Pthe missile crash, where is the confrontation between the United States and Iran? Legitimate question. The arms deal of early January ended on a heavy toll: nearly 230 dead if we take into account the Iranian demonstrators crushed during the funeral of Ghassem Soleimani and the 176 people killed (mostly Iranian) in the civilian plane shot down by the air defense of the Islamic Republic. Without moving on the substance of their dispute, Tehran and Washington observe: tomorrow is an unknown.
International relations researcher at Columbia University in New York, Professor Robert Jervis, one of the most attentive observers of conflicts between states, writes on the site War on the Rocks : "My analysis is that neither President Donald Trump nor the Iranians know what to do now. " Everything has changed and nothing has changed.
The state of the Washington-Tehran conflict remains the same. The starting point is Donald Trump's decision in May 2018 to unilaterally withdraw the United States from the Iranian nuclear program control agreement concluded in 2015 between Tehran, on the one hand, and Europe, China, Russia, on the other. The ambition was to fight against nuclear proliferation. The Islamic Republic respected the terms of this pact and, in return, obtained the gradual lifting of the embargo to which it was subject.
The White House tenant wants another deal, tighter, bigger, wider – enough to celebrate a huge Trump performance. To bring the Iranians back to the negotiating table, he is suffocating their country under a wave of renewed sanctions.
Cornered and seeking to avoid asphyxiation, the Islamic Republic for its part manifests its power of nuisance. Since the spring of 2019, it has multiplied armed provocations in the Arab-Persian Gulf. She acted with impunity, convinced that Donald Trump, wanting not to be dragged into what he calls one of "These stupid little wars" from the Middle East, would not respond.
Avoid war, the real one
But the President of the United States finally responded – with the assassination in Iraq of Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guard general responsible for Iranian expansion in the Arab world. Donald Trump wanted to restore the deterrent power of the American military machine in the region. Has he recreated deterrence? No doubt, at least momentarily. Iran’s reaction has been weighed, measured, calculated against a goal that is also Tehran’s: to avoid war, the real one.
