Suleimani’s successor as Quds force leader – his long-time deputy, Esmail Qaani – was announced in 12 hours of his death. And while Suleimani was charismatic and played a personal role in cultivating many of Iran’s relationships in the region, those ties do not rely on him alone.
Rather, they are the product of extensive and deep bonds that often go back decades and in many instances involve family ties.
Suleimani was well aware of the dangers of the job, as was his singular boss, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in years past deemed him a “living martyr”.
So succession planning was never far from his mind. Indeed, 62-year-old Suleimani gave his younger lieutenants considerable operational authority.
In practice, this has meant the elevation of a new generation of Quds force operatives, some of whom Suleimani had already begun positioning in vital posts: a case in point is Iraj Masjedi, the current Iranian ambassador to Iraq.
So what comes next? Predictably, the Iranian authorities have promised “severe retaliation”. How that unfolds in practice is anyone’s guess. There is certainly no shortage of US targets in the region.
But Suleimani may, with his death, have already achieved the greatest revenge of all, and without firing a single bullet: namely, his ultimate objective of ending the US military presence in Iraq.
If he was indeed behind the attack on the US military base that ultimately precipitated his own assassination, then he has probably succeeded in trapping the US into initiating its own ejection from Iraq.
So far, most Iraqi decision-makers, from the caretaker prime minister to the country’s highest spiritual authority, have condemned in no uncertain terms the violation of sovereignty that the assassination entailed.
As for Trump, he is stuck with the same problem he faced before Friday’s strike.
The United States is no closer to the much-touted “new deal” with Iran, which the president boasted would eclipse that negotiated by his predecessor. Whatever remaining diplomatic off-ramps there were are rapidly crumbling.
Meanwhile, at a time when his unprecedented sanctions had stirred unrest inside Iran, the political elite has just been handed a rallying cry. The strike on Suleimani, whose status approached that of national icon,
will harden popular sentiment against the US while simultaneously shoring up the regime.
