Wars

"This should calm the waters. For now."

We were about to conclude that finally there may be a de-escalation of the long-raging conflicts in the Middle East, most of which are holdovers from the decades old anti-terrorist campaign after 9/11 (some analysts insist these go over back even farther to the days of imperial conquests). Thus, we were shocked back to reality with that precision drone missile attack by US military helicopters on a car convoy coming out of the Baghdad International Airport. The attack killed the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (Foreign Branch), General Qassem Suleimani, and his closest associate in Iraq, Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis, the deputy chief of the radical paramilitary network Hashed Al Shahabi. 

That network has been at the forefront of the weeks-old siege of the US Embassy in Baghdad which culminated in the burning of one of the outposts in that heavily guarded compound in Iraq’s Green Zone. Hours before the attack on the Suleimani car convoy, there were indications that bigger crowds would be besieging the embassy, prompting the US to send reinforcement troops to the war-torn country. Now, there will definitely be more troops pouring back into Iraq and the nearby Gulf Cooperation Council countries—at least in Kuwait and the UAE, probably even Saudi Arabia and Bahrain—all of which have been under the US’ protective umbrellas raged against what they termed a “dangerous expansion of influence by Iran and its proxies in the region.”        

Will this trigger a bigger war, maybe even a world war? This was the frequent question asked by friends and acquaintances alike right after that bold attack which has been condemned by Iran and its allies as a “declaration of war” which will be met with “severe revenge.” My short answer is “no.”

I don’t think this attack, though deadly and provocative and by some accounts brazen and unwarranted, will not rise up to the level of a Pearl Harbor attack which drove the US to the Pacific war theater in World War II, or the attack on the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, weeks before World War I erupted in Europe.

Still, definitely, this will trigger a series of major attacks on US citizens and assets, in and around the world, as the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameini promised. How that will play out, no one knows. Given the experience of the past decades where Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force has been involved, say in Iraq in the aftermath of the US decapitation of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Baath Party and its revolutionary forces, the long-playing Syrian and Yemeni civil wars and the other operations it participated in the region, these can be messy and bloody.  

One good thing is the tempering that immediately ensued. No less than US President Trump attempted to lower the decibel, so to speak, as he advised that the US “did not take that action (Soleimani’s killing) to start a war.” Rather, he was prompted to do it as “Soleimani was about to start a war himself targeting US diplomats and troops in the Middle East.”

As if to reassure the Iranian leadership after their understandably heavy outbursts and calls for “severe revenge,” Trump also said that the US was “not interested in regime change.” That, coupled with cautious statements of restraint from other major powers—China, Russia and the European Union—should calm the waters. For now. So there is not going to be a rush-up escalation. Rather we will probably see a prolonged series of attacks on both sides, US and Iran, directly or through proxies.

What we would say at this point is for the administration to call on our countrymen abroad, specially in the Middle East, to take cautionary measures and to prepare for any eventuality. Our emergency task force units should also be on the alert in the event there is need for any evacuation of movement by our people. In the meantime we should join the call for restraint on the part of the parties in the conflict and enjoin all concerned to tell those on the ground, specially those bearing arms, to hold back from further fueling the already tense situation with unwarranted, provocative actions.