"World" editorial. The consequences of the assassination of the most important Iranian general, Ghassem Soleimani, by an American military strike, Friday January 3, in Baghdad, concern, for the moment, speculation, but one can bet without risk of being wrong that they will be deep and multiple. The most likely of these concerns first and foremost the Europeans, who are aloof from the US operation: their efforts to save the 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear deal are now doomed to near failure.
All climbing has an origin. It would be simplistic to attribute all responsibility for it to President Donald Trump, even if he bluntly insisted on personally demanding the decision of the targeted strike that killed the Iranian leader. General Soleimani’s nuisance capacity no longer needs to be demonstrated: head of the Al-Quds Force, elite body of all-powerful Revolutionary Guards, architect of Iran’s expansion in the Middle East, destabilization strategist, he had more deaths in the region on his conscience than he cared to count.
When he was killed in Baghdad, Ghassem Soleimani came from Beirut, where he helped build one of the political and paramilitary organizations the most effective in the area, Hezbollah. He reproduced this model in the surrounding countries by multiplying the Shiite militias there. In Syria, he led the forces that held the Assad regime at arm's length. And, ultimately, he crossed the red line directly targeting American lives.
Precarious balance
None of the European leaders who signed, in 2015, with Iran, the United States, Russia and China the agreement to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons (JCPOA) did not ignore the true nature of General Soleimani. Barack Obama himself, then president, knew her only too well. But with this agreement, the West had established a modus vivendi with the Iranian regime ensuring a kind of balance, admittedly precarious, but which prevented proliferation in a highly unstable region. The government played its part of the game, lifting the sanctions that strangled it in return for freezing a nuclear program under international control.
This precarious balance was broken in 2018, when, despite the insistence of Europeans, Donald Trump denounced the JCPOA, which he considered to be "Should never have been signed". He replaced it with a strategy of "Maximum pressure" on Iran. The Europeans – French, British and German – then undertook, in connection with the faction of the Iranian regime ready to dialogue, to try to keep this agreement alive at least until the US presidential election in November 2020.
Tehran must, in the coming days, decide on the resumption or not of the uranium enrichment activities prohibited by the agreement. It is difficult to see how the Iranian interlocutors of the Europeans could still today impose diplomatic channels on the hardliners of the regime, who will see nuclear weapons more than ever as a chance for survival.
This imperfect agreement had at least the merit of existing and, with it, a space for negotiation. This space closed on Friday on the smoking carcass of the car transporting the Iranian warlord to Baghdad. There is no longer any diplomacy, no strategy of pressure or sanctions. Only confrontation.
