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It is no longer news that the US President Donald Trump ordered an attack that killed the Iranian army chief, Qassem Soleimani. Justifying the attack, President Donald Trump said, ‘we took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war’. America went ahead to also state the ‘sins’ of Soleimani; that he was behind a series of attacks against American interests and was planning further attacks, hence he had to be stopped.
Ever since the incident, opinions have been divided in support and against America’s action. Russia has described US’ attack as a ‘wrongful and very risky action’. On its own part Denmark which has about 130 soldiers in Iraq decided to move its troops to Kuwait. Iran had fired two missiles at an area around two Iraqi military bases housing US troops on Wednesday as part of retaliatory measures.
Turkey’s Recep Erdogan has warned against escalating tension between its neighbor, Iran and the US. ‘Nobody has the right to throw the whole region, particularly Iraq, into a new ring of fire”, Erdogan has said after the strike against Iraq. On its part, the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres passionately appealed for peace as the world could not afford any war in the Persian Gulf. Slovenia which has six soldiers in Northern Iraq also said it was evacuating them. From the foregoing, it is obvious that there is unease in that part of the world and the possibility of open confrontation is a clear possibility. While I am not against President Trump defending his country against any aggression and those planning such aggression, it is unclear to me whether it was right for America to have conducted an attack inside another sovereignty.
The attack was conducted against an Iranian citizen and inside Iran. It is what one would describe as being the judge and even the jury in one’s own case. The US decided that Solemaini was a threat against its interest and behind attacks against certain America’s targets and America took steps to execute him. How do you describe that? No recourse to any one, the UN or even its NATO allies. Of course, Trump has only respects for Trump, not any one, not any country or individual. It is at the heart of all his policies and statements.
In his address at the UN, he had noted that irrespective of any one, the path to peace begins within your own borders. “Each of you has the absolute right to protect your borders and so, of course, does our country”, adding that while not seeking conflict with other nations, it would not fail to defend America’s interests. “The future does not belong to globalists; the future belongs to patriots… the future belongs to sovereign and independent nations who protect their citizens, respect their neighbours and honour the differences that make each country special and unique”.
Unfortunately, President Trump’s action is antithetical to the later part of his statement on the need to respect neighbours. The question is; would President Trump have taken such aggressive action against North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. We have all seen how aggressive the young North Korean leader had been in his pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, even conducting series of tests that showed its aggressives pursuit of weaponry. When it was thought that America could take action. North Korea responded, ‘the empire of America would go to the hell and the short history of the US would end forever, the moment he (Trump) destroys even a single blade of grass on this land’. The message was clear because North Korea was capable of launching such aggression that has the capacity to reach and hurt America.
At the end of the saber-rattling, Trump accepted that there were other ways to solve the North Korean problem than military aggression. There was a meeting of the two leaders in Singapore in 2018, though that has not resolved anything and is not likely to resolve anything as North Korea would not want to find itself in a position it would not have the capability to challenge America.
In the case of Iran, why did Trump not agree to a dialogue especially now that it is becoming clear that the intelligence that led to the strike against Solemaini was flawed, according to revelations coming in the aftermath of the attack. Obviously, Trump had seized up Teheran and knows it has no capacity to hurt her in the likely hood of open aggression, unlike North Korea with its nuclear capacity.
But Trump has unleashed a beast that may be difficult to cage. America has always been the police of the entire world, determining which regime would live and which would survive. One recall what happened in the case of Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Mummar Gaddafi in Libya. Imagine if Iraq and Libya had gone the way of North Korea and had successfully developed nuclear capability, America would have thought twice before attacking those two countries, though it was on the basis of developing weapons of mass destruction that America and its allies attacked Iraq. Again it was just ‘native intelligence’, as we say in this part of the world. There was no substance to the information. Libya had abandoned its acquisition of nuclear capability for relief against sanction imposed on Libya. Shortly after, Ghaddafi was overthrown and eventually killed by rebels believed to have been backed by America.
In spite of this, it is also important to look at the weight of allegations against Iran and whether it invited this against itself. Prior to Trump’s allegations, Iran had been accused of sponsoring terrorism. In fact, Iran and Iraq were described as axis of evil by former President George W. Bush. In June 2019, the Iran Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down a US surveillance drone over the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. Earlier in 1979, 52 American diplomats were held hostage for 444 days when a group of Iranian students took over the US embassy in Teheran. The latest is the intelligence that Iran was planning an imminent attack on the US thus justifying the attack on Solemaini.
Obviously, Iran and America have always enjoyed a cat and mouse relationship, it is not clear whether this will change. One can only advise that more of diplomatic options should be employed to resolve the conflict between the two. Iran retaliated by sending missiles to an open field in Iraq that did not affect or injure any one, but it was a message. Not only that, Iran’s attack in Iraq also showed restrain from embarking an open conflict. In this situation, one would say Iran had been more matured in its response. If its missile had hurt or killed any of the America’s troops or other allies in Iraq, it would have been a different story. President Trump should equally exercise restraint in his actions and embark more on diplomacy to resolve issues rather than taking aggressive actions like he took against Iran’s citizen and army General.
