(آمریکا هیچ غلطی نمی تواند بکن)
It’s not often that a pronouncement from a nation’s leader is so publicly proven wrong so quickly, but that’s what happened with the statement from Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamanei, itself a paraphrase of the infamous slogan (also in the sub-title) mouthed by his predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, in 1979 during the original Iranian attack on a US embassy.
Turns out that the Yanks could do something, as they had a Reaper drone cruising around over Baghdad Airport in Iraq.
So when Iran’s No. 1 military guy, General Qassem Soleimani, arrived on a flight from Syria in the early hours of Friday morning and hopped into a car convoy he got hit with four missiles and was killed.
Given Soleimani’s prominence over the last fifteen years in killing Americans using various proxy forces, and generally leading Iran’s military efforts throughout the Middle East as the head of the Quds Force (part of the IRGC, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), it’s surprising to me that he hadn’t been killed earlier.
The Quds Force was formed in 1990 for the stated mission of “exporting” the Iranian revolution abroad, and it has since morphed into Iran’s premier “irregular warfare” force.
In 2007, the U.S. Treasury designated the Quds Force as a terrorist entity. In 2011, Obama sanctioned five Iranians from the Quds Force, including Soleimani, who were linked to a plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States. In 2019 Trump decided to designate the whole of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization.
The reason that Presidents Bush and Obama held back from targeting Soleimani – even as they had numerous Islamic Jihadist terrorist leaders killed – was undoubtedly because he was an official part of the Iranian government. Killing such a man is more an action of war than anti-terrorism, and thus raises the stakes considerably in terms of consequences because a nation-state, even one as weak as Iran, is capable of causing far more destruction than any terrorist group.
Soleimani seems to have concluded that himself as he had become very public in the last two or three years. In a recent speech Soleimani openly taunted President Trump:
“We are near you, where you can’t even imagine… We are ready. We are the man of this arena.”
As noted by Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired senior C.I.A. counter-terrorism officer:
“Soleimani was treated like royalty, and was not particularly hard to find,… [he] absolutely felt untouchable, particularly in Iraq. He took selfies of himself on the battlefield and openly taunted the U.S., because he felt safe in doing so.”
Soleimani wasn’t boasting then and only grew stronger as a result of his successes against the US in Iraq, as pointed out by Doron Itzchakov, an Iran specialist from the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies:
“Soleimani leads Iran’s foreign policy in the Middle East. His status is no less than that of Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif… Soleimani leads Iranian activity in every location that the regime labels as being important to its “strategic depth,” including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen… He is certainly beyond being a military leader. His political involvement is very strong.”
Even in earlier days he’d enjoyed poking the eagle, as US General David Petreaus recently recounted:
He sent a message to me through the president of Iraq in late March of 2008, during the battle of Basra, when we were supporting the Iraqi army forces that were battling the Shia militias in Basra that were supported, of course, by Qasem Soleimani and the Quds Force. He sent a message through the president that said, “General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qasem Soleimani, control the policy of Iran for Iraq, and also for Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan.”
As such, even before being targeted, he was closely watched by both Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies and a few journalists; wherever he turned up it was a guarantee that Iran’s resources would follow.
Which is why my curiosity was piqued back on December 14 by the following Twitter thread, listing “a series of 9 unusual and worrying events that have taken place in the last 24 hours“, in Iraq:
- An attempt to assassinate the son of the political spokesman of Muqtada al-Sadr, who heads Iraq’s largest Shiite political force.
- Reports that Muqtada al-Sadr, who has provided staunch support to the anti-Iranian protesters, intends to close all his institutions for a period of one year.
- A Twitter account identified as the unofficial spokesperson for Muqtada al-Sadr posted a tweet saying, “Goodbye,” and its profile picture switched to: “Closed.”
- Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Qods Force of the IRGC, and the nefarious figure who controls Iran’s militias in the Arab world, reportedly returned to Baghdad last night.
- Convoys of tanks and armored vehicles entered Iraq from Iran today through the Zarbatiya crossing. [the twitter thread has video and photos of this].
- Qais al-Khazali, the militant leader of the Iranian-backed militia, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, has not been seen in public. His Twitter account was suspended/closed, a few days after new US sanctions were imposed.
- Kuwait issued a warning to its citizens to leave Iraq immediately.
- Tomorrow universities in Baghdad will be on strike. It’s expected that a larger number of protesters than usual will fill the squares. They will all wear white and call for free and fair elections and for choosing an independent prime minister who is not a politician.
- Both Iraqi protesters and Muqtada al-Sadr’s people are expressing deep misgivings about the plan to appoint Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani as Iraq’s prime minister.
Muqtada al-Sadr gained fame in post-Saddam Iraq as one of the biggest thorns in the side of the USA. Although never as directly tied to US military casualties as Soleimani, al-Sadr’s Shiite militias had fought against the US, so having him getting offside with Iran should have been a big story. As the Tweet summarises:
Connecting the dots, the nightmare scenario of the protesters is that Muqtada al-Sadr’s forces are in retreat, clearing the way for Iranian-backed military forces to storm the squares, crush the protests, and then crown Soleimani’s man as head of the Iraqi government. Apparently, it is Qassem Soleimani who stands behind the pressure to appoint al-Sudani – over the opposition of high-ranking Shiite elements (Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr)
My question is a simple one: is the United States government doing anything concrete to prevent Qassem Soleimani from doing anything like this? If not, why not?
by Iran-backed militiamen at U.S. Embassy Baghdad
At the time, before the events of the other day, my answer to that last would have been that the US government was indeed not going to do a damned thing about Soleimani.
Following the precedents set by Bush and Obama, Trump had repeatedly backed off hitting Iran directly, including when he called off a planned missile strike in late June.
Moreover Trump long ago cemented his support from the small but influential Paleocon segment of the GOP by attacking both Bush and Obama about their wars – right Tucker?
But even before the 2016 election Trump was harping on about this. Back in 2011 he claimed that Obama would start a war with Iran to try and win re-election:
Gander meet goose. But those tweets were at least true to Trump’s nationalist instincts, believing that most or even all foreign adventures are a waste of American lives and money.
Maybe that fooled the Iranians into thinking Trump had no redlines at all? It certainly led to the snorting dismissal by the Iranian leader, as well as criticisms from Trump’s domestic opponents, as noted by The Grundian:
“Former US vice-president Joe Biden warned during a Democratic debate on Tuesday night that Islamic State fighters would strike the US as a result of Donald Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of American forces in northern Syria. “‘We have Isis that’s going to come here,’ Biden said. ‘They are going to damage the United States of America. That’s why we got involved in the first place.'”
And this sort of criticism increased a lot when the US embassy was hit by “protesters” on December 30, 2019 in a further escalation from the nine events listed earlier:
Chris Murphy, the junior Democrat Senator from Connecticut and successor to Joe Biden, proved himself entirely worthy of that great honour with that Tweet. But plenty of other Dems snarked out the same message. Benghazi trended rapidly on Twitter:
The Democrat Operatives With Bylines were naturally on-message: WaPo, “Trump threatens Iran after embassy attack, but remains reluctant to get more involved in region”. Another argued that all this was a sign that Iran was “ascendent” in Iraq against a blowhard USA. Plus similar stuff from the NYT, MSNBC, CNN, etc.
Contrast this with the same sources in the wake of Soleimani’s killing:
I don’t recall any Democrat member of Congress or the Senate asking about Obama’s congressional authorisation as he droned some 2800 people, including a US citizen, in his two terms.
Anyway, aside from partisan double standards and political fighting in the USA, the question now is what happens next between Iran and the USA?
No Minister 