President Donald Trump has stepped back from new military action against Iran after its missile strikes on Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops caused no casualties but he told Iran he would tighten already crippling U.S. sanctions.
Trump and Iranian officials looked to defuse a crisis that on Wednesday had threatened to spiral into open conflict after the killing of a prominent Iranian general in Iraq.
The general was killed on Jan. 3 in a U.S. drone strike was followed by Iran’s retaliatory attack.
The tit-for-tat military action, after months of rising tension since the U.S. withdrew in 2018 from Iran’s nuclear pact with world powers, had stoked global concerns that the Middle East was heading towards another war.
But both sides drew back from the brink, while Arab and other international leaders called for restraint.
In Iraq, Muslim groups, opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq, also sought to cool passions.
“The fact that we have this great military and equipment, however, does not mean we have to use it.
“We do not want to use it,” Trump told the nation after saying Iranian ballistic missiles fired in the early hours of Wednesday caused no casualties and limited damage.
He said Iran “appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned.”
But he said the U.S. would impose additional sanctions on Iran, adding to measures that have slashed its oil exports and crippled its economy.
Trump, who faces re-election this year and who accused predecessors of dragging the U.S. into unnecessary regional wars, did not say what new sanctions would involve.
His comments came hours after Iran’s foreign minister said Iranian missile strikes “concluded” its response to the killing of Qassem Soleimani, a powerful general who masterminded Iran’s drive to build up proxy armies abroad.
The minister, Javad Zarif, said on Twitter that Iran did not “seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression”.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had called Iran’s missile attack a “slap on the face” for the U.S. and said Iran remained determined to drive U.S. forces out of the region.
This is a policy that analysts say it has pursued via its proxy forces.
But Washington said it had indications Tehran was telling its allies to refrain from new action against U.S. troops.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence told CBS News the U.S. was receiving “encouraging intelligence that Iran is sending messages” to its allied militias not to attack U.S. targets.
Moqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shi’ite cleric opposed to U.S. and Iranian interference in Iraq, said the Iraq crisis was over and called on “Iraqi factions to be deliberate, patient and not to start military actions”.
Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia the U.S. blamed for an attack in Iraq in December that killed a U.S. contractor, said “amidst these conditions, passions must be avoided to achieve the desired results” of expelling U.S. forces.
Arab states, which lie across the Gulf from Iran and feared their region was being dragged into another conflict, also called for cooler heads to prevail in Iraq and beyond.
“The brotherly Arab nation of Iraq today is in need of solidarity among its people to avoid war and becoming the site of a battle in which it would lose most,” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan wrote on Twitter.
In Trump’s address on Wednesday, he repeated his promise not to allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon – an ambition it denies ever having – and called for world powers to quit the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran that he abandoned.
Trump said world powers should negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran to replace the one set in place under Barack Obama.
Iran has rejected new talks and said negotiations could not be held without an end to sanctions, which have sent Iran’s currency plunging and slashed vital oil revenues.
An Iranian army spokesman denied “foreign media reports” suggesting there was some kind of coordination between Iran and the U.S. before the attack to evacuate bases.
(Reuters/NAN)