Analysis. Let’s forget Soleimani. Let's bypass the toxic symbol he had become in the Middle East and his posthumous heroism in Iran, to keep only his assassination and its implications. Forget the personality of Donald Trump, the exasperation he arouses abroad, to retain only the course imposed on his country, in the continuity of the Obama presidency. The assassination of the Iranian general represents a powerful revealer, from which the Europeans would do well to draw the consequences.
The jumps in the American chain of command and the problems of modalities do not change anything: Washington wants to withdraw militarily from the Middle East. And in addition, he is pushed there, since it is the Iranian objective. The Trump administration believes that the country's strategic interests are not at stake in the region, no longer having external energy dependence. In his view, the fight against the Islamic State (IS) organization is over, or rather it should fall to others. Driven by a contempt for the notion of allies, Donald Trump is exasperated at the idea of settling the bill for other tables than his own. "We can go home, or largely go home and use NATO"said the President on January 9, speaking of "Great favor" given back to Europeans in the fight against IS.
This analysis does not represent a break. In a reference article published by Foreign Policy In November 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spelled out the terms of the pivot to Asia to draw the "Pacific century" from America. Everyone has their own compass. In a mixture of geopolitical myopia, improvisation and destabilizing transgression for the chosen adversary, the Trump administration seeks to grope, groped, for American foreign policy post-September 11, from Afghanistan to Syria via 'Iraq. It involves this coup, a murder, which embodies the pinnacle of this era in terms of operational methods. " I want to go out (from Syria), said the American president already in April 2018. I want to bring our troops home. " Withdrawal from the world or redeployment: whatever the label and contradictory statements. The general picture is taking shape.
Priority to the fight against IS
The assassination of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in Syria on October 27, 2019 coincided with the brutal announcement of the American withdrawal from this country still at war. Following Iran, Turkey and Russia have engulfed each other, as they have done in Libya, the other theater where the powers collide through local actors. The assassination of Soleimani is a reminder of the United States’s unrivaled military strength to those who focused too much on the President’s Tweet. The gendarme no longer wants to be, he no longer has the legitimacy, but he can still hurt. By acting, or by ceasing to do so.