Soleimani’s death leaves Iran’s strategy in tatters

Barbecued Jihadi

The killing of Quds Force Commander Qassim Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary leader Abu-Mahdi Al-Muhandis changes everything. With one fell blow Trump has taken out the two dominant figures exporting Iranian militancy across the region.

Although the furious regime in Tehran will seek a devastating riposte, this operation liquidates the man who for three decades masterminded its regional terrorist strategy.

The death of Soleimani — lauded by Iranian leader Ali Khamenei as his “living martyr of the revolution” and believed by many to be Khamenei’s likely successor — leaves a gaping vacuum in Iran’s power to mobilize militants across the region.

Soleimani acquired the nickname Wazir Al-Mustawtanat (minister of colonies) in reflection of the pivotal role he played in orchestrating Iran’s quest for regional dominance. Iran in 2003 initially sought to appease President George W. Bush, believing it could be next after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

It was Soleimani who forcefully advocated and spearheaded the policy of bogging the US down in the bloody Iraqi quagmire by building a new generation of paramilitary forces which staged thousands of attacks against coalition troops, killing around 600.

When the US unsuccessfully sought to arrest Soleimani by attacking his convoy in Kurdistan in early 2007, he responded days later with one of the most audacious militant operations of the conflict, penetrating the coalition’s Karbala headquarters in broad daylight, and abducting and killing several US soldiers.

By late 2011 most diplomats were predicting that Bashar Assad would be driven out of power within weeks. Instead, Soleimani flew to Damascus and embarked on a massive campaign to bankroll the dictator and establish sizeable militia forces (using many of his Iraqi proteges).

Soleimani’s strategy ultimately achieved the impossible, with his forces wading their way through rivers of civilian blood to retake much of the country. Russia stepped up its own involvement only after Soleimani had personally overseen the recapture of Aleppo.

Soleimani was also the architect of Iran’s intervention in Yemen, incorrectly arguing that Tehran could give Gulf states a bloody nose without them ever daring to respond.

Talking to senior Iraqis and Iraq-based diplomats, it never failed to astonish me how active Soleimani was, rarely delegating activity to his subordinates. Soleimani was on the frontlines and in the operations rooms during all the key battles against Daesh.

In 2017, he bribed and threatened Kurdish politicians into ordering the Peshmerga’s withdrawal from all of central Iraq, with Iran’s proxies occupying the vacuum. As arguably the second-most powerful Iranian after Khamenei, nobody can fit into Soleimani’s outsized shoes.

His designated successor as commander of the Quds Force, Esmael Ghani, is a much lower-profile figure who will lack his late boss’ encyclopedic network of personal contacts and knowledge of a generation of Iranian militancy.