By Denis Korkodinov
Donald Trump’s foreign policy creates space for a series of major conflicts. Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia – this is not a complete list of countries where US was trying to impose its strength. However, in initiating a conflict with the Ayatollah regime, Washington clearly made a fatal mistake.
It would seem that the foreign policy of the White House administration is developing very chaotically, without any sequence. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that whatever chaos occurs in the international affairs of Washington, it would hardly have been possible without coordination with Donald Trump.
Former US presidents differed a certain romanticism when it came to the export of American democracy. Even, they, as Donald Trump, to some extent underestimated the Islamic world, as well as the increasing role of China in Central Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
All these idealistic views are strongly rejected by the current head of the White House, who insists on the secularization of the Greater Middle East and the implementation of a policy in the spirit of “eradicating your enemies and being close to your friends.” Such a strategy, according to Donald Trump, could curb the ambitions of China, and of Russia, which, by the way, is a “secondary enemy,” but not a “main enemy” in comparison with China.
In turn, the secularization of the Greater Middle East may include a weakening of American influence in Afghanistan, which currently does not seem to be relevant to Washington, and its reorientation towards Iran, which strengthened its role, gradually filling the military-strategic vacuum created by US geopolitical mistakes.
Donald Trump is absolutely sure that the Ayatollah regime is a real danger not only for the US, but for the whole world, and if the influence of Tehran is not curbed, then the whole world, according to the American leader, will collapse like a house of cards. Therefore, he is ready to support any member of the international community who would be opposed to Tehran. For this reason, he supports the Sunnis and the Jews, pushing them to confrontation with Iran. In others words, the White House’s policy with respect to Iran is based on creating a belt of unfriendly countries around Tehran that can start hostilities at any time.
However, such a policy turned out to be fatal when Washington made an attempt through sanctions to exert superpower pressure on Iran. The problem is that if the state, like dynamite, is subjected to unprecedented pressure, then the chance to avoid a big bang is negligible. In this case, it is unlikely that Iran will calmly observe how it is deliberately destroyed and put on the brink of geopolitical extinction. Of course, he will resist. And this resistance can acquire a global scale only for the reason that now the Ayatollah regime has nothing to lose except its statehood, and it will go to any methods to take revenge on the whole world for insults and offenses caused.
On this score in Washington dominates a different point of view. The American hawks, among whom John Bolton and Mike Pompeo play the most prominent role, hope that the increased pressure on Iran will lead to the collapse of the state, as it once happened to the Soviet Union in 1991. But even if we recall the post-perestroika period in the USSR, we can safely say that a “parade of sovereigns” and a series of armed conflicts will accompany Iran in the event of an attempt to destroy it, drawing into this conflict a number of countries and with potentially serious negative repercussion in all the world.
And It is unlikely that the development of such a scenario could be justified on the basis of American interests, which will be the first to suffer.
(The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights)