Seemingly immune from US retaliation, Soleimani spent the Obama years strutting around Iraq and Syria like a peacock in ’70s-style turtleneck sweaters and an array of tailored military style jackets like an IRGC Al Pacino in Scarface, while garnering admiring magazine profiles.
This nauseating treatment started at the top. Under President Obama, the U.S. was realigning with Iran, which meant providing its regime with billions of dollars, some of it hand delivered by U.S. officials in the form of large pallets of cash.
The U.S. also provided direct military support to Soleimani’s Iraqi militias as part of the anti-ISIS campaign. It was important not to cross Iran’s red lines, administration officials regularly leaked at the time, ....
...so as not to jeopardize the safety of US soldiers while they killed Iran’s enemies in Iraq and Syria–a strategy that was variously labeled as “counterterrorism” or “the fight against Al Qaeda” ....
....or “the war against ISIS,” and which invariably involved aligning with Iran to kill Sunni Arabs, who form the majority of the region’s population.
Taking the red-carpet treatment for granted, Iran appears to have badly miscalculated with President Trump. The Trump administration had made clear last week that it would hold Iran directly accountable for any attack by its assets that harmed American personnel.
The president personally tweeted that “Iran will be held fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities. They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!”
Not only did Iran and its militias kill an American in one such attack, but they then orchestrated an attack on the U.S. Embassy designed for maximum public humiliation.
Al-Muhandis and other senior Iranian assets took part in the attack. Graffiti on the embassy walls declared Soleimani to be the attackers’ commander.
There were no pretenses as to who was responsible for the attack.
There were no pretenses as to who was responsible for the attack.
Iran’s head of state, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is often pictured with Soleimani at his side, publicly mocked the U.S., declaring that “You can’t do anything.” The stage was set for a replay of the Iranian U.S. Embassy takeover of 1979 in Tehran.
Apparently, Khamenei, who according to Iranian regime doctrine exercises the authority of the missing 12th Shiite imam on earth, didn’t imagine what was coming next.
After 15 years of Iran spreading its power throughout the region while degrading the U.S. strategic architecture in the Middle East and killing tens of thousands of people with impunity, ...
President Trump attempted to stop the merry-go-round by disentangling the U.S. from Obama’s deal and reimposing sanctions on Iran.
But the administration left some waivers in place, and there have been some mixed signals about negotiating a new nuclear deal with Iran. Apparently, neither Khamenei nor Soleimani was impressed.
Now, Trump has shown that the U.S. is willing to strike back at Iran, and strike hard. What comes next is anyone’s guess, including possible Iranian strikes on Israel or on Saudi Arabia, Iranian strikes on U.S. troops in Iraq, anti-Iranian unrest inside Iraq,...
....and anti-regime unrest within Iran itself, but one thing is already clear beyond any doubt: Iran can no longer expect to kill U.S. citizens and strike U.S. embassies with impunity.
