Why Donald Trump needs a short-term win in Iran before he visits Xi Jinping in China

US sailors and marines aboard the USS Tripoli at an unspecified location in the Middle East on Friday.

Photo: US Central Command via AP The recent surge in US service members in the Middle East suggested the Iran war could become a protracted, low-intensity conflict as Donald Trump eyes his trip to China in May, Chinese military analysts said.

The deployment of elite forces and the American president’s recent tactics in Venezuela indicated Washington was highly aware of and seeking to avoid a costly drawn-out war like Vietnam, they added.

On Sunday, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported that several hundred US Army Rangers and Navy Seals had arrived in the Middle East, joining roughly 3,500 marines and sailors who were deployed earlier and bringing the number of American troops in the region to over 50,000 troops, a 10,000 increase since the conflict began.

The deployment gives Trump additional military options to secure the Strait of Hormuz, effectively closed by Iran, or seize Kharg Island, Iran’s oil hub in the northern Persian Gulf, or extract nearly 1,000 pounds (453kg) of highly enriched uranium from the country, according to the reports.

Smoke rises from buildings in Tehran, the Iranian capital, on Sunday.

The US-Israel war on Iran began on February 28.

Photo: Xinhua Li Cheng, founding director of the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World, called a full-scale US troop invasion of Iran “unlikely”. “Tailored, selective and short-term military actions in specific areas are possible, but chances of employing this kind of action are also very slim at the moment,” Li said.

As the war entered its second month, Trump on Monday threatened massive destruction of Iran’s power plants and energy resources if a deal to end the conflict with Tehran was not reached and the Strait of Hormuz not immediately reopened.

Ni Lexiong in the department of political science at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, echoed Li’s view, saying the best strategic option for the US was to follow its “Venezuela model”. “Despite all the flurry of conflicting and misleading information, it’s clear to me that Trump is earnestly and firmly pursuing a Venezuela model to resolve the Iran issue,” Ni said, referring to America’s capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January. “The key is to get an alternative leader within Iran’s establishment to avoid a new government-versus-old government type of transition, which m

原文链接: 南华早报