Sounds of War

The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani is like throwing gasoline into a fire that has been raging for a long time.

The assassination of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the second most powerful man in the Islamic nation, which occurred last Friday, has returned the troubled Middle East region to the brink of a war that could easily escalate to become global. While President Donald Trump was congratulating himself yesterday, Iran decided to abandon the 2014 nuclear accord.*

To specialists, analysts and commentators cited in various sources of international communication, it is not at all clear whether the decision of the U.S. leader was an impetuous act of complacency or, more likely, an action taken to bury his own political problems, heightened by the upcoming investigation into his extortion of the president of Ukraine. They are also in agreement that, whatever the exact reason, this irreversible event will have grave consequences.

The first official response of the president of the Islamic Republic was published in his Twitter account: “Without a doubt, the people of Iran will avenge this horrible, criminal act.” From New York, his U.N. ambassador offered the second, characterizing the assassination of Soleimani as “an act of war,” and promised that it would be met with “harsh revenge.”

Nevertheless, the first consequence of the action was Iran’s decision to suspend completion of the “final limits in the nuclear accord,” which proposed that Tehran would stop the development of nuclear arms. The decision included resuming the enrichment of uranium, research and the expansion of Iran’s nuclear program.

Gen. Soleimani was regarded as the most important person in Iran after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Among U.S. political and military elites, he was considered to be responsible for thousands of their soldiers’ deaths, as well as being one of the central leaders in the Iraqi resistance. Hence, some analysts find it likely that Arab political terrorism will reappear in the following weeks.

Probably aware of the seriousness of his decision, which surprised even the military leaders who presented it as one of several options, the U.S. president announced via Twitter that his military forces are targeting 52 strategic sites, some of great cultural value, which will be attacked if some form of retaliation occurs.

It is difficult, on the one hand, to predict the course that events could take in the short term, given that gasoline has been added to a fire that has been burning for a long time. On the other hand, the U.S. president claims to have everything under control, despite his capricious behavior. Finally, there is agreement between the elites and the people of Iraq that Americans must be expelled from their country and must take steps to demonstrate that such an attack is unacceptable.

*Editor’s note: The author may be referring to the preliminary agreement regarding Iran’s nuclear program reached in 2015 between Iran and the U.S., the U.K., Russia, France, China, Germany and the European Union.