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US President Donald Trump kicked off 2020 in the Middle East by risking a dangerous military escalation with Iran after he issued orders to kill the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, during his visit to Baghdad on January 3. Also killed in the airstrike near Baghdad International Airport Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, financed and supported by Tehran. Trump’s decision was a major setback for Iran and the militias that revolve around it in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, due to the importance of the role that Soleimani played in coordinating with these armed organizations, especially since he had close relations personal with their leaders. Although Iran promised a large punitive response, it was content to launch missiles at an Iraqi military base where US forces were deployed. The Americans discovered the missiles as soon as they were launched from their runways and took refuge in shelters before the missiles arrived, avoiding fatalities. Although some American soldiers were subjected to brain vibrations, President Trump downplayed their importance because, like the leadership in Tehran, he did not want to enter a costly military confrontation with Iran. Now, with 2020 drawing to a close, and as Trump nears the end of his term in the White House, tension has returned to relations between the United States and Iran.
On Wednesday, Trump warned Iran that he would hold it responsible “if an American dies” in the missile attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad last Sunday. Trump’s warning came in the context of a tweet that included “health advice for Iran” to stop these missile attacks by Iranian-affiliated militias. The warning came after a meeting of Trump’s top foreign and security policy advisers to discuss the deteriorating security situation in Baghdad. Officials from Central Command, which oversees US forces in the Middle East, described the missile attacks on the embassy as the worst in a decade, and that they were aimed at inflicting casualties and were not symbolic or theatrical, and that the party that carried out belongs to Iran.
U.S. officials said senior officials who met with Trump, including Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, will soon present Trump with a variety of options to deter any Iranian attack, and that these options are not designed for further escalation.
President Trump had discussed with his aides in mid-November whether he had practical options for bombing Iranian nuclear facilities in his remaining weeks in power, but his aides, including his deputy Mike Pence and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, asked him. they warned that facing Iran militarily at this point could have it. Complications difficult to contain quickly. The meeting came a day after the Nuclear Energy Agency announced that Iran was increasing its production of nuclear materials at rates well above those allowed in the nuclear deal that Iran concluded in 2015 with the permanent members of the Security Council of the United States. UN and Germany, from which President Trump withdrew. 2018. Some analysts believed that Trump wants, through whatever attack he may lead to Iran at this time, undermine any opportunity to revive or amend the previous nuclear deal, as the new US president hopes.
White House officials said Trump would implement his threat should any missile strike kill US civilians or military personnel in Iraq before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. In recent weeks and days, the US embassy in Baghdad, as well as US forces deployed in Iraq, have taken extra precautions in anticipation of any attack by Iraqi militias, backed by Iran, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the assassination of Soleimani. US officials in Washington are also watching anxiously.
In recent weeks, the Central Command requested the deployment of strategic B-52 bombers at some of its bases in the region. These bombers flew from their American bases and refueled in the air before landing in the region, and a squadron of fighter jets arrived at a base in Saudi Arabia, and the Ministry of Defense decided to keep the aircraft carrier Nimitz in the waters of the region. close to Iran. And the Defense Ministry announced that it would send a submarine equipped with Tomahawk missiles, with a range of 2,400 km, to the Gulf region. And the last time US submarines launched this missile in the region was in 2018 when they fired 66 missiles at chemical facilities in Syria.
In a public warning message to Iran, Israel sent a submarine to the Gulf region via the Suez Canal last week, in anticipation of any Iranian military action to avenge the assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, last November. , whom Iran accused Israel of assassinating him.
US and Israeli officials say these military build-ups are designed to deter Iran, but it is clear that these military build-ups and moves are coordinated between Israel and the United States, and possibly with other Gulf states.
Some analysts closely monitoring Iranian politics believe that Tehran, which recently pressured its militias in Iraq not to take risks and avoid any measures that could push President Trump to a military response, wants to avoid any developments that could restrict freedom. President-elect Biden’s movement in the future. The next four weeks can witness sudden and dangerous events, especially if there is security chaos in Iraq. But it can also remain fraught with tension and not translate this tension into military action.
During his four years in office, President Trump adopted a “maximum pressure” retaliatory policy against Iran, which is based on inflicting huge economic losses on Iran to force it to change its behavior. This policy deprived Iran of exporting its oil, because the US sanctions also affect other countries that trade with Iran, and they also inflicted heavy losses on the Iranian currency. Although the Iranian Islamic regime faced a number of protests in recent years due to the economic crisis and rampant corruption in government bodies, the regime faced them with repression and intimidation.
But the maximum US pressure did not force Tehran to adjust its extremist and subversive policies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Even when Iran attacked the Saudi oil facilities in Abqaiq in 2019 with missiles and drones, and caused extensive damage to these facilities, the US response was limited to sending fighter jets and Patriot anti-missile missiles, in a step that made it clear to the Saudis. that Trump does not want to engage in a serious and long-term military confrontation against Iran. This does not mean that Trump will not use the limited military option against Iran if his attacks in Iraq kill Americans, and it is the limited option that he used twice against Syria and caused limited military damage.
The absence of the political and diplomatic dimension of the purely punitive “maximum pressure” method may explain Trump’s failure to obtain real concessions from Iran, both internally and regionally. During the run-up to the 2015 nuclear deal, the administration of former President Barack Obama persuaded Western countries Russia and China to impose economic and political pressure on Tehran, forcing the Islamic regime into lengthy negotiations with Washington that They started in secret, ended publicly and collectively, and led to the agreement. Of course, the agreement was incomplete and did not include longer uranium enrichment freeze periods and other restrictions on the development of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and one of the biggest loopholes was that it did not include Iranian ballistic missile systems. And the Obama administration’s greatest failure remains its refusal to deter and confront Iran’s subversive policies and hostile practices against the interests of the United States and its friends in the region, as the US, Republican, and US governments have done in the past. democratic, in their nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.
During the Cold War period, the United States concluded a series of nuclear agreements to limit nuclear weapons, such as the “Strategic Arms Reduction Talks” (SALT), the “Strategic Arms Reduction Agreement” (START) and others. agreements related to medium-range missiles, among others, at a time when Washington continued to address Moscow’s hostile and passive policies from Central America to Angola, and end with Afghanistan, where the arming of the Afghan mujahideen by the United States and its Allies contributed to the military defeat of the Soviet Union and its subsequent collapse. President Obama rejected the advice of some of his top advisers to negotiate with Iran, but at the same time confront and dissuade him in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Obama was wrong when he justified his tepid stance on Iran’s subversive policies by saying that he did not want to pressure the Iranian regime to withdraw from nuclear negotiations, which he also wrongly believed would be the “jewel” of his Middle East achievements. But what is also true is that President Trump was not seriously concerned or interested in confronting the same disruptive Iranian policies in Arab countries, and Trump learned nothing from Obama, specifically the importance of forming an international coalition to effectively pressure a country ruled by an oppressive regime like the regime. Islamic in Tehran.
