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US participation in the Iran nuclear deal is now over. The administration of President Donald Trump has chosen to reapply sanctions to the Islamic Republic of Iran six months after the announcement of America's exit from the 2015 agreement. This is part of a strategic shift Washington, where strong pressure must be exerted until Tehran makes concessions in twelve regions. This is not the first time America has squeezed Iran. The years before the nuclear deal had gone through a similar lobbying campaign. We forget how dangerous these times were. The risk of war was real. Today, the risk is greater. The war could arise accidentally from one of the many points of friction between Iran on one side and America and its regional partners on the other. And the more the pressure strategy works and forces Iran to choose between collapse and surrender, the more Iran will look for new ways. One of these pathways is climbing. We have entered a new perilous phase.
The last summit of the confrontation with Iran, from 2010 to 2012, was marked by a war alert serious enough. Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist closely linked to the United States and Israel, wrote a feature film in the Atlantic on the possibility that Israel launches a surprise attack on the Iranian nuclear program. In interviews with prominent security figures in America, Israel and the Arab world, Goldberg wrote in September 2010, "a consensus has emerged that there is more than a 50% chance that Israel kicks off strike next July. US Central Command (CENTCOM), he had reported at the time, had even asked for orders on what to do if his plane patrolling the Iraqi sky detected the current strike. It later appeared that CENTCOM was so preoccupied with a surprise attack that its analysts were watching the phases of the moon before Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak could pull the trigger. CENTCOM's concerns have been well founded. A number of high-level Israeli security professionals then clashed with Netanyahu and Barak for orders that they said indicated an imminent strike.
There was also a hidden side to this fight. In cyberspace, the United States and Israel collaborated on the Stuxnet virus, destroying the Iranian centrifuges in 2010. An Iranian response, the Shamoon virus, hit Saudi Aramco's computer networks in 2012. In the streets, a series of Targeted killings from 2010 to early 2012, killed four Iranian nuclear scientists and injured a fifth.
The attacks, generally suspected of being sponsored by Israel, mainly used "sticky bombs" that the motorcyclists attached to the target vehicles. The last murder took place in January 2012. In February 2012, a similar bomb wounded the wife of the Israeli Defense Attaché in India. The same day, a bomb was discovered near the Israeli Embassy in Georgia. The next day, a gang of Iranian nationals in Thailand accidentally blew up their shelter; another lost his legs after a grenade, which he threw on the police, took an unfortunate bounce. In July, a Hezbollah kamikaze blew up an Israeli tourist bus in Bulgaria, killing eight people: himself, the Bulgarian bus driver, four Israeli tourists some twenty years old, a pregnant Israeli woman and her unborn child.
The secret conflict could have been much bloodier. Several Iranian plots were thwarted at the same time, including a bizarre plan to blow up Mexican cartels at a restaurant in Washington, DC, and kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States. On the other hand, we learned this week that Iran had developed a secret CIA communications system at that time as well, but we can not be sure that this would have an impact on non-CIA activities. 'spying.
In the new confrontation with Iran, the pace of violence is more constant and stronger. New turbulent players add to the din: Saudi Arabia and the UAE. On the Saudi side, the recent assassination of dissident Jamal Khashoggi is a harbinger of the lack of competence and professionalism of the Americans and Israelis who led the charge last time. Sending your own bodyguards in pursuit of a man in your own consulate while his fiancee is waiting outside is not a great moment of plausible denial. The Emirati, meanwhile, had to outsource targeted killings in Yemen to mercenaries. And if the long Saudi war in Yemen is a guide, climbing can be deadly, but not decisive, and may intrude on America.
The new round of struggle focused on Iran's internal friction. During the summer, an Iranian diplomat was arrested in Belgium after allegedly handing over a bomb to members of a dissident group in order to target one of the group's main meetings. In western Iran, a group of Kurdish separatist groups and the guards of the Islamic Revolution have slaughtered themselves in recent months. In September, Iran attacked a Kurdish separatist complex in Iraq. Also in September, an attack on an Iranian military parade in Ahvaz in the south-west of the country killed 24 people. An apparent Iranian vengeance plot against the Ahvaz separatists has been uncovered in Denmark and Norway, and Iran has also launched ballistic missiles on eastern Syria, hitting targets a few miles from US forces .
