Will the US – Iranian confrontation occur?

Written by Nasser Kandil,

The US President Donald Trump ignited the relationship with Iran, putting the world in front of the risk of war. Within a week of anticipation for what he will say on the eve of the date of the  Congress’s ratification of the renewing the work with the agreement provisions, Trump has threatened the world promising of a new strategy that expresses his dissatisfaction towards the nuclear agreement which he described it with the worst agreement. After long anticipation, Trump talked, he used harsh expressions against Iran and has charged it with every accusations, he beheld it the responsibility of all crises, moreover he dealt with the agreement as it is under punishment, when he had to utter the only useful sentence about what he would do with the agreement whether he will abolish it, stop it, or present it to negotiation and modification he stammered and he did not say anything, just that he will not send to the Congress any message that notifies it about the commitment of Iran to the agreement and asks the Congress to renew the US commitments concerning that agreement, so he announced practically the withdrawal from the mission which he was entrusted and has behold it to the Congress.

Trump has done the same thing with the health insurance system which was approved by the former President Barack Obama. America is still without a health system so far, after the decision of Trump caused the staying of millions of the Americans outside any guarantee system. The Congress is still discussing. It was clear for Trump that the Congress is unable to take a decision which the President was unable to take because the factors which prevented the President are preventing the Congress more. Europe is committed to the agreement and it warns from tampering with it. The sanctions which will be undertaken by America if it withdraws from the agreement will be on the companies and the banks which deal with Iran, which most of them are European companies and banks. The decision as the withdrawal from the agreement means that America is bearing the responsibility of the Iranian nuclear behavior which is contrary to the agreement and which America is responsible for its failure. But no one neither America nor in Europe has an alternative to stop the Iranian nuclear activities towards possessing a nuclear bomb but to have a reconciliation with Iran. In case of withdrawal, the alternative represented by the sanctions were not effective throughout two decades, but the increase of the Iranian nuclear capability which reached in the light of the sanctions the degree of having a bomb according to the US reports.

The Congress knows what is known by the President, so it avoids like him going to escalation, because the only remaining choice after the bankruptcy of the sanctions system in case of the fall of the agreement is to go to war. The Congress and the President know that if this was available, it was worthy to go to war under a stronger pretext that gathers the allies around America at their forefronts the Europeans, where America does not appear as a defector force that escapes from its pledges, and it was enough for America to stick to the red line which it put to prevent the Syrian army and its allies, at their forefront Iran and Hezbollah from reaching the Syrian-Iraqi borders and mobilizing the capacities to wage the war there under the slogan of preventing the Iranian expansion and preventing of the threat of Israel’s security. Waging the war on the bordered line will achieve strategic practical goal by separating Syria from Iraq, and separates Iran from Syria, Hezbollah, and Palestine, thus this will achieve the desired goals of America and its allies more than the nuclear. If America is able to win this war then it can bring its allies and the world to modify the agreement under the conditions of the victor.

Scrutinizing the sanctions which Trump said that he asked to be imposed on the Revolutionary Guard have been issued by the US Treasury Department, which means that is an application of previous classifications where there is not any new classification on the terrorism lists. The US Department of State which is responsible for the classification on the terrorism lists has already classified the Corps of Jerusalem in the Revolutionary Guard and some of its institutions on the terrorism list, so the new sanctions are an application of the old classification, but there was no decision to include the Revolutionary Guard to these lists as the US threats said, so this means the avoidance of the confrontation which Iran has promised of in case of such classification.

Trump played around, so he is not on the edge of the abyss, he decided to move around lest he collides with the danger of confrontation, he used the hostile words to avoid making a decisive decision.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,