These are the profound implications of the killing of Qasem Soleimani

At first sight they were a rough-looking and intimidating bunch, most either sullen or hyped up having just spent weeks on the front lines of the small Iraqi city of Tal Afar, notorious for sectarian hatred and slaughter.

“Hashd al-Shabi,” announced my Arabic speaking colleague ominously, referring to the Iraqi Shi’ite Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) to which these fighters belonged. Their identity was further borne out by the huge flags and banners draped from their vehicles depicting Iraqi cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and a few of his Iranian counterparts.

Despite their gruff appearance the men turned out to be an affable lot, engaging openly in conversation with the two Western journalists they had unexpectedly stumbled across en route to the Iraqi city of Mosul, where they were to reinforce others fighting the Sunni jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group.

Looking back on that encounter a few years ago, it is not a meeting I’d like to repeat right now in light of the volatile events played out these past days.

For it’s hard to imagine such fighters being well-disposed towards Westerners at this moment after the US drone strike on Thursday that killed PMU leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis alongside Major General Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian mastermind behind such militia units.

As the long-term head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC) and the architect of nearly every significant operation by Iranian intelligence and military forces over the past two decades, it’s frankly hard to overstate the importance of Soleimani’s assassination at the hands of the US.

“More than anyone else, Soleimani has been responsible for the creation of an arc of influence – which Iran terms its “Axis of Resistance” – extending from the Gulf of Oman through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea,” Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent and national security analyst, wrote in a 2018 profile.

Soleimani, who once described himself as “the smallest soldier,” might have been short in stature, quiet in demeanour and possessed of what one US journalist described as an “underrated charisma", but the man who survived the horrors of trench warfare in the Iran-Iraq conflict of the 1980s was a force to be reckoned with. Other than US antipathy towards the 62-year old Soleimani, perhaps no country had more cause to fear and despise the Iranian general and his Quds force pernicious influence in the Middle East than Israel.

It’s a measure, then, of the Jewish State’s recognition of and obsession with Soleimani that on his birthday last March, the Israel Defence Force (IDF) tweeted a video of a layered cake with moving images of birthday greetings from all of Iran’s proxies ranging from Hezbollah to Hamas.

As the video comes to an end the cake explodes after being hit by Israeli missiles, a message of clear intent from Iran’s arch nemesis. That the Americans appear to have beaten the Israelis in delivering Soleimani’s coup de grace will not trouble the regime of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu one bit.

“Job done” will be the prevailing mood in Jerusalem, even if Israel will now be bracing itself for the expected retaliatory backlash from Tehran.

Curiously though, given that the Israelis themselves have had Soleimani in their crosshairs many times before and not acted, it does the beg the question as to why the Americans chose this particular moment to strike the killer blow.

If Washington’s explanation is to be believed, then Soleimani was already doing the rounds of his proxies plotting more attacks on US targets like the missile strikes that killed a US civilian contractor and wounded several American troops at an Iraq base in Kirkuk.

“Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel but we caught him in the act and terminated him,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Friday. “We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war.”

That Soleimani was perceived to be an enemy of the US and a terrorist neither Republicans nor Democrats disputed. Certainly none mourned his death, but some were also united in expressing concern over the existence of intelligence suggesting that more attacks on US interests were imminent and that Trump’s order to act unilaterally would move the US closer to an intractable war with Iran.

This, after all, was the very war the president insisted in the wake of Soleimani’s assassination that he was trying to “stop”.

As House of Representatives Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, a Democrat, questioned, why would Trump chose now to act against Soleimani, when previous administrations decided such a step would increase the risks in the region?

“If the administration has a broader strategy, they have yet to articulate it,” Schiff told reporters.

And therein lies one of the crucial questions right now when it comes to US policy in the Middle East. Just what, if any, strategy does the Trump administration have short of jumping to the orders of a gaffe-prone commander in chief?

This, to be clear, is a US President who, far from extracting America from the quagmire of conflict in the region and bringing “our boys” home, only further embroils Washington at every turn.

“With respect to Iran, the assassination is a strategic error entirely of Trump’s own making,” observed Stephen M Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard University, writing yesterday in the influential US-based Foreign Policy magazine.

“Egged on by Saudi Arabia, Israel, hawkish institutes like the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, and some of his wealthy backers, the President abandoned the multilateral agreement that has successfully capped Iran’s nuclear programme and also created a diplomatic opening that a savvier administration could have used to address Iran’s regional activities,” Walt added, summing up the frustrations of many US Middle East watchers.

IN addition, Walt points out, Trump has also embarked on a comprehensive programme of economic warfare against Iran that has sought to force the country to change its foreign policy to suit Washington and perhaps even to topple the regime there, despite Trump’s insistence to the contrary.

If recent US polls are anything to go by, the American public are equally wary of Trump’s motives. According to a University of Maryland poll conducted in September last year of a nationally representative sample of respondents, overwhelmingly, the US public does not believe that US interests warrant war with Iran. Even among Republicans, only 34% say that war should be on the table to protect American interests. These figures too were compiled before the assassination of Soleimani, for which the tactical justification remains questionable.

As for Tehran itself, it has already made clear it will not kowtow to such pressure from the Trump administration, not least given that in many quarters Soleimani was publically revered in Iran.

Which brings us to the other question on everyone’s lips concerning just what the scale and shape of Tehran’s response might be.

Until now, Iran’s response has been robust but calibrated. A sequence of rockets aimed at the US presence in Iraq throughout the autumn was more nuisance than menace, though clearly the attack that killed an American contractor near Kirkuk has shifted that calibration. As one observer noted, Iran has many retaliatory weapons at its disposal “from hackers to Hezbollah".

Ironically, in great part because of Soleimani’s own efforts in mobilising the intelligence and military assets of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force of which he was chief, Iran would not be starting from scratch in mustering its response.

“What the Iranians have in front of them is a menu of potential routes they could take. It could be directly or indirectly,” says Naysan Rafati, an Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG).

In recent years Iranian hackers have erased the computer servers of Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Aramco, breached the networks of dozens of US banks and been accused of trying to meddle in the 2020 presidential election.

Aggressive cyber attacks offer Tehran one potential weapon for striking back globally but this is far from being the only international weapon in its arsenal. In the past, when necessary, the Quds Force has been behind the orchestration of attacks against targets ranging from Latin America to Eastern Europe and South Asia.

It’s also been linked to numerous plots in Western countries, including in Belgium, Denmark, France, the US and the UK in recent years. But it’s in the Middle East that any retaliatory efforts will most likely be concentrated.

“In its immediate neighbourhood, Iran could put together a response almost immediately, such as last week’s assault on the US Embassy in Iraq,” says Nick Rasmussen, former director of the US National Counterterrorism Centre. “In the broader Middle East, it might take Iran more time, but its proxies could still threaten US personnel, business people or tourists," Rasmussen told NBC News.

Iran’s strong presence in Lebanon through Hezbollah makes the possibility of retaliation against US targets there a distinct possibility. Hezbollah exercises influence in large swaths of Lebanon, including parts of Beirut, and has the capability to launch attacks against US targets in the country.

Likewise in Yemen, Iran could push Houthi rebels there to launch retaliatory attacks against US allies as well, even though Iran does not directly control that group.

The Houthis maintain a robust arsenal of drones as well as ballistic and cruise missiles, which they have used to carry out attacks in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and surrounding waters such as the Bab el-Mandeb strait. Potential targets include, but are not limited to, airports, critical infrastructure, energy infrastructure, military targets and vessels transiting the Red Sea.

As the online American geopolitical intelligence platform Stratfor has highlighted, it’s barely four months since the attacks on the Abqaiq and Khurais oil-processing facilities that took half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production down. While Houthi rebels claimed responsibility, many analysts pointed to Iran as being behind the strike given its degree of sophistication.

And then of course there is Iraq, on whose soil Soleimani was killed. Even before his death the risk was already high that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias like the PMUs would attack US and Western forces assets and potentially commercial interests. During many visits to Iraq in recent times I’ve seen for myself the growing influence of those PMUs and the fighters within their ranks like those I met on the road that day a few years ago near Mosul.

While some Iranian-backed militias led by leaders like Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was killed with Soleimani on Thursday, are not popular among many Iraqis, US moves to stoke a conflict with Iran on Iraqi soil has already injected serious diplomatic tension into Baghdad’s relationship with Washington and fuelled nascent efforts in the Iraqi parliament to re-evaluate Iraq’s security cooperation with the United States.

All of this does not bode well for the ongoing fight against the jihadists of the Islamic State group, which far from being a spent force, show signs of re-galvanising themselves in Iraq. It’s anybody’s guess whether, for example, the Iraqi security forces will continue to work with the Americans in this vital role. One can only wonder if such crucial factors were taken into full consideration when Trump gave the order for Thursday’s assassination of Soleimani.

As a recent report on Iran’s regional strategy by security think tank The Soufan Centre concluded, Tehran has long developed a “playbook” under the supervision of Soleimani to “build pro-Iranian armed factions into political movements with progressively increasing influence and capabilities.”

For the moment there is great uncertainty over what precisely Iran will do next. But one thing is certain, that “playbook” will now be opened and retaliation is coming. What form it takes could well determine the course of the Middle East for months and years to come. Donald Trump might yet rue the day he gave that order to assassinate Qasem Soleimani.

AMERICA AND IRAN: SEVEN DECADES OF TENSION

1953: The CIA helps orchestrate overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, restoring to power Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

1967: The US provides Iran with a nuclear reactor along with weapons-grade 93% enriched uranium fuel.

1968: Iran signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that permits it to have a civil nuclear programme in return for a commitment not to acquire nuclear weapons.

1979: Iran’s Islamic Revolution forces US-backed shah to flee, Ayatollah Khomeini returns from exile and becomes supreme religious guide. Fundamentalist students seize the US Embassy in Tehran and hold staff hostage.

1980: The United States cuts diplomatic ties with Iran, seizes  Iranian assets and bans most trade with it; hostage rescue mission 
ordered by President Jimmy Carter fails.

1981: Iran releases 52 US hostages minutes after Carter steps down and Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as US president.

1984: US lists Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism.

1986: Reagan (pictured below) reveals secret arms deal with Tehran in violation of US arms embargo.

1988: US warship Vincennes mistakenly shoots down Iranian passenger plane over the Gulf, killing all 290 aboard.

2002: President George W Bush declares Iran, Iraq and 
North Korea an “axis of evil.” US officials accuse Tehran of 
operating secret nuclear weapons programme.

2006: Washington says it is willing to join multilateral nuclear talks with Iran if it verifiably suspends nuclear enrichment.

2009: President Barack Obama tells Iran’s leaders he would extend a hand if they would “unclench their fist.”

2009: Britain, France and the US announce that Iran is building a secret uranium-enrichment site at Fordow.

2012: US law gives Obama the power to sanction foreign banks if they fail to significantly reduce their imports of Iranian oil. Iranian oil sales drop, sparking an economic downturn.

2013: Hassan Rouhani is elected Iran’s president on platform of improving Iran’s relations with the world and its economy. 
Obama and Rouhani speak by telephone, the highest-level contact between the two countries in three decades. Iran and six major powers reach agree to the Joint Plan of Action nuclear deal. Iran agrees to curb its nuclear work in return for limited sanctions relief.

2016: Iran releases 10 US sailors who ended up in Iranian territorial waters; the United States and Iran conduct a prisoner swap.

2018: US President Donald Trump withdraws from the nuclear deal in May, and re-imposes crippling economic sanctions on Iran.

2019: The US designates the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a “terrorist organisation” in April. Oil tankers are attacked in the Gulf in May and June. The Us blames Iran, a charge Tehran denies. Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil company is attacked in September by drones and missiles believed to be from Iran; Tehran denies involvement. Attacks on US military bases in Iraq kill a US citizen. Washington blames an Iranian-backed militia inside Iraq, and fires on its bases in retaliation. Iranian-backed militias protest outside the US Embassy in Baghdad, storming the security post.