Through the targeted assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the United States has decided to renounce the logic that has governed its rivalry with the Iranian regime since 1979. Although President Donald Trump denies wanting a direct confrontation with Tehran, his policy decisions have sharply increased tensions between the two countries.

To understand what is at stake, it is vital to keep in mind that the chess game of Middle Eastern geopolitics is compartmentalized into multiple micro-boards where games are played simultaneously, operating at different speeds and obeying very specific interlinked yet also separate decision-making rationalities. Iran was at the forefront of the game, and its strategy of building and integrating the “Axis of Resistance” which tied together Iran, Iraq, Syria, and other significant geopolitical movements in the region was moving forward successfully—especially after Russia's intervention in Syria.

From the perspective of Iran and its allies, the assassination of Suleimani does not constitute merely a crossing of red lines, but rather the wholesale destruction of them. From now on, it will be difficult to predict with which parameters these lines will be redrawn and according to which criteria. A chaotic “anything goes” situation in the Middle East would be suicidal for all actors involved and would impact many regions around the world.

Concerned about the deterioration of its power in the Middle East and aware of the multifaceted irreversibility of its waning influence in the Iraqi arena, the United States also opted for the strategy of eliminating Suleimani as a trigger to reshape the dynamic of mutual deterrent power that Iran had achieved. The message Washington wants to send with Suleimani’s elimination is that there are new rules for the deterrence process—rules where the real power of deterrence is established unilaterally by the strongest actor.

Nevertheless, the background to the decision to eliminate a figure of Suleimani’s importance is more complex and profound than it may seem. In Washington’s calculation, there were two options on the table: one was “bad” and the other “worse.” The “bad” option would be to simply hand Iraq over to Iran—an outcome that no longer seems avoidable. The “worse” alternative was to eliminate Suleimani—a move that would destabilize the existing dynamic and render the overall situation less predictable.

More than a mere general, Suleimani was the guardian of Iranian national security and the main strategist of the country’s regional power-building project in the Middle East. Of the two mechanisms governing the functioning of the Iranian state—the bureaucratic government apparatus and the revolutionary institutions—Suleimani was, in the hierarchy of the regime, by many accounts, perhaps the second most important statesman right behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Suleimani was viewed as occupying a position of undisputed leadership—the “crown prince” of the revolutionary guard—and skillfully navigated the four pillars of power that make up the Iranian state’s internal power structure: theocrats, the military, moderates, and reformists. Combined with his immense popularity, this made Suleimani a true force to be reckoned with inside Iranian domestic politics.

For Tehran, the most important move in response to Suleimani’s assassination is to force an American exit from Iraq. This is what the Iranian regime has been working to achieve ever since preserving the Syrian regime and its spectrum of alliances. Raising the pressure to make the U.S. military’s presence in Iraq unsustainable is its primary strategic objective at the moment. The recent popular manifestation, with almost a million people in the streets requesting U.S. departure from the Iraqi territory, is just the first signs of the iceberg tip. One can argue that losing Suleimani to take full control of Iraq would be a painful but strategically necessary sacrifice for Iran’s strategy. But, in reality, this may not be true since Iraq was already fairly integrated into the Iranian project.

From now on, a different type of security and political framework will preside over the new stage of confrontation between Iranians and Americans. In coordination with Tehran, the Iraqi parliament, backed by Iraq’s former prime minister, positively voted on a motion compelling U.S. troops to leave the country which now makes the U.S. presence there practically legally unsustainable by local and international standards. Suleimani was the architect of this strategy. Amalgamating and strengthening the “Axis of Resistance” depended, from his perspective, on the departure of the U.S. Army from Iraq.

The Iranians wanted to render illegal the continued presence of American forces in Iraq. The presence of U.S.troops in Iraq was allowed by the agreement signed between the U.S. and Iraqi governments during the Bush administration. With the revocation of the agreement’s validity in the Iraqi parliament, the formal condition of the U.S. military in the country will be that of an occupying foreign force if the United States refuses to leave, which it has signaled that it will do. That signal came through a statement issued by State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus on January 10. “At this time, any [U.S.] delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how best to recommit to our strategic partnership—not to discuss troop withdrawal,” she stated. This outcome would tend to legitimize the attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq carried out by the Popular Mobilization Forces—a conglomerate of various paramilitary groups operating in Iraq that Suleimani’s Quds Force helped shape. The purpose of this particular project was to form an impenetrable “parallel military force” semi-independent of the Iraqi political system and its external associations with Europe and the United States.                

In the geostrategic theater of the Middle East, respect for international law has never been worth much. In fact, it has often been worth nothing. But trust in the stable or consistent policymaking decisions of Washington by its allies and rivals alike not be easily restored, as U.S. partners on the ground such as the Kurds in Syria, the Iraqi government, as well as rivals such as Russia predict unpredictability on the U.S. side which seems to sway between demands for diplomatic international negotiations with Iran followed by punctuated unforeseeable military escalations. As such, China, Russia, and other actors may now be encouraged to pursue the same policy that Iran has used against the United States and its allies in other geopolitical theaters: adopting maximal resistance and hardline brinkmanship.

For Iran, the implications of this situation, despite multiple internal differences, will likely unite the country. The regime will close ranks. The power and legitimacy of reformist and pro-opening forces in Iran will shrink. If the moderates had prevailed over the hardliners in the recent past and succeeded in moving forward with nuclear negotiations, then things may have turned out differently, but any remaining hope for a new nuclear deal now seems to be buried.

It will take time for the region to adapt to a new security architecture whose format is still unpredictable. One thing seems certain, however: Suleimani's elimination will rebuild the Iranian state’s drive to accelerate the resumption of its nuclear program.

Hussein Kalout is a political scientist, Research Scholar at Harvard University and Former Special Secretary of Strategic Affairs of Brazil (2016-2018).

Image: Reuters