What will Washington do against Iran?

Written by Nasser Kandil,

The US Ambassador to the United Nations Nicky Healy said “If Russia continues to cover up Iran, and if the Security Council does not announce an action, the United States and our allies will take an action themselves” This occurred after the voting on the western –Arab draft resolution for condemning Iran for arming Ansar Allah in Yemen especially with the ballistic missiles that targeted Saudi Arabia.  Therefore the question becomes what will Washington do under the title “if we do not get an action from the Security Council we will take our own actions”?

The American option is restricted between two things; politically, it is represented by announcing the cancellation of the American commitment to the nuclear agreement with Iran and the return to the system of sanctions which applied before, and which will affect the Iranian Central Bank and the international banks which deal with it, especially the European and the Chinese ones. Militarily, it is represented by adopting the comprehensive or the temporal military option which might turn under an uncontrolled moment into a comprehensive confrontation or both of them. But it is certain that the bet on a diplomatic and popular crowd, media mobilization, and sanctions system that does not affect the nuclear agreement is considered less than a threat launched by Healy and showed her silly and her words trivial.

Concerning  the nuclear option, it seems clear that Washington’s problem is not with Iran rather with China and Europe, which stick to the agreement, and which refuse the sanctions system related to the cancellation of the agreement and which their companies will pay the cost for the returning to it, while Russia stands with Iran under the title that the cancellation of the agreement means that Iran has the right to return  to enrich uranium from where it signed its agreement, so those who announced their  sticking to the agreement must not address Iran rationally, but they have to do one of two things. Either to prevent Washington from the cancellation or to refuse the commitment to its sanctions no matter what the consequences will be on the European and Chinese banks. So is it possible after Washington has evaded from the cancellation twice to do it now and to enter an unpredictable financial war and which its repercussions may affect the financial status of America negatively  in a way that surpasses the crisis with Iran?

Regarding the military option, nothing has changed in favor of Washington for years, so it disregarded it. The US forces and interests which are distributed among Iraq, Syria, the Gulf, and the sea waters and the water ways will turn into targets by Iran and its allies. The results of the military action as the former US Secretary of State John Kerry said have no guarantees to achieve decisive results whatever the harm is, because Iran may accelerate to produce a nuclear bomb, as the former US President Barack Obama said on the eve of signing the nuclear agreement in response to the Arab and the Israeli calls, revealed by Kerry from Munich platform for security days ago.

 

Dennis Ross, the former US diplomat to the occupation entity, the US peace envoy for years, and a researcher who lived through several epochs in the US studies centers  said in his article two months ago that the dual response to two important questions about the American policy towards supporting the Kurds in Syria till the end, and  towards the confrontation of Iran is shown in how Washington behaved with the collapse of the dream of secession of the Kurds of Iraq under the blows of Iran and under the eyes of the US leadership in the White House and Pentagon without reacting, while the Kurdish entity was the most important opportunity for America to work against Iran, and the most important sign of the seriousness of supporting the independence of Kurds. Those who abandoned the Kurdish entity in Iraq because they did not want to get involved in a war, will not do the same in Syria, and those who missed the opportunity of being so close to Iran as the chief of staff in the occupation army Gadi Eizenkot said will not go farer than the political words and escalation.

Does that mean that Healy’s words are trivial and she is silly?

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,