Iran’s allies on high alert in Trump’s final weeks in office
BAGHDAD — Iran has instructed allies across the Middle East to be on high alert and avoid provoking tensions with the U.S. that could give an outgoing Trump administration cause to launch attacks in the U.S. president’s final weeks in office, Iraqi officials have said.
The request — delivered by a senior Iranian general to allies in Baghdad this week — reflects the growing regional anxiety over President Donald Trump’s unpredictable behavior and the uncertainty in the chaotic transition period until President-elect Joe Biden takes over Jan. 20.
Iran’s allies have collectively welcomed Trump’s election defeat. Under his presidency, tensions with Iran escalated, reaching fever pitch at the beginning of the year with the U.S. airstrike that killed Iran’s top general, Qassim Soleimani. Iran launched a ballistic missile attack in response to the fatal drone strike, targeting U.S. soldiers in Iraq and wounding
dozens.
Trump also unilaterally withdrew America in 2018 from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers, meant to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons, and reimposed punishing sanctions on Iran, crippling its economy.
Iran has since abandoned all limits on its uranium enrich
ment program, even as the deal’s other international partners have tried unsuccessfully to salvage it. The incoming Biden administration has stated plans to rejoin or renegotiate the 2015 nuclear accord.
But there is growing concern over what Trump, who is refusing to concede the election, might do in the last days of his
presidency — including a potential strike on America’s enemies abroad.
The concern does not appear to be rooted in anything concrete — Trump has ordered a drawdown in U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to be completed by mid-January — but rather in general nervousness about the unpredictability of
Trump’s actions. His firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper two days after the election triggered a flurry of speculation about whether it was related to a broader plan to strike abroad.
Iraq, where the U.S.-Iran rivalry has chiefly played out, is seen as a potential arena. Frequent attacks against the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in recent months led a frustrated Trump administration to threaten to close the mission, a move that sparked a diplomatic crisis and diplomatic back channel messaging that led to an informal truce a few weeks ahead of the U.S. election.
Two months before the Biden administration takes over, Iranian Gen. Esmail Ghaani, head of the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, delivered Tehran’s request during a meeting with Iranian-backed Iraqi militia factions and Shiite politicians in Baghdad this week, according to two senior Iraqi Shiite politicians who attended the meetings.
The message: Stand down to avoid giving Trump the opportunity to initiate a fresh tit-fortat round of violence. And to Iraqi Shiite paramilitaries: Be calm and cease attacks for now against American presence in Iraq.
However, if there was a U.S. aggression by the Trump administration, Iran’s response would “be in line with the type of strike,” one of the Iraqi politicians cited Ghaani as saying.
Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the leader of the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group, Hasan Nasrallah, warned followers to be vigilant during Trump’s remaining weeks in office.
“All of us should be on high alert in these next two months so that it passes peacefully,” Nasrallah said in televised remarks this month even as he urged followers to “be prepared to face any danger, aggression or harm” and to respond in kind “if the US or Israel’s follies go that far.
But only hours after Ghaani delivered Iran’s message in Baghdad, a barrage of Katyusha rockets were fired at the Iraqi capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone, landing a few hundred yards from the U.S. Embassy.