WASHINGTON – Since the day Donald Trump opened his presidential campaign, he made it clear that military operations in the Middle East are not his cup of tea. “We spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, we could have rebuilt our country twice,” he told Hillary Clinton in one of the presidential debates leading to the 2016 presidential elections. He made it clear on many occasions that his focus is going to be on adding jobs and strengthening the US economy. He spoke more than once about the military presence in the Middle East being an impediment to that goal. “Our brave troops have now been fighting in the Middle East for almost 19 years,” he said in his 2019 State of the Union Address. “In Afghanistan and Iraq, nearly 7,000 American heroes have given their lives … As a candidate for president, I loudly pledged a new approach. Great nations do not fight endless wars,” he added. Trump cited the same approach when he addressed the nation regarding his decision to withdraw from Syria. “We’re talking about sand and death,” he said. So how did Trump, a leader that was so cautious with using military force, take such a bold step to kill Soleimani? Some experts are arguing that by taking that action, Trump avoided a broader confrontation between Iran and the US. “One way to stop sending Americans to Iraq to deal with existential threats like al-Qaeda and ISIS is to kill Qasem Soleimani,” Mike Pregent, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and former US intelligence officer in Iraq told The Jerusalem Post. “This is intelligence, strategically-driven decapitation of Qasem Soleimani’s grip on Iraq. It’s the only way Iraq has a chance. Iraqi protesters now have a chance to take their country back,” he added. “Thursday night was likely the most consequential night in Trump’s presidency, from a foreign policy perspective,” Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) told the Post. “I don’t think that’s a loss on his base, and even the isolationists have to concede that eliminating Solemani was a major moment for the president.” According to Schanzer, Trump’s policy never approved Iran’s activities, but in the past week, when the Iranians started to target US personnel directly, they left the US president no choice. “When Iran struck the Saudi oil fields, it was Saudi, not American,” he said. “Even when Iran harassed ships on Hormuz, they were other countries – Naval vessels, not American. And as long as Iran steered clear of the United States in its provocations, Iran seemed to have not a green light, but maybe a yellow light.” He continued, “At the moment that Qasem Soleimani and his militias began to target the United States directly, that was when the light switch turned on for US strike,” he continued. “And it became clear that Trump was not trying to deliver a modest message. He delivered a forceful one, about as forceful as one could imagine short of striking Iran itself.” Schanzer emphasized that the answer to the question of what comes next relies entirely upon Iran’s decision-making.“They have a few choices,” he said. “One is they could directly challenge the United States. This would be disastrous for the regime. But it’s a possibility given the anger and the emotion that has stemmed from the United States eliminating a man who Khamenei saw almost as a son.” Ilan Goldenberg is Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “This seems to have been an entirely impulsive move,” he told the Post. “It’s not even clear he understands the consequences. According to some reporting, his advisers put the idea on a power point slide along with a number of other options, and he surprised them by choosing it.” Asked if he believes that a full-scale war is possible, he said that it’s an option. “Neither side wants all-out war, but that hasn’t stopped them from getting all the way to the precipice,” he said. “Iran will retaliate certainly in Iraq possibly with attacks elsewhere in the region. It may also seek to target senior US government officials. If it is successful, that could absolutely trigger a US response that brings us to a war nobody wants.”
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