ATLANTA — Americans are beginning the first full week of 2020 on edge.
Iran’s military is considering plans to strike back at the U.S., for killing Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani.
The Iranian government has already declared that it will no longer comply with the 2015 nuclear restrictions.
President Trump says the U.S. is ready to retaliate against Iran if and when Iran does attack American interests, insisting the U.S. launched Friday’s drone strike to kill Soleimani, in Iraq, as a defensive measure because Soleimani was plotting to carry out new rounds of attacks on Americans.
Predicting Iran’s next move, and charting how the U.S. and then Iran might respond back and forth after that, can be as difficult as predicting the path of a hurricane.
“It is scary, we don’t know what happens next,” said Middle East terrorism expert Todd Stein in Atlanta Sunday evening. Stein served as attorney for the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and he believes Iran is scared, too, despite its threats.
Stein said it is likely the U.S. drone strike that killed Soleimani caught Iran by surprise.
“I would imagine that the Iranians do not have a contingency plan for this” that would enable its military to strike back immediately.
Iran realizes now, Stein said, that President Trump will not hesitate to use “reaper drones all over the Middle East that could kill Iranians at any instant. So, best-case scenario is, they’re scared. And they’re more reluctant to do things because this president, perhaps more than previous presidents, is willing to take unpredictable action” when he deems it in the U.S. interest.
“The worst-case scenario is they do try to escalate it, somehow, by attacking U.S. bases and harming soldiers… in the Persian Gulf region…and, at which case, the president would be forced to do something even more. And that’s the escalation, I think, people are concerned about.”
Georgia members of Congress are divided.
Republican Doug Collins, for example, tweeted his thanks to the president for “standing up to Iran, a crown prince of terror is dead and innocent people are safer.”
Democrat Hank Johnson tweeted that the president is “a trigger happy armchair strongman, lacking Congressional authority, has recklessly brought our nation closer to war.”
Many members of Congress are calling on President Trump to provide evidence that Soleimani was devising new and imminent plans to launch attacks against Americans--plans that would explain the U.S. drone strike on Friday killing Soleimani.
“This is a very bad person who has spent his entire life attacking Americans,” Stein said. But whatever Iran does in response, Stein believes Iran is not likely to launch terrorist strikes on U.S. soil.
“They export their terrorism in the region, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East. They don’t necessarily export it to Europe and the United States. It’s not Al Qaeda, this is much different.”
What is certain, Stein said, is that the volatile relationship between the U.S. and Iran that has lasted for decades is at a flashpoint.
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