President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities puts the Middle East in a volatile position, analysts say they are now looking at Tehran’s next move.
In areas already on the edge, Trump’s airstrikes have put several options on the table for Iran, analysts say. All take risks inherent in Iran and bring about the future survival of the country’s leaders.
Diplomacy: The first is that Iran can return to the negotiation table.
Iran “we could declare that they are asking for negotiations and ending the war. We will negotiate on the basis of zero (uranium) enrichment,” Yadrin said.
Yadrin said Iran may leave the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but promised not to develop bombs under it. However, Iran’s “ability to build bombs will not exist in next year or two,” he added.
But will Iranian conservative hardliners tolerate a purely diplomatic response to US military attacks on Iranian soil?
county: Another option is for Iran to retaliate, dragging the US and the wider Middle East into complex, drawn-out conflicts.
Iran said “once the United States participates in this war and attacks nuclear facilities, they will oppose the US troops in the region and retaliate against the interests of the United States.”
Iran could also choose to close the Strait of Hormuz, the main transport oil route, to give it the power to affect “the whole Gulf commercial transport.”
Prominent advisors to Iran’s top leader have already called for missile strikes and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
“After the attack on the nuclear equipment of America’s Fordow, it’s our turn,” warned Hossain Shariatmadari, editor-in-chief of the Hardline Kayhan newspaper, a well-known conservative voice who previously identified himself as Khamenei “the representative.”
Geographical leverage via global transport gives Iran the ability to “shock the oil market, raise oil prices, promote inflation and collapse Trump’s economic agenda,” Middle Eastern scholar Mohammad Ali Shabani told CNN.
There are no easy options: Khamenei is likely to respond by “making a decision,” CNN analyst Aaron David Miller added that “it’s “nearly impossible” to imagine this 86-year-old leader essentially maintaining a revolution and passing it over to one of his successors.
