After threatening for days to attack Iran in support of protesters challenging the Ayatollah’s regime Ali Jameneion Wednesday Donald Trump He decided to tone down his rhetoric. He said Iranian authorities had informed the White House that arrested protesters would not be hanged and that the “killing” of protesters had generally stopped.
An idea reinforced this Thursday by the Persian judiciary after declaring that it has not issued a death sentence against Erfan Soltania 26-year-old protester whose execution was planned this week.
However, regardless of the conversations that are taking place directly between Washington and Tehran, everything seems to indicate that Trump’s moderation has been sponsored by the Gulf countries and, also, by the Israelis.
What’s more: according to a senior US official – cited anonymously by The New York Times–, his own Benjamin Netanyahu he would have called Trump asking him to postpone a possible attack on Iran. Apparently, as explained by an extensive analysis that appeared in the Jerusalem PostNetanyahu fears a massive attack on Israel if Khamenei is cornered.
Likewise, some of Washington’s main Arab partners – Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt – have been insistently calling the White House and the Pentagon to try to prevent an attack against Iran. Your argument? That an offensive against the Khamenei regime can lead to a regional crisis of unknown proportions. In parallel, those same Arab countries would have asked Iran not to retaliate against them in case the United States makes a move.
“We believe in dialogue and resolving any disagreement at the negotiating table,” declared the Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeirin line with the diplomatic work that his country is carrying out.
All of the above does not imply that Trump has kept the plans for that hypothetical attack in a drawer. It just means that he seems to have pushed them away…temporarily.
Perhaps only until the arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln –accompanied by an escort made up of several destroyers– to the area. His command post received orders yesterday Thursday to leave the South China Sea, where he was located, to head to the Middle East. A journey that will be covered in just over a week.
It should be remembered that Trump already juice to the ambiguities last June, even though he had already approved the precision bombing that was intended to dismantle the infrastructure of the Iranian nuclear program. In fact, a senior Pentagon commander cited by the American press has acknowledged that the president “has not ruled out the military options that his commanders have presented to him in recent days.”
The Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in front of his acolytes.
EFE
Thousands of dead
The new wave of protests – it is not the first time that Iranian society has demonstrated against the regime – began on December 28. The reason: a historic collapse of the rial, the local currency, against the dollar. In a matter of hours thousands of merchants went on strike and took to the streets. The fuse was lit in the bazaars of Tehran.
Throughout the first days, the protests gained followers and all types of professionals and students joined the merchants; both men and women. Anger spread throughout the country and Tehran became just one of the many cities that registered marches.
The message also evolved: what had begun as a strike over economic issues became a protest against the regime. During those days, Iranian police forces mainly used tear gas to disperse people.
Then came the first week of January and, with it, a substantial increase in tension. In some cities the protesters tried to break into government buildings (sometimes succeeding) and the clashes between those protesting and the regime forces intensified, thus leaving the first fatalities.
In the middle of all that maelstrom took place, thousands of kilometers away, the capture of Nicolas Maduro in Caracas by US special operations forces. This capture came followed by several statements by Trump about Iran. In one of them he said that if Khamenei ordered “to kill people” as in the past, the United States would hit the regime “very hard.”
After Trump’s statements, Khamenei himself appeared on state television to blame the riots on a series of foreign agents and say that the “violent” ones had to be put in their place. From that moment on, the regime’s repression increased considerably and shortly after the communications were cut off. Then the information from inside the country stopped flowing.
“First Trump encouraged people to continue demonstrating,” says a young Iranian resident in Germany during a telephone conversation with EL ESPAÑOL. “And now he decides that we have to wait… what kind of behavior is that?”
“The first expressions of American and Israeli support could have had an unforeseen effect: increasing the risk tolerance of the protesters, based on the belief that external actors would finally rescue them,” says Israeli analyst Herb Keinon, also alluding to the explicit messages from Mossad encouraging Iranians to take to the streets in Iran. “However, the delay in sending in the cavalry – or taking any other substantial action – could be eroding that confidence.”
At the time of writing these lines, the number of deaths is still not known with certainty. More moderate reports indicate that there are about 3,500 identified victims. In any case, according to what Trump conveyed, that figure – whatever it may be – should not rise any further.
Still, many analysts are concerned about how the regime has verbalized its intention to moderate repression. He has begun to differentiate, in his speech, types of protesters. Mere “troublemakers”, on the one hand, and “people linked to foreign intelligence services” or directly “terrorists” on the other. Presumably, whoever is identified in this latter way will suffer the most severe punishments.