YEREVAN. – The first—tactical—phase of the Iran-US conflict is over. Ruben Safrastyan, Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, stated this during a meeting with journalists today.

According to him, now the conflict will move to a strategic plane, which will address more important issues. "The most important of these issues is: Iran has made it very clear that it will do its utmost to put an end to the presence of the US military in the Middle East,” he said. "As for the United States, the issues here are not so clearly defined."

He recalled that last year it was announced that the United States was withdrawing its troops from Syria, but it remained incomplete. "The world is entering a new phase in terms of international relations," he stressed. "The peculiarity of this phase should be that one country, in this case the United States, will simply not have the opportunity to spread its potential to different regions of the world and to give it a text of military presence."

According to Safrastyan, the US has a very serious military presence in the Middle East. "In fact, Iran is surrounded by US armed forces," he added. "If Iran sets such a task before itself, it means that the conflict between the two countries will move to a strategic plane. I think there will be no calm in the Middle East for the next 1-2 years."