"You’ll find his name, Qasem Soleimani, buried in an annex (PDF) of the unremittingly dense Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, along with some of his colleagues from the senior ranks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps".
thedailybeast.com/nuke-deal-help…
thedailybeast.com/nuke-deal-help…
Somebody tell Ben.
In a sense the strike on Soleimani parallels the struggle in Washington. Who was friend is now fiend.
Turn back the calendar to the Arab Spring. There's an apparent opportunity to overthrow Assad by arming his enemies. The fallen Khadaffy's arsenal is available. What could be more natural than using these to arm anti-Assad forces?
But things don't go exactly to plan as it turns out that many of those armed go on to form the core of an emergent group called ISIS. At first it seems like a JV team. Then the Europeans get worried it could become a problem.
The big US battalions have just been withdrawn from Iraq and there's nothing available to suppress the ISIS frankenstein. But wait! There's Iran, a natural enemy of Sunni militants and pretty competent too. The problem with using them vs ISIS is all the legacy sanctions.
Plus Iran had been killing American troops in Iraq. But the ISIS problem becomes a disaster. Suddenly like a flash of genius comes the inspiration to reach a nuclear deal with Tehran. But it's not really primarily about nukes but normalizing relations with Tehran.
The JCPOA is born. Even Soleimani gets a sanctions break. His proxy forces help stem ISIS but the results are inconclusive. Eventually America has to make other alliances, as with the Kurds, to finish ISIS off. With ISIS dead, the successor frankenstein, Iran, becomes a problem.
Things really start to go wrong when JCPOA unravels. Frankenstein goes off his meds and starts killing American troops again. It even threatens to seize the US embassy, like it did before. So America belts it one and it runs off into the night. But it'll be back.
The law of unintended consequences, of successive monsters, still haunts the region. Worse it haunts Washington. There are enough secret fiascos to sink a dozen careers. For the nth time the problem is: what now?
