Tensions rose in the US-Iran crisis on January 5 as the Iraqi parliament voted to urge Iraq’s leaders to expel all American troops and Tehran announced that it will no longer abide by any of the uranium enrichment limits imposed by the 2015 nuclear deal.

Hundreds of thousands marched across Iran to mourn Qasem Soleimani—Iran’s top general and second most important official, assassinated on January 3 in a Baghdad airport drone strike ordered by US President Donald Trump—as his remains were carried through the cities of Ahvaz and Iran’s second city Mashhad, ahead of a burial in his hometown on January 7.

“Iran’s wearing black, revenge, revenge,” chanted mourners in Mashhad as Soleimani’s coffin was paraded to the floodlit Imam Reza shrine. Top Iranian officials, meanwhile, began referring to Trump as “a terrorist in a suit”.

The Iraqi lawmakers’ call for the expulsion of US troops in Iraq, presently numbering around 5,200, was boycotted by Kurd and Sunni MPs. It is not binding, and would require a one-year notice period, but the vote was led by an acting prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, who is regarded as a US ally.

“Urgent procedures” were required to commence a US exit necessary to restore “our national sovereignty”, Abdul Mahdi told reporters, adding that he had been due to meet Soleimani on the morning he was killed by a US Reaper drone attack. “He was to come to me with a message from Iran responding to the message we delivered from Saudi to Iran,” he added.

Beyond the pale

Abdul Mahdi’s description of Soleimani’s agenda for January 3 served to underline that while Trump portrays the killing as the taking out of a man he claims was the world’s top terrorist, the US has in fact assassinated a top Iranian government official and given that the Iranians and Americans are not actually at war the move by the US Commander-in-Chief is widely regarded as beyond the pale. To Tehran, it's as if they had assassinated a top member of Trump's cabinet.

Shortly after Abdul Mahdi’s statement, the US announced that it was suspending operations against Islamic State in Iraq as well as a five-year-old training mission to equip local forces. A US statement claimed the suspension was a reaction to rocket attacks on US bases, carried out in recent weeks by Shia militias.

While there are plentiful Iranians who detest the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—Soleimani headed its elite Quds Force, responsible for operations beyond Iran’s borders—citing the sinister and sometimes brutal role it and associate groups take in repressing dissent, the extraordinary scenes of mourners thronging Iranian cities underline how Soleimani was widely regarded as a charismatic figure who gained immense popularity while masterminding Iran’s presence on the Middle East stage. Not that it should be forgotten that in essentially running Iran’s strategy for Middle East conflict zones, his orders resulted in the deaths of hundreds of US troops and thousands of civilians.

Thick with tension

As things stand, the Middle East is thick with tension as the world waits to see how Iran, and possibly its allies such as the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, will deliver on the vow of vengeance for the killing of Soleimani. Trump on January 4 upped the stakes by tweeting that the US was ready to hit 52 Iranian targets, including cultural sites, if Iran attacked US assets. He said on Twitter: The US president tweeted late on January 4: “We have . . . targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!”

Mourners marching in Ahwaz.

In Tehran, a former chief of the IRGC said that the Israeli city of Haifa would be included in Tehran’s retaliation. “Iran’s revenge against America for the assassination of Suleimani will be severe … Haifa and Israeli military centres will be included in the retaliation,” Mohsen Rezaei said in a televised speech.

However, IRGC Commander-in-Chief Hossein Salami said on January 4 that the Islamic Republic would adopt a “strategic revenge… to put an end to the US presence in the region”. He added that Soleimani’s assassination has helped create “new energy over an expansive geography”, implying that several other Shia groups would be crucial in the Iranian strategy.

Where hopes for diplomacy are concerned, there are lines of communication with the US open to Tehran via Oman, Japan or through the Swiss embassy, the latter being the formal conduit for communications between Tehran and Washington. Additionally, the EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, has invited the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to Brussels for talks on the US-Iran crisis and nuclear deal situation. Iran has for months been gradually making for the nuclear deal exit believing that Europe has absolutely failed to protect its economy from the sanctions onslaught unleashed by Trump in 2018 after he unilaterally pulled Washington out of the multilateral accord.

Iran’s announcement that it will no longer abide by the uranium enrichment restrictions in the deal mean that it is still formally in the accord, along with the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China, but de facto the deal may be dead unless Tehran reverses course. There is hope it may yet survive in that Iran has said it will still allow independent inspections of its nuclear programme and it has not yet said it will push uranium enrichment to beyond the key 20% level.

Known as the JCPOA, the deal is meant to provide Iran with major sanctions relief in return for compliance with measures to ensure the Iranians could not move on to a path for the development of a nuclear weapon. At the point when Trump walked out of the deal, demanding a far tougher accord, UN inspectors said Iran was in full compliance with it.

Harder challenge to maintain influence

The Soleimani assassination will make it even more challenging for the US to maintain its influence across many parts of the Middle East. For instance, after the killing was announced Qatari leaders rushed to Tehran to convey their support to Iran, even though tens of thousands of US troops are stationed in Qatar. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, the two Gulf states seen as closest to the US, have put out very cautious remarks about the death of Soleimani. Riyadh emphasised it had not been consulted about the drone strike.

After the attack on Saudi oil processing facilities last year—widely attributed to, but denied by, Iran—it is clear that the UAE governments running international business hubs such as Dubai became queasy at the prospect of the US and Iran turning the Middle East into a war zone.