All talk now is focused on the nature of the expected US response to Iran, in the wake of the killing of three US soldiers on the Jordanian border by an Iranian militia drone. Will it be an effective reaction or just a formal one? Republicans are demanding a harsh response, and within Iran itself.
John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said: “We are not looking for another war,” noting that Washington was “not interested in a broader conflict in the region.”
He announced, on the other hand, that his country reserved the right to respond, amid media expectations that the move would be imminent.
Well... how do you read that? The answer is simple: the United States does neither have a clear strategy against Iran, nor a plan. Washington was lenient with Tehran, not through statements or negotiations, but rather in more important and dangerous matters.
For example, since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the US occupation of Iraq, Washington has been soft with Tehran, making one concession after another, under flimsy justifications that are so naïve that it is difficult to believe. The mere example of this is the pressure exerted to bring Nouri al-Maliki to office instead of Iyad Allawi.
At that time, Allawi won by a margin of one vote over Al-Maliki. Obama sent his deputy, Joe Biden, the current US president, to resolve the prime ministerial crisis. As a result of that visit, and under Iranian pressure, Allawi was removed and Al-Maliki ruled, and the rest of the story is known.
Since the era of Obama, Washington has reduced its intelligence activity against Iran, and even lowered the level of intelligence cooperation with Israel for fear of targeting Tehran. This matter is not a secret, but has been reported in US newspapers in recent years.
The United States did not take a decisive stance towards Iran until the moment former President Donald Trump gave the order to liquidate the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani. There is no doubt that it was a historic decision, but it was not the product of a strategy, despite the impact of Soleimani’s elimination that Iran is enduring to this day.
Accordingly, today Washington is targeting the Houthis in order to protect the Red Sea, after the Biden administration removed them from the terrorist list. Washington also attacked the Iraqi Al-Nujaba militia, and sent its battleships to deter Hezbollah on the Israeli border with Lebanon. They are all Iranian militias.
Despite all this, there is no US strategy against Iran, not even an immediate plan. The Biden administration can do a lot, and to a painful extent, without the need to target Iranian territory directly, as Pakistan did, within 24 hours when it responded to the Iranian attack recently.
Washington’s options are many and powerful, including, for example, cutting off Iranian supply lines between Iraq and Syria, which would disrupt the lifeline of Iranian militias in Syria, and even Hezbollah. This would change the rules of the game in the region.
Anyone who follows Iranian expansion in the region knows well that its main artery is Syrian territory. There are many examples, and the summary of the story is that everything that Tehran believes to be its area of influence can be used as a card by Washington to restrain Iran’s activities. The most important and first of which is Syria.
However, for the umpteenth time, there is no clear US policy towards Iran, but the latter has a specific strategy, which is expansion and inciting sectarianism, to reach the nuclear bomb and the influence it seeks in the region.
