Trumpets: Twitching The Tail of A Serpent

Iran deplores the killing of its top general, then strikes back at the US. How close are we to the proverbial fuse that lights the train of gunpowder that is West Asia?

- Pranay Sharma

If there is universal consensus that a fuse has been lit, fear of its logical conclusion—a conflagration—lurks in every corner. The possibility of the ongoing US-Iran brinkmanship slipping into an enhanced armed confrontation in an oil-rich and volatile West Asia increased substantially on January 8. Tehran launched over a dozen ballistic missiles at two American military bases in Iraq in the first response to the assassination of its military commander General Qassem Soleimani in a US drone attack—an action personally approved by President Donald Trump. The Iranians struck soon after Soleimani’s funeral on January 7—an apogee of anti-US denunciation, which was attended by thousands of emotionally charged mourners.

While the Pentagon confirmed that the bases at Irbil and Al Asad were hit, there was no report of casualties. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the attack was in retaliation for the death of Soleimani on January 3. Cautioning other countries, it struck an ominous note: “We are warning all American allies…that any territory that is the starting point of aggressive acts against Iran will be targeted.”

The flare-up, along with Iran’s defiant avowals of revenge, drove oil prices to $70 a barrel and made Iraq a frontline state of the US-Iranian conflict. With Iraq’s parliament unanimously calling for the withdrawal of all ‘foreign troops’ to stop precisely that, invoking Trump’s sharp response, in turn, there is widespread fear that a widening circle of conflict can engulf the region and beyond.