Well that's pretty clear:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a Tuesday interview that the United States will not allow Iran "to hide behind its proxy forces" in its offenses against American interests in the Middle East.
"We've made clear that we will not allow Iran to hide behind its proxy forces," Pompeo said on the Hugh Hewitt show. "But if American interests are attacked, whether by Iran directly or through its proxy forces, we will respond in an appropriate way against Iran."
Much like Russia's vaunted so-called "hybrid war"--that is basically Russia attacking a country while denying they are attacking--can be undone simply by not going along with that obvious fiction, simply telling the Iranians we know your arm is elbow-deep up the nether region of your puppet proxy nullifies Iran's strategy:
Mark down May 2019 as the month Iran's war-by-proxy-forces racket became an undeniable problem for Tehran's dictators.
This month, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. informed the Iranian regime it will suffer violent consequences if and when the militias and terror cells Tehran employs throughout the Middle East and the world attack Saudi and American targets.
Tehran no longer enjoys the diplomatic nicety of plausible deniability that armed surrogates supposedly provide. The regime will be held directly responsible for its proxy's violent actions.
Indeed, it is worse for Iran than even that. Our refusal to go along with the fiction puts Iran more at risk if one of their proxies acts against us or our allies even without Iranian orders. If we hammer Iran when their proxies act whether or not Iran orders the action, Iran gets the pain--which is what fighting through proxies is supposed to avoid.
In the bigger picture, mullah-run Iran is the source of a lot of our problems. (And note that I was extremely wrong to give Obama the benefit of the doubt given subsequent history that led to the astoundingly awful Iran nuclear deal.)
And in regard to Iran's desire to fight America to the last Arab, I will ask again why we don't covertly set up a web site to celebrate all the non-Iranian martyrs who have died for Iran's proxy wars.
The list could be pretty large if we go back in time and it might give some young Moslem men thinking about fighting for Iran the clarity that dying for Iran is likely--and that Iran won't cry for too long when the cameras are off.
