As a former @StateDept official who worked on Iraq and Syria for a decade, two decisions taken by the Obama Administration greatly empowered #QassimSolimani. The first was allowing his #Qudsforce to successfully support #Assad. The second to play a leadership role in the #PMF
We watched him ferry supplies to Assad as early as 2012 over Iraqi airspace and eventually send Iraqi and Afghan militias, and Quds Force personnel. We watched them lay siege to, and starve countless Syrian towns from Homs to Mouadmaya to Aleppo.
Then we allowed his proxies a leadership role in the US-backer PMF that we provided indispensable air cover to and the support of a 70-nation counter-ISIS coalition. The Iraqi government begged us at the time to bail them out when Mosul fell. We could have kept Soleimani out.
There are other instances. But these two decisions greatly increased the real and perceived power of this man. A man that wrecked havoc on the region and fellow Muslims from Yemen to Lebanon.
