Sanctions To Weaken Iran

Iran’s military response to the United States’ selective assassination of the regime’s No. 2, Qassem Soleimani, which took place last Friday, has not evoked a substantial change in the U.S. administration’s strategy toward the Iranian theocracy. Since his arrival at the White House, Donald Trump has gambled by abandoning the containment and appeasement policies specified in the anti-nuclear pact promoted by his predecessor, Barack Obama, and backed by the European Union, in favor of economic sanctions on the ayatollahs’ regime. Although the Iranian attacks against two U.S. bases in Iraq did not result in any casualties and only caused “minimal damage,” Trump announced new sanctions against Iran, a strategy that has proven to be quite damaging for a regime that does not hide its intentions of developing nuclear weapons in the medium term. The U.S. president also called on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and countries such as France, the United Kingdom and Russia to abandon the nuclear agreement signed in 2015 and join the effort that the U.S. is leading on the ground with the aim of curbing Iranian expansionism in the region, whose main driver was Gen. Soleimani.

The latter is precisely what the Islamic regime wants to avoid, and yesterday, through the mouth of its supreme leader Ali Khamenei, it demanded the complete withdrawal of the American presence in the area, stating that the “region will not accept the presence of America.” We cannot forget that since Obama ordered the gradual withdrawal of the forces deployed in Iraq in 2010, Iran has not ceased to expand its influence in neighboring countries with aggressive policies imposed through terrorist and subversive acts. Its militias have been the ones holding the criminal dictator Bashar Assad at the forefront of Syria, helping him win the war, and thanks to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Iran maintains almost absolute control of Lebanon and subjects Israel to relentless harassment.

With Iraq, the strategy is the same, since most of the Iraqi armed forces are made up of former Shiite militiamen who act under Iranian orders, and several radicalized groups threaten U.S. interests in the country. The U.S. estimates that a large part of its casualties have been caused by this militia, which is also behind the latest assault on its embassy in Baghdad. This is why the White House named Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a foreign terrorist organization in April and focused on Soleimani, leader of the Quds Force, who was responsible for hundreds of terrorist attacks in the area. His murder, an example of Trump’s irresponsible unilateralism, has opened a scene of tension with unforeseeable consequences that needs to be de-escalated to avoid the worst.