Chronic. Will 2020 be the year of new negotiations with Iran? Or that of an armed confrontation with this country? In either case, the Islamic Republic will remain the central player in the Middle East – with Syria continuing to be the scene of endless drama.
2018 saw Donald Trump sabotage the Iranian nuclear program control agreement signed three years earlier in Vienna by Barack Obama’s United States (but also by China, Russia and Europe). It was the adolescent whim of a president who wanted to "break" what his predecessor had done. It only added a few embers to the Middle Eastern hearth. Consequence: 2019 was a year of punctual economic and military clashes with Iran – the latest on December 29, when US Airforce F-15s bombed “pro-Iranian” militia bases in Iraq and Syria.
The question is whether this situation will degenerate in 2020. Transform into a larger confrontation? Or get both to negotiate?
There are at least two fronts. The first is very localized. Since 2012, Israel and Iran have been pursuing a kind of mini war – air raids on one side, missile and drone fire on the other – in Syria, but also in Iraq and, at least once, in Lebanon .
The second, broader, is the follow-up to the decision taken by Trump in 2018. With economic sanctions, the United States has completed the stifling of the Iranian economy, already heavily handicapped by the incompetence of the regime and the expenses he spends on maintaining his Arab proteges – in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Trump intends to force Tehran to a new negotiation. He wants even stricter monitoring of the Iranian nuclear program. Negotiations must this time include the Islamic Republic's ballistic missile arsenal and Iranian interference in the Arab world.
Two linked fronts
Iran resists and defies Washington: military provocations in the Gulf, attack on the oil installations of Saudi Arabia, the great ally of the United States in the region. Iran is playing with fire by gradually resuming uranium enrichment beyond the constraints set in Vienna. Guide Ali Khamenei knows the limits of Trump: the American does not want to be drawn into a new war in the Middle East. Tehran can make his life impossible before the presidential election in November 2020. Iranian pressure is aimed at obtaining the lifting of American sanctions, prior to a possible resumption of negotiations.
