Tehran will not leave the killing of its top commanders unanswered, and yesterday vowed "crushing revenge" over the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani. The raid dramatically escalated already tense relations between the US and Iran, who have for months been fighting a shadow war. The US is now bracing for a response, though it is unclear yet what form it will take. Direct attacks Iran showed in September with an attack on Saudi Arabia’s biggest oil field that is is capable of sophisticated and long-range attacks from its soil, if US intelligence is to be believed. Such a range would bring tourist-friendly cities such as Dubai in the UAE within striking distance. But a direct attack on the US is difficult and might be considered too provocative a move for Iran as it suffers from an ailing economy brought to its knees by US sanctions, and growing unrest at home. Asymmetric warfare is how Iran fights. “It definitely can't go unanswered,” Amir Toumaj, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies specialising in Iranian affairs, told the Telegraph. But, he said, “Iran doesn’t want a protracted conflict.” “Allied installations and interests would be among the sets of targets. There will be huge pressure to strike US directly, which would invite harsh attacks again,” he said. “The challenge is to calibrate the response in a way that would allow them to save face without re-creating the current pressure to have to reply to the US directly.” The US has a considerable military footprint in the UAE, as well as Kuwait and Qatar, while Bahrain is home to the US Fifth Fleet as well as a Royal Navy base, which could all be vulnerable. A destroyed vehicle burns in the wake of the attack in Baghdad which killed the Iranian general Credit: AFP However, Henry Rome, an analyst at Eurasia, believes such steps "would have the effect of unifying the Gulf against Tehran" and "Iran will instead target its ire against Washington in the near term." Israel, a US ally and enemy of Tehran, is also within it sights, but would likely not be considered a sufficiently prominent enough target for such a high-profile assassination. Commercial interests A resumption of attacks on commercial shipping in the Gulf is more likely, and Tehran could launch military exercises to temporarily interrupt shipping. Iran proved over the summer that it was capable of disrupting traffic in the busiest oil chokepoints in the world., harassing ships with Western flags and even hijacking and impounding the British Stena Impero. With 30 per cent of the world's global oil supply travelling through the Strait, a resumption of attacks could be a blow for the global economy. Oil prices briefly spiked 4 per cent in the wake of the attack on Friday. Iranian Major General Mohammad Bagheri warned a while ago that the strait could be closed completely, should hostilities go on. Iranian assassination | Read more Proxy attacks Soleimani, who was widely revered and hugely popular in Iran, commanded a league of proxy forces across the Middle East, including Hizbollah in Lebanon, militias operating under the Hashed al-Shaabi in Iraq, or Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), umbrella, and to a lesser extent, the Houthis in Yemen. Through its networks of militias, it has created what has been called a "Shia crescent" of influence across the Arab world. It has hoped to unite all Shia Muslims into a force capable of confronting rival Sunni Arab powers led by Saudi Arabia, who could also mobilise against other foes such as the US and UK. He also led a detachment of Iranian and allied Afghan forces in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. The Hashed is a network of mostly Shia armed units, many of whom have close ties to Tehran but which have been officially incorporated into Iraq's state security forces. Most recent estimates put the number of fighters in the tens of thousands. With such forces under their command, Iran's revenge attack will therefore likely first target US interests in Iraq and Syria. Iraq Iraq, which has struggled for years to balance its ties between the US and neighbouring Iran, is the most likely staging ground for any conflict between the two. Last weekend, Iran-backed Kataib Hizbollah hit a US base near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk with rockets, killing an American contractor and wounding a number of servicemen. In response fighters and supporters of the Hashed stormed the US embassy in Baghdad, breaching the Green Zone and setting fire to its gates. They called for the withdrawal of the US’s some 5,000 troops in Iraq. The US was concerned enough to warn its citizens in Iraq to leave immediately on Friday. There have also been increased threats to American and other Western journalists operating in Baghdad. The embassy attack showed that the US is weakened in Iraq and considerable outnumbered. The ease with which Hashed’s supporters reached the US mission - America’s largest and most expensive in the world - also revealed that when the chips are down, they cannot rely on Iraq for protection. US President Donald Trump had already ordered 4,000 more troops to the region. The UK, which has some 400 troops in Iraq spread across four locations, is now reviewing readiness and force protection measures. Syria US troops in Syria could also be targeted. Washington has a contingent of several hundreds troops in the eastern region of Deir Ezzor, nominally there to protect the oil fields from falling into the hands of Isil, but also Iran and the Syrian regime. Iranian troops are stationed not far away, unhappy with the US presence so close to the main highway that facilitates their movement of troops and weaponry between Iran and Syria. So far they have avoided each other, however, fearing a direct confrontation in Syria could lead them into war. They have both the missiles and the manpower in position should they wish to attack in future. Hizbollah Hizbollah, based in Lebanon, is one of the most powerful militias in the region, as a result of decades of support and arms deliveries from Tehran. Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah’s leader, has called on “resistance fighters” around the world to avenge Soleimani’s death. When relations between Iran and the US were at their worst, following the 1979 Islamic revolution, the group carried out a series of kidnappings of Westerners and launched one of the deadliest attacks on US troops in history when a car bomb outside their embassy killed more than 200 soldiers in Beirut. There is nothing to say the group would not return to its guerilla roots. Protests against the assassination have taken place in Kashmir Credit: AP Cyber attacks Iran also has sophisticated cyber abilities. Tehran could choose a stealth attack that causes maximum damage but with plausible deniability. The Iranian regime has demonstrated greater appetite towards destructive or disruptive cyber-attacks in peacetime than any other nation. Notable examples include the Shamoon attacks in 2012 and 2016, which rendered thousands of workstations unusable across Saudi Aramco, Saudi ministries, and other organisations. It is also thought to have launched disruptive attacks on critical national infrastructure within Western countries, including the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against over a dozen major US banks and financial institutions in 2012 and 2013.
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