US-Iran conflict - Containment strategy needed to prevent war

THE killing of Iran's top security and intelligence commander in a US air strike on Baghdad International Airport last Thursday amounted to a dangerous escalation in the four-decade-long conflict between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The decision by US President Donald Trump to order the killing of Major-General Qassem Soleimani, who was considered to be the second most powerful figure in Teheran, is viewed as a declaration of war by the Iranian leadership. It has raised global anxieties over the potential for a full-blown war between the US and Iran that could ignite a regional military conflagration in the Middle East, draw in other outside powers and send tremors through the energy markets.

The Trump administration has blamed the Iranian general - who since 1998 had commanded the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGG), which Washington has designated as a terrorist group - of instigating the recent assault on the US embassy in Baghdad by an Iraqi-Shi'ite militia with ties to Iran. It was regarded as part of an Iranian effort to create an axis of Shi'ite forces in the Middle East that would threaten the interests of the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel. There is very little doubt that Maj-Gen Soleimani had a hand in the killing of hundreds of American soldiers and civilians, and that he had helped mastermind terrorist actions in the Middle East and beyond. Indeed, Mr Trump and his aides have defended the decision to kill Maj-Gen Soleimani by suggesting that he was about to launch a series of new attacks against American targets.