Fox News reports that Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani has been killed in a rocket attack at Baghdad International Airport. Soleimani was the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force. President Trump ordered the attack and our military carried it out.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had said that Soleimani is as dangerous as the late ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed by a U.S. strike last year. I think that’s true. In any case, Soleimani is responsible for more American deaths than Baghdadi was. His forces have killed hundreds of American troops in Iraq.
Soleimani was likely the mastermind of the recent attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The Iranian-backed mob spray painted “Soleimani is our leader” on windows at the embassy.
Now, this will have to be amended to “Soleimani was our leader.”
The same strike that took out Soleimani also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. He was the deputy commander of an Iranian-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. At least five others are said to have been killed.
The Washington Post says that it isn’t clear who is responsible for the rocket attack that took our Soleimani and the others. However, this report in the South China Morning Post says that the U.S. carried out the strikes. I think we’re easily the most likely candidate to have done so. [NOTE: The Pentagon has now confirmed that the U.S. did, indeed, carry out the attack on President Trump’s order]
Iran can be expected to retaliate in some fashion. Our ability to carry out the attack that killed their General, plus all the other evidence of our military capability, should give the regime pause. But the need to save face probably dictates some kind of a response. After all, the attack on the embassy was itself a response to a U.S. air force strike in Iraq (which was a response to an Iranian-backed militia’s attack on a U.S. base).
Expect more turbulence ahead.
In the wake of Soleimani’s demise, however, we should at least see a cessation, for a while anyway, of articles like this one, published in the National Interest after the attack on our embassy, called “How Tehran Rolled Donald Trump In Iraq.” That “rolling” didn’t work out well for Tehran’s most important military man.
JOHN adds: This is excellent news. However, watch for the U.S. press to root non-stop for the mullahs.
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