The calculation and the containment have characterized the long rivalry between the united States and Iran, with assaults more or less covert or via intermediaries, avoiding a direct attack and unequivocal against civilians or military trigger for a war open in the region. That tradition was shattered with a missile launched from a drone MQ-9 Reaper the early hours of Friday near the Baghdad airport.
With the order to shoot that missile, the president, Donald Trump not only eliminated an enemy of the united States, the feared and powerful general iranian Qasem Soleimani, but he was not going to one of those who have been the pillars of its foreign policy: the commitment to take the country out of the “eternal wars” in the middle East. For now, the Pentagon has announced the sending of a reinforcement of 3,500 troops to an area that promised to bring home its soldiers. The seismic waves from the surgical attack, shake up a global board that three years of Management Trump little they have done for stabilize.
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Thousands of iraqis fired at the general Soleimani while growing the tension about the reaction of Iran to the US kills the powerful general iranian Soleimani in an attack with drones in the airport of Baghdad
on The contrary that Osama bin Laden or Abubaker al Baghdadi, leaders of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, executed by the united States in the past, the commander of the elite Al-Quds of the iranian Revolutionary Guards, the unit in charge of the operations on the outside, it was a goal that is too difficult. His whereabouts was known, moved to the light of day, did not avoid the spotlight. The previous two presidents had on the table the option of deleting it, but resisted for fear of entering a war.
that’s why am surprised that the that decides to take action has been Donald Trump, who has not hidden his reluctance to become entangled in the middle East. It is worth remembering that, unlike also of Bin Laden or Bagdadi terrorists who did not respond to any Government, Soleimani was a high official of a State, and not one anyone: a kind of command of special operations more intelligence chief plus Foreign minister de facto, of size almost heroic in Iran. Why delete it almost forces you to Tehran to strike back with force.
While the united States hopes to retaliation, no one disputes that Soleimani was an enemy, not even his direct responsibility in the recent campaign of shi’a militia against us interests, that ended with the death of a contractor on Friday December 27 in Baghdad, triggering the escalation of events that led to the death of the general. What is controversial is the desirability of that move to the strategy of Washington in a region of chronic instability.
“Iran now has two options,” explained the National Security adviser, Robert O’brien, in a conference call with journalists Friday afternoon. “One is to continue with the climb, something that would not lead to any side the people or the iranian regime. The other alternative is to sit down to negotiate with the us to abandon its nuclear program and its war subsidiary in the middle East, and to behave as a nation normal”.
The own Trump suggested that the attack was a tool for negotiations: “Iran has never won a war, but he has never lost a negotiation,” tweeted. His Administration repeated that he does not seek the conflict, and that the action was an exercise of self-defense to prevent an imminent attack against u.s. interests. “We acted to stop a war,” the president said Friday, “we do not act to start a war”.
on two occasions earlier, Trump had opted for containment. In June, after the downing of a drone for surveillance in american, the commander-in-chief stopped at the last time a military offensive that was considered “disproportionate”. Three months later, also contained after the missile attack to two refiners saudis. Now, while he argues that the execution of Soleimani fits in with the strategy in force and denies a turn to a conflict, Washington is prepared indisimuladamente for such a contingency.
What is true is that Trump chose the path of confrontation with Iran since even before getting to the White House, promising to make the united States the agreement signed by Barack Obama in 2015, which sought the freezing of the iranian nuclear programme in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. In may 2018, Trump fulfilled his election promise, retiring officially of the agreement and by rebuilding the sanctions, with the hope of forcing Iran to return to the path bargaining by accepting more concessions. The strategy, far from lure Tehran to the table, has been answered with a succession of provocative attacks, orchestrated by the own Soleimani, to u.s. interests in a region that Trump insists on wanting to be shed.
Its up to now unsuccessful campaign of maximum pressure on Iran, combined with its allergy to multilateralism and their impulsive proceeding, has diminished his support in the region. These are concentrated in Saudi Arabia, to whose crown prince, when less controversial Mohamed bin Salman, Trump has displayed an uncritical endorsement, and in the Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu, a prime minister besieged by domestic problems even greater than that of the us.
So go Trump in the year of his re-election. With all its foreign policy priorities at a standstill, in the best of cases. The trade war with China is bogged down, feeding the cloud of an economic slowdown that would constitute the greatest threat to his re-election, and the explosion of other fronts, not offers but an incentive to Beijing to continue tightening the rope. The “rocket man” Kim Jong-un, to which Trump opted for an erratic policy of rapprochement with the hope to neutralize the historical threat to north korea, said this week that it sees no reason to maintain the moratorium self-imposed by Pyonyang on nuclear testing in order to enhance dialogue with the united States. And in the face of south america, Nicolás Maduro continues clinging to power, and the expectations generated by John Guaidó, whom Washington hurried a year ago to recognize as a legitimate president, followed by more than 60 countries, have been diluted.
In house, with a political landscape polarized to the extreme, does it Trump a seamless support to your mule to Iran. The president is awaiting the trial for his impeachment in the Senate after the approval of his impeachment, precisely because of its alleged abuse of power in the management of foreign policy, andn this case with Ukraine. Flies over the ghost of operation Desert Fox, a massive bombing campaign in Iraq ordered by Bill Clinton in 1998, when the democratic president was the same trance of the impeachment to which it now faces Trump. A precedent for many analysts, a lack of further elaboration on the nature of the imminent threat it officially intended to neutralize in the early hours of Friday in Baghdad, offers an explanation to the main question that surrounds the execution of Soleimani: why now?
Trump chose the most extreme
The final order to execute the general Soleimani, an option that had been on the table several times earlier but always ended up discarding, emerged from a series of meetings held by the president Trump over the past week, according to u.s. officials-anonymous quoted by Reuters. Last Sunday, after the death of a u.s. contractor in an attack on a military base in iraq on Friday 27, the president met with the staff of his National Security team in a windowless room in the basement of his vacation home in Mar-a-Lago, in Florida. He was offered a range of options for retaliation, including the killing Soleimani was the most forceful. Tuesday, after the assault on the embassy in Baghdad by militia proiraníes, Trump decided by that option extreme.
in mid-October, according to Reuters, Soleimani had met with their leaders, militia allies, in a villa on the banks of the Tigris, to plan sophisticated attacks against u.s. interests. Was looking for that, in the midst of the growing protests against the influence of Tehran in Iraq, a military reaction of the united States from diverting popular anger towards Washington. Before his death, says another official anonymously told Reuters, Soleimani was traveling through the region to authorize attacks against americans that the intelligence services considered that they were “in the final stages” of planning.
“it Was a defensive action”, reiterated on Friday to the journalists the National Security adviser, Robert O’brien, who attended the meeting of Mar-a-Lago. “It was a decision very clear to the president.”
