This is a guest post by Brendan Skip Mark and Efe Tokdemir. This post is based on research from their article When Killers Become Victims: Diversionary War, Human Rights, and Strategic Target Selection, published in International Interactions.
Was the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani an attempt to divert attention from President Trump’s unfavorable domestic attention, and if so, will it be successful? The event parallels an earlier historical example. In 1998, a New York Times headline read “Impeachment Vote in the House Delayed As Clinton Launches Iraq Air Strike, Citing Military Need to Move Swiftly.” Then as now, many questioned whether the use of force in Iraq was meant to divert attention from President Clinton’s impeachment.
A string of research in political science has examined how Presidents use this rally effect to divert attention away from an unpopular domestic situation. The use of force abroad is believed to create a “rally around the flag” effect by increasing the public’s patriotism as the American people unite against a common, foreign enemy. Put simply, the diversionary use of force is when the increase in patriotism also spills over into support for the Commander in Chief, which then distracts from any unfavorable domestic attention.
It’s important to first lay out the nature of this conflict. The US-Iran conflict includes six major events. First, in December of 2019, an Iranian-backed militia launched a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that killed an American contractor and wounded four US service members. In retaliation, the US launched an airstrike at five locations in Iraq and Syria that killed 24 Iranian-backed militia members. Iraq’s leader argued this was a violation of their sovereignty, and shortly after, the US embassy in Baghdad was stormed by Iraqi citizens protesting these killings. Three days later the US assassinated General Soleimani, the commanding general of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s Quds Force, and five others in an overnight drone strike at Baghdad airport. A few days later unknown rockets were fired near the US embassy in Baghdad, and on January 7th Iran launched rockets at two Iraqi bases housing US troops in al Assad and Erbil.
Was Soleimani’s killing an act of diversionary conflict?
In order for the use of force to be diversionary, it must meet a few criteria: First, a leader must need to divert public attention from unfavorable domestic conditions. President Trump is undoubtedly in the midst of domestic turmoil that could benefit from a distraction. With an election on the way, his approval rating hovers around 42%, he recently became the third president in US history to be impeached, and 52% of Americans believe he should be removed from office. What’s more, his foreign policy, the place where presidents have the most direct power, has been heavily criticized; most recently with his decision to pull US troops out of Syria leaving the ground to Russia, Iran and Turkey.
Second, for a diversionary use of force to be successful two criteria must be met. First, the conflict has to grab media headlines and the people’s attention. In other words, it has to actually divert everyone’s attention from the domestic situation. This condition is undoubtedly met by the assassination of General Soleimani. Media coverage of US-Iran relations totally eclipsed all other news stories as the conflict unfolded. Questions of whether we will see war with Iran abound, with coverage varying between Iran backing down, the US backing down, and warnings that future escalation may be likely or unavoidable. At the time of this piece, news stories continue to emerge questioning whether the conflict will escalate once again.
Third, the use of force must be justifiable, defensible, and not an obvious attempt to divert attention. The choice of target is therefore quite important. In fact, our research shows that when leaders face domestic trouble, they are more likely to target regimes who violate human rights because the use of force against a repressive regime is both more successful at diverting attention and more easily justified.
Iran is an authoritarian and repressive state with very few civil and political rights. Indeed, the CIRIGHTS human rights dataset shows that Tehran’s scores on the use of torture, killings, disappearances, and political imprisonment for 2017 puts Iran as the 11th most repressive state in the world.[1] The Iranian government engages in the widespread violation of its citizens rights to peaceful assembly, free movement, religious freedom, labor rights, women’s rights, and free speech. According to our research, Iran is a good target for the use of diversionary force.
The US government justified its use of force by pointing out the repressive nature of Iran with President Trump calling him a “monster” whose death would save many lives. As a reminder, by almost all international accounts prior to this conflict, General Soleimani was a terrorist, possibly a war criminal, and responsible for many acts of repression carried out against the Iranian people. The United Nations had already banned him from traveling outside of Iran (UNSC Resolution 2231), the European Union had designated him as a terrorist for his activities in Syria (EU Reg. No. 790/2014), and the US had implemented sanctions against him in 2007 for proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (Executive Order 13382).
The US government also justified the assassination as self-defense to save American lives from an “imminent” attack. It should be noted that there is little publicly available evidence to corroborate this claim. Further, the UN Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, Agnes Callamard, publicly tweeted that the assassination was most likely unlawful. However, as we argue, diversionary uses of force abroad are particularly effective when the international community is unwilling or unable to punish repression and the US can claim to be acting on behalf of those whose rights are violated.
What explains Iran’s behavior?
Altogether, these conditions make Iran a perfect target to divert public attention from domestic affairs. But that begs the question of why Iran bombed an American base in the first place? “Strategic conflict avoidance” theory suggests that the Iranian government should have been aware of President Trump’s need to divert attention from his impeachment, and therefore, should have kept a low profile as their odds of be targeted were high. The Iranian regime and Trump administration may be implementing the same tactic.
Iranian leaders are facing their own domestic trouble and they have their own incentives to use this conflict for diversionary purposes. Protests and strikes in Iran have been ongoing since 2017. Protesters have called for radical changes to the country’s economic policies, political reform, and have threatened the Iranian leadership directly. The government has resorted to widespread repression to try and quash the protests with little success. In November 2019, a mass protest broke out over a hike in fuel prices, and the government responded by killing somewhere between 300 and 1,500 peaceful protesters (a mass atrocity by most definitions). The threat of war with the US could help demobilize these mass protests and allow the Iranian government to create its own “rally around the flag.”
So, what does it mean for the future of this conflict if both sides are trying to use force for diversionary purposes? Diversionary use of force theory expects leaders to engage in strategic foreign policy to divert public attention and boost popularity, but leaders have to be careful not to escalate the conflict or it may end up more costly than either leader wanted. Neither the US nor Iran wants a war right now; therefore, diversionary actions should stop at the edge of war. We should witness a de-escalation period regarding the final moves of both countries: President Trump publicly stated after the Iranian missile attack that “No Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime” and that Iran was standing down. News reports since then have pointed out that dozens of US troops were injured and suffer brain damage. President Trump has dismissed these injuries as “headaches”. This implies the US has built Iran a golden bridge to retreat across” as Sun Tzu puts in The Art of War. President Trump’s decision to threaten sanctions rather than military force or boots on the ground appears to indicate an unwillingness to allow this conflict to escalate. News reports at the time of this writing have noted that Iran has similarly taken steps to de-escalate the conflict.
Key takeaways
In sum, there is good evidence that Trump ordered the killing of General Soleimani to divert attention from his domestic troubles as the assassination of Soleimani meets all of the conditions necessary for a diversionary use of force. The assassination captured the attention of every major media outlet, as well as the public, and was justified as both self-defense and the execution of a “monster.”
Iran similarly seems to be using this conflict to divert attention away from the mass protests that are threatening their regime. By raising the possibility of war with the US, the Iranian regime hopes to demobilize protesters who may take the death of General Soleimani, a key figure in the repressive tools employed by the state, as the spark of a new democratic movement.
One of the conclusions of our research and the broader political science literature is that foreign policy is rarely carried out to improve human rights. Similarly, the use of violence for the purposes of improving human rights has a pretty poor track record. While much of the media has focused on the Iran-US conflict in terms of sincere actions by leaders in both countries, we argue that much of the conflict may be diversionary. If leaders are engaging in a diversionary conflict, then much of the tension surrounding this conflict has been fabricated to benefit the leadership in both countries. Viewed through this lens Iran is helping President Trump stay in power, and President Trump is helping the Iranian leadership stay in power. Far from either country trying to destroy or cripple the other, this conflict has strengthened both leaders’ power within their own country.
Brendan Skip Mark is an assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Rhode Island. His research examines the causes and consequences of human rights violations in relation to conflict and development policy. He is also a co-director of the CIRIGHTS human rights data project. Follow him on Twitter: @SkipMark1
Efe Tokdemir is an assistant professor of International Relations at Bilkent University. His research revolves around behavioral and attitudinal responses of individuals to violent vs. non-violent strategies pursued by the state and non-state armed actors. Follow him on Twitter: @efetokdemir
[1] They are tied for 11th with 6 other countries.
