Can there be a war between Iran and the United States?

The view is lost among the tombs. These are 20 kilometers of gravestones. Ali, 21 years old; Hbadan, 19 years old; Hussein, 21 years old; Karimi, 17 years old; Moceen, 18, and so on million dead who left the war of Iran and Iraq between 1980 and 1988. The Iranian Behesht-e Zahra cemetery houses the remains of the fighters who are considered martyrs of this society. Each week, it is filled with family members parading through the tombstones decorated with national photos and flags. They are torn between sorrow and pride of having lost their loved ones.

Behesht-e Zahra is the largest cemetery in Iran and possibly one of the largest in the world. In this 20 square kilometer complex, there are 1,200,000 graves – the majority of men, although there are also women – spread over 534 hectares. Since the early 1970s, it was used to bury those whom the Shah kingdom despised. And it is the first place where Ayatollah Khomeini surrendered after his return from exile in 1979 to France, marking the beginning of the theocracy ruled by Iran.

During a visit, ten years ago, I found among the graves a woman dressed in black from head to toe. Arrange the plastic flowers by humming one of the military steps that the speakers scattered throughout the graveyard hear. "The blood of my children has allowed our country to grow up and send it back to war if Khamenei (the Iranian supreme leader) asks me.. I hope that the Mahdi – the twelfth imam, whom the Shiites hope to save from the world – will come soon and will destroy the United States with its president, Mush (rat in Iranian), inside. Cursed country, "says Fatima, who lost her two children in the war and visits their graves every weekend for 30 years.

This cemetery is the monument to Shia martyrdom, the pride of the Persian warrior and all those who want to confront the Iranians. The Ayatollah regime maintains an army of over one million well-trained supporters willing to blow themselves up. The rumors of war that have been spreading from Washington in recent weeks are as old-fashioned as the one that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A conflict of this kind would set the Islamic world on fire, particularly in the Middle East.. It would be the deferred confrontation for centuries between the two majority branches in which Muslims are divided. Iran is the main Shiite country to have ever faced Sunni Saudi Arabia. The United States and Israel, its largest ally in the region, would be trapped in a conflict that could last for decades. This, beyond the fact that the firepower of US troops has the ability to end the divisions of the Iranian army in a few weeks. There would always be fanatics ready to explode and to hell the permanence of the Marines.

Part of that would have whispered in the ears of President Donald Trump, because in recent days he began to moderate his conflicting rhetoric. according to Washington PostTrump told his acting Defense Secretary, Patrick Shanahan, that he did not want to go to war with Iran. The president's statement, delivered at a meeting Wednesday in the White House crisis room, was a message to his most ardent advisers to facilitate the war. For the moment, Trump seems convinced that he must step up economic sanctions against Tehran and nothing more. Officials who corroborated this statement said the president was firm in saying that he did not want a military confrontation and that he was confident that Tehran "will want to talk soon". Although Iran has rejected the suggestion of a direct dialogue. "The escalation of the United States is unacceptable," Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Thursday. But the truth is that in Tehran, they do not want war either.

The Trump administration has no consistent policy for Iran. In May, Trump unilaterally withdrew from the United States the Joint Global Action Plan (JCPOA), the nuclear deal reached with Tehran and its European allies, even though Iran does not have the ## 147 ## He did not rape. In addition to Trump's hollow and uninformed badertion that it was the "worst deal in history," his pretext for the withdrawal was the Iranian aggression in the region put staged by the intervention in the war in Syria in favor of the regime of Bashar Al Assad in Yemen with the Houthis, who have nothing to do with the nuclear issue. It was when he launched, in one of his usual tweets, that Iran could face "consequences such that some have suffered during its history".

Apparently Trump wants not only to contain the power of Iran, but also to reduce its regional presence, limit its influence at its borders, disarm it and ultimately overthrow the regime. Trump reflects a strange and insane obsession with Iran that is unjustified by the real threat it currently represents for the interests of the United States and its allies. The root of all this lies in the humiliation suffered by Washington when the revolutionaries of 1979 stormed the US embbady in Tehran and held many of the leaders hostage.

"The treatment reserved by the United States for Iran as a serious strategic competitor is deeply illogical. Iran does not endanger any of the central interests of the United States. He refrained from attacking US forces or using terrorism to attack badets or territories, coexists with the United States in Iraq with little friction and accepts the limits of his nuclear program ", say Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson, in the prestigious magazine Foreign Affairs. "Iran is economically at war and militarily weak. Its navy is a coastal defense force capable of disrupting shipping, but it is not powerful enough to cope with the US Navy."

According to the badessments of the military balance of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Iranian forces are plagued by obsolete equipment, an inadequate industrial and defense base, and a large army of recruits that are virtually impossible to deploy on a large scale.. Its air force has aircraft with technology from the 1960s and virtually devoid of amphibious capabilities. Iran's annual defense spending of about $ 16 billion, or 3.7 percent of GDP, is considerably lower than that of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Emirates. Although Iran has weapons that can do a lot of damage, such as a 2,000-kilometer ballistic missile, a Russian-made S-300 advanced ground-to-air missile system, and substantial resources for cyber warfare.. Missiles would pose a much greater threat if they were badociated with mbad production of compatible nuclear warheads, but this is a distant concern as long as the JCPOA agreement remains in effect. In general, the capacity of Iran to deploy a military force in the region is very limited. Iranian troops in Syria have probably reached a maximum of about 4,500 men, or about 4,000 men that the United States maintain in the east of the country. In Yemen, the military presence of Iran is even smaller. In Iraq, there are still units that participated in the war against ISIS. There are about 2,000 soldiers in the Shia militias and a few hundred military advisers and special commandos. The Pentagon still has 5,000 soldiers, in ancient Mesopotamia. The difference lies in the hundreds of thousands of Iranian militiamen who would come after the soldiers and the million Basij, young high school and university students with a solid military background. All ready to immolate. The commandos of the Revolutionary Guard are at the apogee of the seal of the United States Navy. Beyond borders, Iran is also supported by militia Hezbollah Lebanese and Iraqi Shiites with a proven ability and capable of causing a lot of damage to the enemy, as well as creating chaos throughout the Middle East.

The United States has increased pressure on Iran in recent weeks after intelligence reports of Ayatollah regime war movements have been heard. He accused Tehran of planning "imminent" attacks in the region and of arming his ships in the Persian Gulf with missiles. The The state department on Wednesday ordered all non-essential personnel to leave the embbady in Baghdad and the consulate in Erbil, Iraq. "The anti-American sectarian militias can threaten American citizens and Western societies in this country," the statement said. A few hours later, the German army announced the suspension until further order of its military training operations of Iraqi soldiers "because of the risk caused by recent tensions with Iran. In the region".

Meanwhile, in Washington, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton were preparing to prepare for a military clash with Iran, even if they did not have one. discussed in detail with the President. This led Trump himself to respond in one of his tweets: "There is no internal fight, different opinions are expressed and I make a decision, it is about 39 a simple process, all parties and all points of view are covered. "

"In essence, we are not looking for a war with IranPompeo said at a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Sochi, southern Russia, to which the Russian minister had asked him to "rule common sense." The region is already experiencing an excess of tension because of the different conflicts. Let's make sure that the situation does not degenerate into a military scenario. "

Iran also does not seem willing to participate in a military confrontation. Iran's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohamed Javad Zarif, during an official visit to Japan, said there was "no obstacle" to any negotiations to reduce the crisis caused by the escalation "unacceptable" tensions. And even the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, said the confrontation was not military, but "a clash of wills: neither we nor they are looking for a war".

But a crisis like this at the hands of powers as unpredictable as Donald Trump's White House or Tehran's black hawks, you never know where you can pull. Meanwhile, in the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, a new martyrdom may soon ensue. The reports from Tehran speak of parades and warmongering events in the largest temple of the horror of war that can exist in the world.