When US President Donald Trump entered the battle between Israel and Iran late on Saturday night time, the area was braced for escalation.
The US dropped 17 Large Ordnance Penetrator bombs and two dozen cruise missiles on Iran’s nuclear amenities at Natanz, Fordow and Esfahan, helping Israel, which had already been buying and selling missile fireplace with Tehran since July 13.
Iran’s response quickly got here. On Monday night, it launched 14 missiles aimed on the US Air Drive’s Central Command within the Center East, at Al Udeid in Qatar, a impartial nation. These missiles flew over the capital, Doha, spreading alarm.
But as a substitute of resulting in the “rathole of retaliations” UN Secretary-Basic Antonio Guterres had warned in opposition to, the assault presaged a truce that Trump introduced hours later, and that was facilitated by refined diplomacy involving Qatar, the US and Iran.
So, how did a ceasefire emerge from the smoke of an assault?
What choices did Iran have?
A army response in opposition to a US base was an apparent alternative, as a result of the US has publicity in Iran’s neighbourhood.
Other than Al Udeid airbase, its Fifth Fleet is headquartered in Bahrain. Each are simply greater than 200km (125 miles) throughout the Persian Gulf from Iran. There may be additionally an air base in Kuwait and 4 logistics air bases in Oman. Additional afield, the US has three air bases in Saudi Arabia, three air bases in Iraq, and an air base in Jordan.
“The US has 40,000 troops within the area [on] 19 US bases, eight of that are everlasting, and Iran has mentioned beforehand they’ll turn out to be reputable targets if the US strikes Iran,” mentioned Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari.
Previously, Iran’s proxies within the area have been Tehran’s “major Iranian technique of retaliating in opposition to adversary assaults,” wrote The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based assume tank, on Friday.
Houthi militias may resume assaults on transport within the Pink Sea, and Iran may itself assault transport within the Strait of Hormuz – thus menacing two of the world’s most economically essential transport chokepoints concurrently.
However the proxy assaults by no means got here, demonstrating the constraints of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance”, and “how exhausted it’s after months of combating america and Israel”, mentioned the ISW in a touch upon its web site.
Nonetheless, even because the world ready for Iran to reply to the US assaults, an Iran historian at St Andrews College within the UK, advised Al Jazeera on Monday that he thought “an ‘off ramp’ with america” was possible.
“There will probably be numerous public bluster, however privately, I feel feelers will probably be put out,” he mentioned, earlier than the Iranian strike later that night.
How did the strike unfold?
At round 7pm native time (16:00 GMT) on Monday, Iran struck Qatar.
Qatar condemned the attack as “an especially harmful escalation that represents a flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the State of Qatar”. It issued a demarche to the Iranian ambassador in Doha.
However the “feelers” Ansari had talked about seem to have been put out beforehand.
“I need to thank Iran for giving us early discover,” wrote Trump on social media, “which made it potential for no lives to be misplaced, and no person to be injured.”
The warning additionally allowed Qatar to arrange its air defences, capturing down 13 of the missiles and permitting one to fly “in a nonthreatening path”, in response to Trump.
Satellite tv for pc photos steered the US had evacuated workers and plane from Al Udeid even earlier than it struck Iran, so focusing on it represented a low threat of casualties. Neither the US base at Al Udeid nor the Qatari Air Drive suffered few materials losses.
“I’m happy to report that NO Individuals have been harmed, and hardly any harm was completed. Most significantly, they’ve gotten all of it out of their ‘system’,” wrote Trump three hours after the assault.
A mere two hours later, he introduced the ceasefire.
“CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE! It has been totally agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will probably be a Full and Whole CEASEFIRE (in roughly 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wound down and accomplished their in progress, closing missions!),” Trump wrote on Fact Social, his social media platform.
Trump later revealed that “Israel & Iran got here to me, nearly concurrently, and mentioned, ‘PEACE!’”
Iran’s authorities was keen to place the battle behind it, issuing a press release early on Tuesday saying it had delivered a “humiliating and exemplary response to the enemy’s cruelty”, and framing the ceasefire as a “nationwide determination to impose the cessation of battle on the Zionist enemy and its vile supporters”.
How are Qatar’s relations with the US and Iran?
Qatar hosts the biggest US airbase within the Center East and has labored carefully with Washington on a sequence of tough diplomatic negotiations, involving the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hamas in Gaza, amongst others.
On the identical time, it enjoys heat diplomatic and financial ties with Iran. “The South Pars and North Pars and North Discipline have been a joint [venture] for a very long time – over 25 years,” Doha-based vitality professional Roudi Baroudi advised Al Jazeera, referring to gasoline fields that Qatar and Iran share.
The South Pars gasoline area alone holds nearly as a lot gasoline as all the opposite identified gasoline fields on the planet, mentioned Baroudi.
Proper after he introduced the ceasefire, Trump thanked the emir of Qatar.
“I’d prefer to thank the Extremely Revered Emir of Qatar for all that he has completed in in search of Peace for the Area,” he wrote on Fact Social. In the meantime, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian telephoned the Qatari emir on Tuesday to specific “remorse” over the assault yesterday.
Pezehkian clarified that Qatar and its individuals weren’t the goal of Iran’s strikes. “[Pezeshkian] pressured that the State of Qatar will stay a neighbouring, Muslim, and sisterly state, and expressed his hope that relations between the 2 international locations will at all times be primarily based on the rules of respect for the sovereignty of states and good neighbourliness,” the emir’s workplace mentioned in a press release.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani mentioned on Wednesday that “Qatar undertook important diplomatic efforts with regional and worldwide companions to defuse tensions.”
And the affect of these efforts will probably be felt effectively past simply Israel and Iran, Baroudi steered.
“Washington and Doha defused an unseen financial and ecological bomb,” he mentioned, as a result of the Gulf is a powder keg of extremely inflammable oil and gasoline wellheads, offloading terminals and tankers.
“The entire area has over 34 refineries alongside the coast. We now have over 105 energy vegetation and desalination vegetation, so a ceasefire will put away any hazard to the water and electrical energy [supply] of the entire area,” he mentioned, suggesting Qatar be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
