As a general, Mattis urged action

against Iran. As a defense secretary,

he may be a voice of caution.
Retired U.S. Marine Corps General James Mattis has been chosen
to be secretary of defense by President-elect Donald Trump,
according to people familiar with the decision. (Jenny Starrs/The
Washington Post)

By Greg Jaffe and Adam Entous January

8 at 6:47 PM
The Iranian-supplied rockets were raining down on Gen. James N.
Mattiss troops throughout the spring and summer of 2011 with
greater and greater intensity.
Six American soldiers were killed by a volley in eastern Baghdad
in early June. A few weeks later, three more Americans died in a
similar strike, driving the monthly death toll to 15. It was
the worst month for U.S. troops in Iraq in more than two years,
and Irans proxies were vowing more rockets and more bloodshed.
Mattis, the top American commander in the Middle East, was
determined to send a clear message to Tehran to stop it. His
proposal, crafted with the support of the ambassador and the
senior American commander in Iraq, was to hit back inside Iran,
said current and former senior U.S. officials, who took part in the
debate.

One option was a dead-of-night U.S. strike against an Iranian

power plant or oil refinery, said the officials, speaking on the
condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive operations.
You could let them know that we have rockets, too, one senior
U.S. official said of the options forwarded by Mattis to Washington.

Now-retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattiss advocacy and

aggressive style alienated the Obama White House and the
president he was serving. (Matt Dunham/Associated Press)
Mattiss proposals quickly reached the White House, which had a
different view of how to curb Irans increasingly aggressive
behavior. To President Obama, a U.S. strike on Iranian soil would
only inflame a volatile situation and widen a conflict that he had

promised to end. Others in the White House worried that Mattiss

proposal risked starting yet another war in the Middle East.
The battle over how to respond to the mounting American
casualties in summer 2011 reflected the deepening divide
between the president and his top commander in the Middle East.
In a White House worried about American overreach and the
unintended consequences of military action, Mattis was the voice
from the field consistently calling for a tougher response.
There were clearly White House staff who thought the
recommendations he was making were too aggressive, said Leon
E. Panetta, who was defense secretary at the time. But I thought
a lot of that was, frankly, not having the maturity to look at all of
the options that a president should look at in order to make the
right decisions.
Ultimately, Mattiss advocacy and aggressive style alienated the
White House and the president he was serving.
Now Mattis will play a different role for a new commander in chief.
As President-elect Donald Trumps choice to lead the Pentagon,
Mattis will oversee a force of nearly 1.3 million active-duty troops
scattered across more than 150 countries. He will serve a
president who has questioned the impartiality of Americas
intelligence agencies and has moved in often puzzling ways
to embrace longtime adversaries, such as Russian President
Vladimir Putin. He has emphasized the value of unpredictability
over careful deliberation and raw power over diplomacy.
Mattiss falling out with the Obama administration, especially over
Iran, offers a perspective into how the retired four-star Marine

general will lead the worlds largest military and the advice he will
bring to Trump during the most sensitive Situation Room debates.
The heated discussions in 2011 over how to respond to the
Iranian rockets stretched on for weeks.
There were concerns about proportionality, effectiveness and
whether the Iranians would escalate, said one former Pentagon
official who took part in the discussions. Could you actually hit
the guys who were responsible as opposed to some random
entity? Would it be anything more than a pinprick? How do you do
something more than a pinprick without starting a conflict?
In the end, Mattis was authorized to take action inside Iraq
against the leaders of the Iranian-backed militias.
Senior White House officials said the American military response
effectively deterred the Iranians and slowed the rocket attacks
that were killing U.S. soldiers and Marines. Only 10 Americans
died in Iraq during the last five months of 2011.
It was a very tough, tough period, a former senior White House
official said. And it was a very tough response.
Mattis and some of his allies who favored a cross-border operation
had a different takeaway. The American response slowed the
attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, but it also demonstrated that
the Obama White House was unwilling to take the fight directly to
the Iranians, even when they drew American blood.

The American response solved the immediate problem of

Iranian-backed attacks, but was not sufficient to deter Iran from
further challenges to the U.S. military throughout the region, one
senior U.S. official involved in the deliberations said.
3 priorities: Iran, Iran, Iran
For much of the Obama presidency, Iran loomed as one of the
toughest and most volatile foreign policy problems. A big part of
that challenge was managing Israel, the United States closest ally
in the region, but one that might take unilateral action against
Iran.
Israeli leaders were sending mixed messages to Obama and his
top advisers about how far they were willing to go to stop Iran
from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Then-Defense Minister Ehud
Barak briefed his Pentagon counterparts on secret plans to launch
a commando-style raid on Irans most heavily fortified nuclear
site. Israels Mossad intelligence service, in turn, privately told the
Americans that the Israelis could not act against Iran alone. The
White House was never certain whom to believe.
Mattiss job at Central Command was to be prepared if Israel
triggered a war and to signal to the Iranians that the outcome of
any wider conflict with the United States would be devastating for
them. It was a responsibility that Mattis took seriously, sometimes
too seriously for those at the White House and the State
Department, current and former officials said.
Soon after Mattis was tapped to lead U.S. forces in the Middle East
in August 2010, Obama asked the general to spell out his top
priorities. Mattis replied that he had three: Number one Iran.

Number two Iran. Number three Iran, said a senior U.S. official
who was present. The generals singular focus unnerved some
civilian leaders, who thought he should pay attention to a broader
range of threats.
His style and Marine swagger often struck the wrong chord in a
White House that was focused on diplomacy and that was notably
short of top officials with military experience. Mattis and his aides
relentlessly drilled the U.S. militarys war plan for Iran. During one
planning session, which focused on the wars aftermath and
included senior officials from Washington, Mattis repeatedly joked
that Irans navy would be at the bottom of the ocean,
participants said.
His preparations for a possible conflict also rattled some U.S.
diplomats whom Mattis invited to Central Commands regional
headquarters in Qatar in 2011 for briefings on how Iran might
strike back at U.S. allies and facilities. Some of the diplomats had
the impression that Mattis was describing a World War III
scenario, one ambassador said.
Among the greatest dangers in the region was uncertainty, and
some White House officials worried that Iran might misread
Mattiss war preparations as an act of aggression. At the time, the
United States had no direct channels of communication with the
Iranian military to de-escalate tensions.
On occasion, the U.S. military would conduct exercises designed
to send messages to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps about
Americas seriousness. During and after those maneuvers, U.S.
spy agencies would monitor the Iranians reactions. Sometimes
the Iranians missed the intended signal, suggesting to the
Americans that they did not notice what the United States had

done. At other times, they seemed to react to American actions

that were not intended to be provocative.
The fog of war was enormous, a former senior Pentagon official
said.
Mattis proposed opening a direct channel with the Iranian military
to mitigate the risk of miscalculation. But the White House,
worried about sparking a diplomatic backlash, rejected the
proposal.
In this atmosphere of growing tension, Mattis began pressing for
more authority to hit the Iranians hard if it looked as though
Tehran was shifting to a war footing. Irans first move in a fight
with the United States or Israel probably would be to drop mines
into the Strait of Hormuz, choking off the Middle Easts oil supply.
Mattis asked for permission to strike Iranian fast boats as soon as
the United States had solid intelligence that the Iranians were
loading them with mines. His rationale was that the boats were
most vulnerable when they were still in port and that a swift blow
could cripple Irans war effort before it had even started.
His number one objective was to prevent the war from breaking
out by being ready to preempt the Iranians, a former senior
military officer said. If he had taken the Iranian swarm boats out
with mines in them, then that was going to be it for them.
The White House worried that bad intelligence or a rash judgment
could trigger an unnecessary war with Iran. Its understandable
that if we were going to engage in an act of war in the Strait of
Hormuz that the president ought to play a key role, Panetta said.

But, Panetta added, it also was Mattiss job to offer the president
his best military advice and options. The United States would
have only a few hours to act after Iran began loading the mines.
Once the mines were in place, Mattis knew reopening the strait
could take three weeks and lead to U.S. casualties.
The end result of the heated debate in late 2011 and early 2012
was a compromise: Obama would bypass the White Houses
careful and cumbersome policy process and decide on an
expedited basis whether to strike the fast boats, Panetta said.
Americas sentinel
Mattiss bold moves were seen as helpful when the White House
was trying to press Iran into talks to curb its nuclear program. His
brash style was also a reassurance to Israeli leaders threatening
to launch unilateral strikes. The Israelis may
have questioned Obamas willingness to use force against Iran to
prevent it from building a nuclear bomb. But they believed Mattis
was serious.
In time, however, as secret talks with Iran got underway in the
summer of 2012, some White House officials began to see Mattis
as a potential liability.
Each week, Mattis wrote a classified letter to the defense
secretary that was forwarded to the White House. Typically,
Mattiss updates focused on Irans support for terrorism and its
destabilizing activities throughout the region. To the White House,
these threats were secondary to restricting Irans nuclear
program, and Mattiss hard-nosed approach, as outlined in the
weekly letters, was seen by some as out of step with the
presidents top foreign diplomatic priority.

Eventually, higher-ups in the Pentagon encouraged Mattis to shift

his focus away from Iran and concentrate on the rest of the
Central Command region, which encompassed all of the Middle
East as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. The feedback was to
tone down the Iran stuff in the letter, one former military official
said. Basically, they said it wouldnt hurt to talk about something
else.
Mattis often said it was his role to act as Americas sentinel in
the Middle East. He refused to soften his assessments.
It was a kind of culture clash, said Dennis Ross, who advised
Obama on Iran policy. There was such a preoccupation in the
White House with not doing things that would provoke Iran or be
seen as provocative. Mattis was, by definition, inclined toward
doing those things that would be seen as provocative. And as
time went by, this became increasingly less acceptable to them.
In early 2013, the general was told he was being replaced five
months early. Inside the White House, Mattiss early departure
was not viewed as a firing. He had not behaved unethically or
rebelled against his civilian chain of command.
Jim Mattis was not a runaway general, said Matthew Spence, a
senior administration official who worked closely with Mattis.
There was a very unfair impression that he was coming out of
the trenches and only saying go, go, go. In reality, he was one of
the most thoughtful strategists in uniform that I have ever worked
with.

But Mattis had a different view of his departure. He was convinced

that he had been dismissed early for running afoul of the White
House, friends and former colleagues said.
Now Mattis is poised to serve a new commander in chief whose
brash approach could force the former general into a new and
unfamiliar role. When Iranian naval vessels were harassing
American warships this summer in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump
responded with a verbal broadside.
When they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats
and they make gestures at our people that they shouldnt be
allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water, Trump said
to thunderous applause at a campaign rally.
As defense secretary, Mattis may be compelled to act as a check
on an inexperienced presidents instincts. There are already some
signs that he is thinking along these lines and indications that his
task will not be an easy one.
Shortly after Trump tapped him to lead the Pentagon, Mattis asked
Michle Flournoy, the front-runner for the defense secretary job in
a Hillary Clinton White House, to consider serving as his deputy.
Mattiss courtship of Flournoy suggested a bias for continuity over
radical change and underscored his determination to be an
independent voice in White House policy debates.
Flournoy visited Trump Tower in New York to discuss the job with
senior Trump foreign policy advisers. Soon after, she decided her

differences with the president-elect were too deep to accept the

position.
Several weeks later, Mattis is still searching for a deputy.
Posted by Thavam