On 4 January, the world awoke to news that Qasem Soleimani, an important Iranian military commander, had been killed in an American Reaper drone strike whilst travelling in Iraq the previous evening.
The Strike
News media and Twitter were immediately consumed with screaming pundits, memes about World War 3, and condemnation of the Trump administration by his many furious online critics.
Iran for its part released ominous statements about ‘severe revenge’ and promised to retaliate soon.
To many, this strike seemed to come out of nowhere. To the average news watcher, it appeared that a rogue Trump had just killed another country’s senior leader without any provocation. In fact, Soleimani was a legendary figure who had been taunting the United States (US) for years.
Before we consider what happened next, the wisdom of the strike and the greater implications for the region and the world, it’s important to discuss who Soleimani was, and the events leading up the strike.
The Commander
Soleimani is known by some by the nickname ‘The Shadow Commander’, a monicker which gave the title to an excellent New Yorker profile of him in 2013.
Soleimani headed the Quds force, a division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG), a secondary army loyal to the regime in Iran, designed to protect it from military coup by the regular army.
The Quds force itself is something akin to a combination between the elite soldiers of the Navy Seals and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and is responsible for clandestine operations and activity outside Iran.
Soleimani came from a poor family, reaching adulthood just before the 1979 Iranian revolution, which brought the current regime in Tehran to power. He joined the IRG in 1979, allegedly as a water carrier, but rose quickly through the ranks due to his personal bravery and skill. During the gruelling Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), he established his reputation as a brave and talented commander, and was known for personally undertaking risky scouting missions behind enemy lines.
Soleimani remained with the IRG until his death this year, serving it loyally and capably.
In late 1997, Soleimani was appointed head of the Quds force and led the organisation to prominence in the Middle East, growing Iran’s power enormously.
Iranian expansion
The Iranian regime regards itself both as a revolutionary Islamic Republic and as heir to the Persian empires of the past. As such, it sees itself both as the true leader of the Islamic world and as the supreme power of the Middle East, destined to rule Arabs, Persians and Kurds under a Shi’ite state and defend them against Western and Jewish influence.
A fierce Iranian nationalist at heart, Soleimani worked tirelessly to achieve the goals of the Iranian revolution in the region. As head of the Quds force, one of his great successes was combining the creation of Shi’ite militias loyal to Iran abroad and an effective political strategy to bully Lebanese, Iraqi, Yemeni, Syrian and Afghan political leaders into the Iranian camp.
Using the Lebanese militia and political party Hezbollah, a long-time Iranian proxy, as the template, Soleimani began setting up similar militias all across the Middle East, most importantly in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. This gave Iran enormous power to wield force while being able to use the unofficial nature of the militias as a way to deny their involvement whenever it was politically important to do so, such as when a militia attacked U.S troops.
Partly as a result of Soleimani’s efforts, the Iranians managed to save Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad from falling to Sunni rebels after the Arab Spring revolt against him. In addition, by 2013, Soleimani was effectively directing the composition of the Iraqi government, and enabled the capture of major cities across Yemen by Iran’s allies, the Houthis.
Crucially for the Americans, Soleimani’s Quds force and the training it provided was linked directly to the deaths of American troops in Iraq, with one study putting the number attributable to Iran at 600.
America comes under fire
Leading up to Soleimani’s killing, the Iranians were engaged in a series of escalating actions to bring the Trump administration back to the negotiating table after Trump had withdrawn from the Iran deal in 2016. The resulting major American sanctions and diplomatic pressure sent the Iranian economy into free-fall, with some estimates suggesting it shrank by about 9% in 2019. Iran needed urgent sanctions relief, but at the same time needed to show its strength in the region, and so the IRG began attacking American allies in the region as well as American military assets.
In 2019, we saw attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran by IRG ships, an American drone being shot down, and the temporary loss of half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production after Iranian missiles allegedly struck an oil-producing facility in the north of the country. These actions were designed to put pressure on Trump to negotiate a new deal, something he claimed he was in favour of, and thus release the pressure on the regime internally.
Things came to a head at the end of 2019 when Iranian-aligned militias attempted to storm the US embassy in Iraq in response to an American drone strike, and take the ambassador hostage. On the walls of the embassy, they spray-painted ‘Soleimani is our leader’. It seems that this was the final straw for the Americans.
Iran retaliates
After Soleimani’s death, Iran reacted with fury. By some accounts Soleimani was the 2nd most powerful person in Iran, and the Americans had just killed him without warning. After days of mass state-sponsored funerals, with mourners numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the Iranians struck back at the US.
On the evening of 8 January, at the same time as the US strike on Soleimani, the Iranians fired 22 ballistic missiles at US bases in Iraq. These were the same kind of missiles that speculation suggests have been used at long-range to accurately strike Saudi Arabia’s oil production facilities. After a few hours of terror – some American media outlets and journalists tweeted claims from Iranian state television that around 80 Americans were killed – it emerged that only two Americans had been injured, and there were no Iraqi or American deaths at all.
It was subsequently revealed that the Iraqi government was given advance warning of the attacks, and that America was informed by Iraq that Iran would be attacking, which evidently helped to prevent American deaths.
Some have speculated that Iran intended to avoid killing Americans so that it could prevent the confrontation from escalating into a full-scale war, which it would lose. The Americans have claimed that Iran did intend to kill their troops, but were unable to, due to American missile-warning systems.
Whatever the case, as a result of there being only minor damage and injuries, Trump announced in a speech soon after that America would not retaliate for the attacks and considered this chapter of conflict closed, for now.
At the time of writing, it seemed that the Americans had pulled off an enormous win, killing one of Iran’s brightest military minds and sending a very clear warning to the Iranians that they are willing to fight. For this, they suffered no serious casualties and have potentially opened the door to peace.
Possible peace?
With Soleimani dead, the Iranian government has lost one of its biggest proponents of expansionism. Whilst Iran may decide to take further revenge against the US and its allies, at the moment they are severely weakened. In 2019, there were massive protests in Iraq and Lebanon against Iran’s allies in government, and the prime minister of Iraq was even forced to resign. There is clear discontent amongst Iran’s vassal populations over Iranian rule.
Additionally, the large protests against the government within Iran, by Iranians tired of Iran’s military adventurism and weak economic growth, have continued and some have been put down with violence. One estimate states that the Iranian government killed 1 500 of its own people in 2019 in the course of suppressing protests.
This has opened a door for the more consolidationist members of the regime to argue strongly for a disengagement from foreign conflicts in order to secure the Islamic revolution. These factions may argue that expansionism has weakened rather than strengthened the regime, that the Americans may yet kill more senior leaders and that the dual projects of expanding their influence and developing nuclear weapons must be abandoned.
If Iran were to pull back, at least somewhat, from Iraq and Syria, and abandon its nuclear programme, the West would likely be persuaded to lift its sanctions against Iran, and possibly even send the Iranians money again, as they did when the Iran deal was signed under former US President Barack Obama. This would help the regime to repair its image at home, and to preserve itself for the next couple of decades.
Of course, hardline elements may make appeals to national pride and seek revenge against America by encouraging its proxies to attack the US, or the regime may double down in its quest for nuclear weapons, an action that will eventually force either an Israeli, a Saudi or an American response.
Only time will tell. For now, however, America has secured one of the greatest geo-strategic wins of the last 20 years.
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