Calls, COBR and Crisis Response - thoughts on the HMG initial reaction to the Iran crisis

The killing of Iranian Qods Force leader Qasem Soleimani by the United States in Iraq on Fri 3 Jan has caused a significant security crisis to explode in the Middle East. Tensions in the region, already high following days of attacks on the US Embassy in Baghdad are now higher than ever. With Iran contemplating how to respond to this strike, the long running covert war between the Iranians and a plethora of other nations has the potential to become far more overt in nature.

What though does this mean for the UK and more importantly, what should the Government do in response? Already the media is full of shrill calls for the Prime Minister to break off his holiday, return home and chair a ‘Cobra Meeting’ (sic), while others are bemoaning the death of the special relationship because apparently the UK wasn’t told in advance. Amidst this outbreak of near hysteria, Humphrey is pretty sure he heard demands of ‘we want eight and we won’t wait’ too…

The first question to ask is does the UK have a strategic interest in what has gone on in Iraq – yes, it absolutely does. The Middle East is a complex challenging region in which the UK is a leading external player.

With significant economic interests, diplomatic presence and military personnel and assets based all over the region, coupled with a strong national security interest in seeing regional stability, this is a crisis that the UK must ensure it monitors and understands in order to best protect its national interest. As to whether the UK should have been consulted in advance of the strike though, well that’s a very different question.

‘Call Me’

The US and UK are extraordinarily close allies, enjoying an unparalleled level of military integration and co-operation, supplemented by close links in the intelligence space and wider alignment on many international foreign policy issues. The relationship is close and genuine, and it is reasonable to say that the two countries are genuinely close in their thinking and actions.

But just because you are close does not mean you share everything automatically. There will always be decisions taken by the President and Prime Minister that will not be shared with each other allies before they occur. In this case there would appear to be good reason why no formal notification was made.

It seems likely that Soleimani, or one of the other intended targets, was tracked using some exceptionally sensitive means of intelligence collection and exploitation. It is entirely likely given the sensitivities of this capability that its abilities and access were not shared in full with allies in case this led to its compromise. Indeed, it’s also likely that huge parts of the US Government and military were not made aware of it either. 

The challenge with time sensitive strikes like this is that they can go awry if plans change or if the information is not totally accurate. If the US had taken the decision to consult with allies ahead of time then the risk of compromise of the capability would have grown, particularly if the strike had to be called off for any reason. Once that was done it would have made any future strike increasingly unlikely.

The decision to strike would have probably compromised this intelligence capability, representing the difficulty inherent in trading off access versus action. Put simply, until you know you no longer need to worry about the capability you have, you want as few people as possible to have ‘a need to know’ about it. Until the strike had occurred, it looks like the UK, Iraq and other nations did not have ‘a need to know’.

The second reason that you probably wouldn’t want to consult widely ahead of time is the risk of delay while people gave their views. Assuming the White House had reached out to the Prime Minister, he would almost certainly have wanted professional advice on the implications and impact that such a strike would have – that’s not something you can easily draft or provide at 3am on the 2^nd of January in a hurry. So the question is, what tangible difference would it have made to UK foreign and security policy by finding out shortly before hand, versus around the time of the strike itself?

There will be those out there who enjoy the status of being the professionally offended who will seek to use this as a reason to claim the UK doesn’t have any influence in Washington anymore. This is an absurdly simple claim that doesn’t stand up to serious scrutiny – ultimately, when you are dealing with a fast moving, time sensitive and hugely compartmented capability to track an individual you wish to kill, the ability to partake of diplomatic small talk to make other countries feel good is pretty limited.

The fact that the US didn’t tell the UK doesn’t change the nature of the military alliance. It doesn’t change the nature of the enduring posts occupied by liaison officers and exchange officers across the DOD, often in some very influential and important posts. It doesn’t change the deep trust earned over nearly 80 years of fighting and dying on the same battlefields. Its just a reminder that sometimes nation states will put their sovereignty and national interests first over the niceties of protocol with others.

‘Call COBR’

The second charge being made is that the UK is somehow already failing in its response because a PM led COBR hasn’t been publicly called or that the Prime Minister has yet to fly home from his winter holiday. Given we’re dealing with a crisis that is less than 12 hours old, neither of these facts is particularly surprising.

The UK media have a bit of an obsession with the COBR process (which they usually and inaccurately call ‘Cobra’). It feels like no crisis is a true crisis until you get a reporter standing breathlessly in front of 70 Whitehall going ‘and I understand that COBR has been called’ in order to help set the mood of the nation into one of ‘oh right, this is serious’.  

The name COBR means ‘Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms’ – sometimes incorrectly called COBRA, reportedly due to it once long ago being held in ‘Briefing Room A’, although this is long lost to history. Like many readers on this site, Humphrey has lost count of the number of times he’s attended COBR meetings in various guises and roles as part of the HMG response to various crises over the years, and he’s never once been in this quasi-mythical ‘Room A’ for it…

To the public COBR is usually imagined or portrayed in bad films or novels as a whiz bang super secret bunker deep under Whitehall filled with big screens, highly efficient IT and glamorous spies and SAS types somehow solving the problem via live broadcast before retiring for medals and double entendres. The alternative is that its filled with Machiavellian mandarins in immaculate pinstripe suits taking calm charge of the crisis / losing control of the crisis only to be solved by the plucky working class lad who got stitched up by the evil officers.

COBR is neither of the above, rather it is a process that can be used a means to bring the machinery of government together during a crisis and help resolve a problem that needs fixing. It is usually held in a suite of rooms in 70 Whitehall, which are not as glamorous or high-tech as the movies would have you believe.

What the COBR process does very well is provide a means of getting reliable and secure communications together to enable all the parts of Government with a stake in a crisis to speak, share their understanding of the situation and determine next steps and what to do. Its essentially a meeting room where people share their understanding, take ownership of resolution in the short term and get to the point where longer term response mechanisms can be set up to resolve an issue.

It works at two levels – one level for officials who come together at working level to share their understanding of the situation, and one for Ministers who can come into take charge of an event. In the most significant of crises, it can be chaired by the Prime Minister directly – although this is relatively unusual. 

It’s a short-term response, typically used when an incident occurs that needs people brought together who don’t normally work together. For example, it is often called for disasters or incidents where a group of bodies and organisations, or departments that may have a stake in fixing things need to start sharing information and co-ordinating outcomes.

In these circumstances it is brilliant – it helps force co-operation and it helps start to shape a response, often when things are confused or unclear. It also helps people work out who owns which part of the problem, and who is responsible for fixing it. To that end, COBR is a superb means of crisis recovery – particularly in a fast-moving situation where lives may be at stake.

That does not mean COBR is always the ideal thing to be called for this situation – far from it. There appears to be an assumption in some quarters that the Government either does COBR or does nothing. There are plenty of cross Whitehall channels that exist that bring people together to share understanding and views on issues – you don’t automatically need to call COBR to start getting the right people in the room and fixing the problem. You can call COBR when you need to bring people together who’ve not worked together yet and you need to get the ball rolling.

The risk is that because the Government has  not publicly announced that it has called a COBR people perhaps assume that nothing is being done. In fact, it’s likely that plenty is going on in Whitehall today, but that because the relationships and teams already exist and people are used to working together, there is less need for a Ministerial COBR to help define the response as the existing structures already exist to handle these challenges via extant means. Alternatively, COBR could have met at working level, but without any publicity attached to it. Its possible that in due course one may happen, but to help shape the response based on what has been done so far, rather than grip things from the outset.

There are without doubt a wide range of responses needed to this crisis, ranging from diplomatic views, foreign policy considerations and practical ones about what to do to ensure the safety of UK troops and interests in the region. But this sort of work is very much routine business and not something you need the Prime Minister to personally direct.

If we’re in the stage where the machinery of Government is fundamentally unable to handle the right working level responses to these sorts of issues without needing the PM on hand, then something has gone very badly wrong indeed with Whitehall.

The whole point of the Cabinet structure is that it provides you with multiple Ministers who are the leads for specialist departments. In this case with both the Foreign and Defence Secretary’s reportedly in London, doubtless supported by their staffs, the right people to work out a response are already on the case. 

It also points to a wider issue of expectation management about the time it takes to handle a crisis and how this doesn’t conveniently fit with press deadlines. These sorts of events happen quickly and there is a sudden rush of demands that ‘something must be done’ – there was some criticism of the fact that the PM was in the West Indies and hadn’t yet returned home.

This crisis is barely 12 hours old. Even with the best will in the world, if the PM had been woken the second the strike occurred, it is doubtful he could be back in the UK yet. If he was, then what actual advantage does this give us – a tired and jetlagged individual needing to be brought up to speed and offer views on a crisis that his Ministers and Civil Servants already have in hand.

Crises don’t occur in easily manageable chunks. The world is a messy and complex place where things happen daily that need managing. If you expect your national leader to pause and cancel a holiday every time something happens, you merely end up with a very tired leader who probably needs a holiday in case they start making poor decisions due to fatigue.

We’re not at the point where British troops are in the firing line, nor are we at the stage where the nation is poised to go to war. Given this, what value now does having a PM do beyond provide good copy for journalists and reporters?

It feels as if the UK may be suffering a sort of self-manufactured crisis – we’ve decided that barely 12 hours into a crisis that we’ve failed because people haven’t visibly dropped everything immediately to do something. The fact that this is the opening act, and a lot is likely to play out over quite some time seems irrelevant to some people – they’d rather the pretence of action for actions sake over quiet thoughtful consideration about the right thing to do.

Over the next few days and weeks there is likely to be all manner of incidents occurring in the region as the crisis occurs. This will place a significant burden on staff in the UK and elsewhere to ensure that the UK’s interests are considered and protected, and that all necessary planning is done.

Just because there isn’t exciting news from Whitehall to report doesn’t mean that things aren’t happening – it just means that the system is working as intended and doesn’t need external intervention to work as planned. This won’t automatically need a COBR to do, nor will it necessarily occur in the harsh glare of public scrutiny. But it will be done thanks to the superb effort and dedication of the Civil Service and Armed Forces who will lead the way in offering advice and acting on direction. As ever, we owe them our thanks for their service and support.