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What would a war between Iran and the United States be like? 2:04
(CNN) - Although President Donald Trump's confrontation with Iran, fortunately, ended before a full war, the potential coup did nothing to defuse a confrontation that will surely rise again soon.
Although the two sides can claim strategic advances and political advantages, the most risky confrontation between these enemies of decades may have taken their confrontation to a new and even more dangerous phase.
- READ: 5 things you should know to understand the US crisis and Iran
That is because the structures of conflict and diplomatic disconnection between a revolutionary Iran and the US nationalist government that broke the nuclear agreement that involves the two countries remain in force.
The confrontation unleashed a fierce controversy in Washington, where there is a growing partisan dispute over Trump's justification for the operation in which Iranian General Qasem Soleimani died, a situation that caused the crisis.
The scare, which is already one week old, also left a chilling memory of how the impulsive elections of a president who is guided by his intuition led his country to the cusp of another war in the Middle East. Trump may now learn the wrong lessons about his risky policy.
And the drama exposed the flaws of a shattered national security team that is largely made up of inexperienced or deeply ideological officials apparently prone to confusion and mixed messages.
- LOOK: Despite the current calm, Iran's military actions are not ruled out
On the positive side, the tensions that culminated in Trump's assessment that Iran was "retreating" after not killing any Americans in attacks on bases in Iraq did not get out of control. Apparently, the two sides were able to communicate their intentions, through public rhetoric and a Swiss diplomatic channel, to avoid miscalculations that could have ended in a war.
While there is hope that going back from the limit will give each party an incentive to start a new diplomatic process, they are more likely to return to the same state of mutual hatred that has prevailed for 40 years.
Iraq is still on the limit: a pair of missiles landed in the highly fortified Green Zone of Baghdad on Wednesday, the area that houses the US embassy, which had previously been previously attacked by a pro-Iran mafia.
Drones and missiles may be suspended for now, but it would be naive to assume that this episode is over. Events in the Middle East take months and years to develop. And the history of Iran suggests that it will not consider a limited missile attack as a sufficient revenge for the death of a high leader like Soleimani, who led the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which means that it is likely let there be more violence by the militia.
- READ: US-Iran crisis, natural disasters and even air incidents: all this has happened so far in 2020
“I think that anyone who says that this is over and that the reprisals have stopped and that we can all make assessments based on where we are now… that is very unlikely. The story is far from over, ”said Susan Hennessey, a former National Security Agency official who is now a CNN legal analyst, on the“ The Situation Room ”program.
What Trump achieved
Even so, after he was apparently dragging the United States into the kind of Middle Eastern crush he criticized as a candidate, Trump agreed to step back this Wednesday.
"Iran seems to be retiring, which is good for all parties involved and something very good for the world," said the president in the White House.
The president's team, without losing sight of the race for re-election, has material to work on. They will presume how Trump, daring to take a step that his predecessors would dismiss as too provocative, erased Soleimani from the planet, whom he criticized as a "monster" terrorist.
- LOOK: Trump gave a message about Iran's attacks in a tone far from his usual threats on Twitter
More strategically, Trump may have established a principle that could be significant in the future tensions of the United States and Iran. The murder of Soleimani, who devised the regional network of militias allied to Iran like Hezbollah and Hamas, indicates that Washington now sees Iran's power activity as the basis for military action, a new threshold in confrontation.
"There was a direct attack, a direct aggression against the US embassy, sovereign soil of the United States, by Iranian delegates," said David Urban, Trump's senior political advisor and veteran of the first Gulf War.
"This president, unlike presidents in the past, decided to say: 'The United States will no longer allow Iran to attack the United States through affiliates," Urban told Christiane Amanpour of CNN.
- READ: Lowering tension: how Trump decided not to return the coup was his best option with respect to Iran
This new standard could be significant given Iran's record of using affiliated groups to attack US targets, such as the assault on the US Navy headquarters. in Lebanon in 1983.
But it could also be the spark of a future conflict.
Iran counts its earnings
Iran also sent messages to Trump after taking the significant step of firing missiles from its own territory against US troops, crossing a new line in the confrontation with the president.
He put his US allied neighbors under notice. that their missiles could reach targets such as bases, airports and civil cities. And next time they may not be programmed to fail. In addition, Tehran skillfully orchestrated the funeral rites of Soleimani to promote an impression of unity, weeks after unleashing brutal repression against anti-government protests amid economic devastation caused by Trump's severe economic sanctions package.
Trump's threat to impact Iranian cultural goals, meanwhile, helped solidify the notion that Iran faces an existential threat from the United States, which the clerical government has used for years to consolidate its legitimacy.
But the deeper trends revealed by these tense days suggest that it is likely that Iran and the United States will not return to their respective corners and count their profits.
- MIRA: Iranian attack: should the United States withdraw its military troops from Iraq?
To begin, Trump's speech at the White House that showed that military action was over for now included a promise to toughen the sanctions. While the president said he was willing to “embrace peace with all who seek it,” he showed no signs of less tense conditions for dialogue with Iran that would effectively require the Islamic Republic to capitulate on its main problems. That means there is no way for Iran to loosen the straitjacket imposed by Trump's "maximum pressure campaign", apart from indirect attacks on maritime transport, oil fields and, in a possible more serious scenario, the objectives Americans in the region.
How training could burst again
The United States - despite Trump's presumption that its citizens are safer with Soleimani dead - seems to have emerged from the conflict with a worse geopolitical position. Iran has escaped the latest limitations of the Obama-era nuclear agreement, raising fears of a possible race towards an atomic weapon in a matter of months.
USA He also seems closer now to being forced to leave Iraq after the attack on Soleimani on Iraqi soil, an insult to that country's sovereignty. Trump aggravated the damage by threatening to sanction the nation invaded by US-led troops in 2003 if US forces are expelled. Any departure from the US Iraq would hamper the fight against extremism and give an award to the largest and most powerful neighbor in Baghdad. For military logistics reasons, it would probably force the United States to abandon the remains of its fight against ISIS in Syria.
- READ: What you need to know about the military bases attacked by Iranian missiles
In Washington, the step to step back in the confrontation with Iran has taken some of the intensity of Trump's confrontation with the Democrats in Congress over what at one time looked like another war.
But the Democratic legislators and some Republicans left Wednesday the briefings, which made senior officials about the crisis, disgusted by the presentation. Trump has claimed that he thwarted the impending terrorist attacks against Americans with the death of Soleimani.
Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah said it was "the worst briefing I've had on a military issue," while he and his colleagues criticized the government for ruling out concerns about Trump's legal justification for attacking Soleimani.
Republican Congressman Rand Paul of Kentucky also told Wolf Blitzer of CNN that he was not given overwhelming evidence that specific acts were about to happen.
“We were not given specific information about a specific attack. I didn't know anything different in the audience that I hadn't seen in a newspaper, ”said Paul.
- LOOK: What do Iraqis who live with war want?
The question about the timing of an Iranian attack is important because it is based on the legal justification of Trump's attacks against Soleimani.
There was also new evidence of the disorder in Trump's national security team during a crisis that at one time saw conflicting signals sent about whether US troops were withdrawing from Iraq.
Government sources spoke on Wednesday about Iranian signals sent through Swiss and Iraqi diplomats that the missile attacks were not intended to kill Americans.
But General Mark Milley, head of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, broke ranks.
“I believe, based on what I saw and what I know, that they were meant to cause structural damage (destroy vehicles, equipment and planes) and kill personnel. That is my personal evaluation, ”Milley said.
Iran conflict Donald Trump Qasem Soleimani US-Iran relations