Why did Iran choose such a response?

Written by Nasser Kandil,
It is clear that Iranian response to the assassination of the Commander Qassim Soleimani wanted to reflect a set of irrevocable goals. The first of which, to prove the right of response in order to assure the rivalry between Washington and Tehran and to prove that it is not affected by the American threat of hitting tens of Iranian targets in case of any Iranian response. Second, to show the ability to challenge the American military system that many believe that it is impenetrable, and that every attempt to get close from any American site will be doomed to fail, since the missiles will be disrupted by a superior electronic warfare and exceptional space jamming capabilities, and if they were launched they will be deviated from their paths or they will be dropped by the superior air defense. Third, to give credibility to the announced political strategic ceiling of the revenge campaign which is the ousting of the Americans forces from the region. It is clear too that the Iranian response has put additional goal which is described by the Secretary-General of Hezbollah as the departure of the American soldiers and officers horizontally which means in coffins after they came to the region vertically which means on their feet in order to ensure the American withdrawal and the achievement of the goal, in addition to expose a wave of accountability in the American community about the impact of funerals which will prevent the US President Donald Trump from returning to the White House.
It is obvious that many things had happened between Saturday and Wednesday, the most important of which was the phone call between the French President Emmanuel Macron and the Iranian President Al Sheikh Hassan Rouhani and many unannounced calls with Iranian leaderships from Russia, China, Oman, and Qatar, all of them realized the seriousness and the determination of the goal which is the military ousting of the Americans from the region. It is clear that these data become on the table of the American political and military leaderships at the forefront the President Donald Trump, and that there is such a worry from uncontrolled bombing at these difficult hours of exchanging messages. Some of these messages were leaked by mistake as the American message to the Iraqi government in which it pledges to withdraw from Iraq, and another related to the withdrawal from Kuwait. Furthermore, it became clear that the Iranian attack has shown that Iran is the first country in the world that bombs American central military base and announces that, Iran has what allows it to challenge the American military system, to penetrate its defense, and to reach to its target, it assures the non-negotiable decision of ousting the Americans from the region.
There were four things that seemed to be postponed by the Iranian leadership and were part of the response waiting for the American behavior and its pledge; the American bloodshed, the region from which the Americans are meant to get out, is it Syria and Iraq or the gulf region, the fate of the battle to topple Trump in the presidential elections and the his approval to withdraw from the region or at least from Syria and Iraq. The consequences of the Iranian attack and the speech of the American President who reduced the region’s importance in the American interests by talking about his sufficiency with oil and his call the NATO to take care of the region show that he paves the way to withdraw. The fourth postponed thing is determining the party or the parties which will replace the Americans in the region after determining it geographically and distributing the responsibilities. After scrutiny, it seems that the positions remained without Iranian commitment to stop the resistance forces from facing the Americans and without any announcement of the end of the response. This scrutiny is based as Trump says on an implicit acceptance of renewing the nuclear understanding and perhaps the return to the previous understanding waiting for the new version of the post -current understanding stage in 2025. Consequently, through that response Iran and the resisting forces won in the first round, while Washington seemed weaker than bearing the consequences of an open confrontation. Waiting for the days to come to show whether Washington is able to withdraw without bearing humanitarian losses that affects its unity and whether Iran and the resisting forces accept what is less than the withdrawal from the whole region not only from Syria and Iraq.
Translated by Lina Shehadeh,