The murder of the Iranian Top General, will later be seen as a “Turning Point” in US Interference in West Asia.

Major-General Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran, said that the assassination of Lieutenant-General Qasem Soleimani, will be seen later as a “turning point” in US interference in West Asia.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif reacted strongly to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s suggestion that (his activist) Iraqis were “dancing in the street” to celebrate the assassination.

On Twitter, Zarif posted pictures of the funeral procession for Soleimani and wrote, “End of US malign presence in West Asia has begun.”

Both the military and the diplomatic wings of Iran’s government are in agreement that it is not Iran that will be weakened by the assassination of Soleimani, but that the United States will suffer the consequences of this action.

Why does the United States of America – the country with the largest military force in the world – fear Iran? What can Iran do to threaten US interests?

To understand US fears about Iran, it is important to recognize the ideological threat that Iran poses to Saudi Arabia.

Until the Iranian Revolution of 1979, relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran were on an even keel. Both were monarchies, and both were subordinate allies of the United States.

Whatever historical animosity remained between the Shi’ite (15%) and Sunni (85%) – two branches of the Islamic tradition – were on mute.

The Iranian Revolution shook up the region. The crown of the monarch was set aside, as a specifically religious republic was created.

The Saudis have long said that Islam and democracy are incompatible; this is precisely what the Islamic Republic rejected, when it created its own democratic form of Islam.

It was this Islamic republicanism that swept the region, from Pakistan to Morocco.

Fears of Islamic republicanism brought shudders into the palaces of the Saudi royal family, and into the US higher establishment.

It was at this point that US president Jimmy Carter said the military defense of Saudi Arabia’s monarchy was a paramount interest of the US government.

In other words, the US military would be used to protect not the people of the Arabian Peninsula but the Saudi monarchy. Since the main threat was Iran, the USA turned its entire arsenal of military and information war against the new Islamic Republic.

The Saudis and the West egged on Saddam Hussein to send in the Iraqi Army against Iran in 1980; that bloody war went on until 1988, with both Iran and Iraq bled (1 million deaths) for the sake of Riyadh and Washington.

Soleimani and his successor Brigadier-General Esmail Ghaani both fought in the Iran-Iraq War. Both Saddam Hussein and later the Afghan Taliban held Iran tight inside its borders.

American wars, Iranian victories

US president George W Bush broke the wall around Iran. The United States prosecuted two wars, which were in essence won by Iran.

First, the USA in 2001 knocked out the Taliban and delivered an advantage to pro-Iranian factions, who joined the post-Taliban government in Kabul.

Then, in 2003, the US took out Saddam Hussein and his Ba’ath Party; the pro-Iranian Dawa Party succeeded Saddam. It was Bush’s wars that allowed Iran to extend its influence from the Hindu Kush to the Mediterranean Sea.

The United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel used several mechanisms to push Iran back inside its borders.

They first went after Iran’s regional allies: first sanctions against Syria (with the 2003 Syria Accountability Act in the US Congress), and then a war against Lebanon (prosecuted by Israel in 2006 to weaken Hezbollah). Neither worked.

In 2006, the US fabricated a crisis over Iran’s nuclear-energy program and pushed for UN, European Union, and US sanctions. This did not work. The sanctions regime ended in 2015. Attempts to intimidate Iran failed.

US President Donald Trump left the 2015 nuclear deal, and then said he would get the US a better deal from Iran. The Iranians scoffed.

Trump ratcheted up the economic war against Iran. This hurt the Iranian people, but with Chinese help, Iran has managed to survive the contraction of its economy.

Trump’s policy toward Iran is known as “maximum pressure.” It was this that led to the recent fracas, including the assassinations of Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a leader of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (Hashd al-Sha’abi).

After the assassination, the US regime sent an envoy to Tehran. The brief from Trump was simple: If Iran does not retaliate, the USA will remove part of the regime of sanctions.

Soleimani’s life was the price to pay to reduce sanctions. Trump wants to make a deal. He does not understand Iran.

His is a policy that is both naive and dangerous. But it is rooted in the Carter Doctrine, and therefore in the US establishment’s policy framework.

Iran will not accept Trump’s tawdry deal. It has already set aside its policy of “strategic patience” for a much more forthright “calibrated response” policy.

If the USA wants to leave the nuclear deal, then Iran will start to process uranium. If the West threatens Iranian shipping, then Iran will threaten Western shipping.

If the US attacks Iranian interests, then Iran will attack US interests. Now, the USA has assassinated a senior Iranian military leader who was traveling from Beirut to Baghdad on a diplomatic passport; will Iran offer a proportionate response?

Where will this US policy of “maximum pressure” lead? Iran has said it will not bow down to the US pressure.

Now, Iraq already asked the US military to leave the country, while in Afghanistan a military jet with CIA agents was suddenly shot down.

It has become commonplace to compare the assassination of Soleimani to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which led to World War I. This is chilling.

If the US regime starts a full-scale war against Iran, what will be the reaction of the other major powers in Eurasia, namely China and Russia? Both China and Russia have condemned the assassination, and both have called for calm.

However, Iranian officials such as Zarif and Salami insist that US influence in the region has deteriorated and will deteriorate further.

The USA can continue to thrash about with its superior military force, and it will continue to have bases that ring Iran. But what it can do with that power is unclear.

That power was not able to subdue Iraq, nor was it able to overthrow the government in Syria, and nor could it create anything near stability in Libya.

The attitude toward the USA is dismissive on the streets of West Asia, even as the Saudi monarchy continues to flatter US presidents into supporting its worldview.

Globetrotter / Asia Times 2020.