The Mullahs' Fatal Miscalculation - Frontpagemag frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/mu…
Soleimani and al-Muhandis were legitimate military targets. President Trump had both the constitutional authority and duty as commander in chief to order their killings.
They were looking to launch unprovoked offensive attacks against U.S. military personnel and diplomats stationed in Iraq and elsewhere, while the United States was determined to respond forcefully in defense of its citizens.
Soleimani lost his own gamble. He found himself in a place where he could not “imagine” there would be a U.S. drone waiting upon President Trump’s orders to take him out. Now, Soleimani has an eternity to think about what went wrong during his “sleep” in hell.
Hundreds of Iranian-backed militia fighters, reportedly at Soleimani’s direction, invaded the compound of the United States embassy in Baghdad last Tuesday after breaking down the compound gate.
They threatened American lives, before finally withdrawing. President Trump tweeted a warning. He said that Iran “will be held fully responsible.”
None of this gave Kata’ib Hezbollah’s patron Soleimani any pause. He brazenly took a flight from Syria to Iraq and was met by his lackey Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at the Baghdad airport. Both met their maker last Friday night.
According to U.S. intelligence services, Soleimani was in the midst of planning for the execution of imminent major attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic personnel in Iraq and other countries in the region that could have cost hundreds of American lives.
Suppose that President Trump had not authorized the killings, and the attacks were carried out quickly as originally planned, resulting in many American casualties.
The same disgustingly cowardly Democrats complaining about the president’s decisive preemptive action would have condemned him for allowing those attacks to proceed.
Soleimani had forged a personal network of Iranian-sponsored terrorists loyal to him. The loss of both Soleimani and al-Muhandis will deprive the terrorists under their command of the kind of highly sophisticated, knowledgeable, and reliable leadership they had come to rely upon.
President Trump’s critics are cowed by the Iranians’ vows of revenge. They have grown alarmed by the tense war of words, threats and counter threats that show no sign of abating.
Ken Timmerman, an expert on Iran, believes that President Trump’s decision will ultimately have a positive outcome. He said it showed that “the aura of the Iranian regime’s invincibility is over.”
For years, he added, the Iranians “have been lulled into thinking they can act with impunity in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Finally, the United States has drawn a firm hard line on their bad behavior. This is exactly what we needed to do.”
As a result of President Trump’s bold action to take down the brutal Soleimani, the protesters against the Iranian regime within Iran itself and in Iraq who hated Soleimani may become more emboldened.
The thugs running Iran today may have to look over their own shoulders at home before taking more provocative actions that would incur the full wrath of the U.S. military.
