The administration of US President Donald Trump continues to celebrate the killing of the commander of the Quds Force, General Qassem Soleimani, whom Trump has said is the worst terrorist in the world, but about a week after the killing, it appears that all of America's goals in the Middle East have been hit hard.

The United States wants to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but Iran has said it will abandon all restrictions on its nuclear program. The United States wants to limit Iran's influence in its allied Iraq, but after Washington killed Soleimani on Iraqi soil, Iran was granted a victory in the Iraqi parliament, which voted to expel all American forces from Iraq. The United States wants to eliminate ISIS in all Iraqi territories, but the relationship has now deteriorated between the two parties, and the countries of the US-led international coalition against ISIS have now stopped operations against ISIS, focusing all of their attention on any possible attacks from Iran. Based on the above, what is happening now is in the interest of "ISIS" and Iran.

Indeed, the chaos by the Trump administration extends far beyond Iraq and Iran, and has destroyed America's relations with European allies, but it may be in the interest of Trump, who has repeatedly declared that his goal is to withdraw from the Middle East.

But at the end of last month, the United States sent additional military reinforcements to the area, in addition to Marines to protect the American embassy in Baghdad, after the demonstrators tried to storm it last week. Additional American soldiers were sent, as America deployed about 14,000 soldiers in the region since last May, and Trump pledged that he would not leave the Middle East at the end of last week, and even if he left a country in the Middle East, he would threaten to strike again, Where he threatened that he would strike targets in Iran, if it attacked any American or any American targets.

And the US Defense Secretary, Mark Esber, has always stressed that the deployment of these forces in the region was made for defensive measures, even after the United States hit five Iraqi and Syrian sites, which the US military said were linked to Iraqi militia Hezbollah, responsible for the killing of many contractors. The Americans. However, Mark Esber said that the U.S. strikes were in response to the actions of those militias, and that they were defensive.

The head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Millley, told reporters that the lack of response to the militia is considered negligence and neglect, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that such attacks had failed many of the terrorist plots that could have killed hundreds of Americans. The problem is that some of the president's statements appear to be false, and management personnel are forced to improve them.

One example is that after Trump wrote on Twitter that he would strike 52 locations in Iran, some of which are cultural, Pompeo was forced to respond to criticism against targeting cultural sites. He told Fox News: "Are they allowed to kill our people, they are allowed to abuse, and use explosive devices on both sides of the roads, and we are not allowed to touch their cultural sites. This is unreasonable".

At a press conference held last Monday, Presidential Adviser Killian Conway worked to complicate matters further, when he said: “Minister Pompeo said that we will remain within the limits of the law, and I think Iran has many strategic military sites, which can also be considered cultural sites. "He did not say that we would target cultural sites."

The killing of Soleimani accelerated trends that were essentially ongoing, as Iran was trying to evade its nuclear agreement with the administration of former President Barack Obama in 2015, but announced after the killing of the Iranian general that it would never abide by the restrictions imposed by the agreement on its nuclear program.

The Trump administration left the agreement in 2018, and has pledged to create another agreement, through which restrictions on violence by Iran's arms in the region, in addition to the nuclear program, will be imposed, but this has not happened.

As for Iran's growing influence in the region, Minister Pompeo attributes it to the nuclear agreement, which he affirmed had given Iran great relief from the sanctions, which helped it finance terrorism, but Iran's recent expansion began much earlier. After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the fall of the regime, this gave the Iranian-backed militias a foothold in the country, and a base from which to attack American forces. The fight against ISIS contributed to further strengthening these militias, as the Iraqi government relied in part on them to fight the terrorist organization, and since that time Iraq has been struggling to return them under the authority of the government, and the United States has spent millions of dollars to train Iraqi forces, in an attempt to keep Iraq out of the ark Iranian. During this period, the civil war erupted in Syria, and Iranian forces and their proxies supported the Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad, which helped reinforce what officials described as the "Shiite Crescent", for the influence that extends between Iran, Iraq and Lebanon. The contradiction is not between Trump and the rest of his administration, but rather within Trump himself. He has announced twice so far that he defeated ISIS, and that he tried to leave Syria, but he changes his mind. He admitted that he hates war, but he loves to kill siblings, but what will happen after their killing is the responsibility of others.

consequences

Once again, part of the fight against ISIS stopped, after Soleimani was killed. The Americans have not only stopped their cooperation with Iraqi military units since the killing of Soleimani, but other NATO members have also stopped their operations in Iraq, and this is the second time in three months that operations against ISIS have been stopped. It was the first after President Trump decided to stay away from the Turkish attack against the Kurds, America's allies.

And American officials continue to say that their goal of pressuring Iran is to "restore deterrence", as the arrival of every additional group of soldiers to the region, or even the killing of Soleimani, aims to stop the cycle of violence by sending a clear message to Iran, that the consequences of its actions will be Worried about it, but the problem is that if the Iranians are not deterred, they may carry out numerous acts of violence, for the same reason that the United States is aiming for: Proof that the dire consequences will not be on Iran alone.

Contradictory political goals

One of the benefits of the fact that the American and Iranian sides have paradoxical political goals is that when one fails, the other is achieving success, but what the US military describes as the “overall defeat of ISIS”, which has been achieved by local partners, such as the Iraqis, and with American support It may have ended now, because it has become difficult to cooperate with the Iraqis if the American army leaves the region, a goal that the US State Department and Department of Defense aspire to.

The United States wants to limit Iran's influence in its allied Iraq, but after Washington killed Soleimani on Iraqi soil, Iran was granted a victory in the Iraqi parliament.

Cathy Gelsnan is a journalist for The Atlantic.

- 14,000

Soldier America has deployed to the region since May, and Trump has vowed that he will not leave the Middle East.