Assassination of Iranian Powerful General Qasem Soleimani Has the U.S. Bracing for Retaliation
The assassination by U.S. airstrike of Iran’s Gen. Qasem Soleimani on Friday immediately ignited concern that the asymmetrical warfare he famously championed would not only survive his death but also avenge it.
U.S. military facilities across the Middle East ramped up security and the U.S. embassy urged American citizens to “depart Iraq immediately” after the Pentagon confirmed President Donald Trump had ordered the strike against Soleimani.
The killing was not like other attacks to eliminate enemies of the U.S.—the raids that killed Osama bin Laden or ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Soleimani was a major public figure in Iran, a Major General in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, who was easily the most popular official in an Iranian government that generally is not. Inside Iran, and on social media posts circulated globally, he was the frontman of, as well as chief architect for, Iran’s regional ambitions – in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and, most immediately in Iraq, where he met his end.
“Soleimani was the international face of resistance,” Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement, “and all lovers of resistance will be his avengers.” He promised that “harsh retaliation is waiting.”
After announcing his death, Iranian state television suspended all programming and displayed a photograph of Soleimani accompanied by mournful recitations from the Quran, signaling a major event. State TV also began airing footage of Iranian forces in combat, from the Iran-Iraq War— which Soleimani fought in—to Lebanon and Syria.
Into Syria, Iran sent both its own forces to save President Bashar Assad, and those of Hezbollah, the militia it had set up in Lebanon decades ago. It found a new client in the Houthi rebels of Yemen, who drew regional rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates into a cruel war. And despite a $1 trillion U.S. investment, and thousands of American lives, Iran remained by far the most powerful country in Iraq.
In 2017, when TIME included Soleimani on its list of the 100 most influential people, former CIA analyst Kenneth M. Pollack wrote that “To Middle Eastern Shi’ites, he is James Bond, Erwin Rommel and Lady Gaga rolled into one.” Inside Iran, his successes abroad evoke the past glories of the Persian empire that, in its early years, the Islamic Republic worked to downplay, because they predated Islam. But the ayatollahs have lately found an asset in nationalism; another poster memorializing Soleimani labels him “PERSIAN GENERAL.”
So popular was he with the Iranian public that Soleimani was envisioned—at least by some in Tehran—as a figure who might provide much-needed public faith in the regime after the eventual passing of the Supreme Leader, now 80—perhaps by becoming the public face of the Islamic Republic while a new top cleric found his feet. That notion, however real or plausible, was also destroyed on the Baghdad pavement.
“The US,” Iran’s foreign minister declared, “bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism.”
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