Trump would have had it.

Yet Wednesday morning's missile strikes against al-Asad airbase and Erbil airport -- both of which play host to US troops -- were clearly not an act designed to kill the most Americans possible.

Iran will have known that the troops are normally asleep in the early hours of the morning. Choosing to attack then likely minimized the number of personnel roaming around the base who could be killed or injured.

It will also have known the US has a strong air defense system that would have been on high alert. Tehran should have a grasp of how well its missiles would fare against such technology.

The missile attacks don't make sense if Tehran's goal was to really hurt US troops in large numbers -- as some had been pledging to do.

They do make sense, however, as the execution of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's order to strike back openly, military-to-military, in response to the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.

Khamenei's instruction was confusing when first reported, given that the US would be bound to prevail in a straightforward military conflict. Was the Supreme Leader ordering an empty show of force?

Wednesday's strikes sent a message that Iran would violate US red lines and engage in direct warfare, but they killed nobody.

The only thing wounded might be Iranian military pride that a moment they had so heavily trumpeted drew no blood from their adversary.

 

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