If the Iranian leadership is smart, and there is some reason to believe that it is, the Islamic state will not substantially retaliate for the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani.  Why not?  They don't need to.   

The history of Iranian revenge strikes is much less formidable than being made out by our handwringing leftist elites.  In fact, it's difficult to discern Iranian retaliation from provocation.  In other words, Iran is going to attack Americans and American interests regardless of whether we strike back.  Indeed, that is exactly the pattern of events that led to the killing of Soleimani and an Iranian-supported Iraqi militia leader a few days ago. 

The attack on Soleimani followed a string of Iranian attacks on U.S. assets and personnel and those of allied nations over several months.  This includes the mining of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, the downing of a U.S. aerial drone, the attack on Saudi oil storage facilities, and finally repeated rocket attacks against Iraqi military outposts containing U.S. troops and contractors. 

Supposedly, the Trump administration "provoked" these attacks by withdrawing from the Obama administration's "nuclear deal" with Iran and reinstituting economic sanctions on the country for its continued pursuit of nuclear weapons capability.

However, Islamic Iran has been launching such attacks on the U.S. and its allies for over 40 years, since the seizure of the U.S. embassy in 1979.  The Iranian regime is an imperialistic, reactionary theocracy, which sees the United States as its principal obstacle to achieving regional hegemony, to include domination over its Sunni Islamic neighbors in the Gulf, and the elimination of Israel (which it regards as an American puppet state and metaphysical affront).  There are and have always been Iran apologists anxious to explain away this aggression as anger for various American transgressions, real or imagined, from the 1953 overthrow of Prime Minister Mosaddegh to the Iran-Iraq War to U.S. support for Israel and the Arab Gulf states.

The bottom line for any reasonable United States government actually pursuing American interests, including the protection of its citizens and property, is that we are at odds with a permanently hostile Iranian regime that seeks to harm us and our allies at every opportunity.  Nor is there a shred of evidence that this changed after Obama inked his nuke deal with the mullahs and paid them off for it.

The killing of Soleimani is only one relatively unremarkable incident over these decades of conflict.  Let's put it in actual perspective, rather than overheated attempts to stir panic.  Soleimani was a major general in the Iranian armed forces, a high but hardly exalted rank.  He was not, as Congressman Chris Murphy and other "experts" have claimed "the second most powerful person in Iran."  He was the equivalent the U.S. head of Special Forces Command and a completely legitimate military target.  Soleimani was popular among some in Iran, but so what?  He wasn't going to be the next ayatollah, in no small part because he wasn't an ayatollah.

And Iran will most likely act in accord with those facts.  Indeed, the history of supposed Iranian reprisals is hard to separate from their regular and ordinary acts of provocation.  For example, in a listing of 20 Iranian terrorist actions or plots between 1979 and 2012 compiled by the Congressional Research Office, it's impossible to clearly delineate what is "retaliation," what is "provocation," and what is just plain hitting at what Iran perceives as its enemies.

Sometimes Iran just huffs and puffs and doesn't retaliate at all.  It did nothing following the assassination of Soleimani's close associate, notorious Hezb'allah terror operative Imad Mughniyeh, by Israel, possibly with U.S. help.  It didn't retaliate when the U.S. mistakenly downed an Iranian airliner in 1988, or in response to Operation Praying Mantis, which preceded that downing, in which the U.S. Navy took out about half of Iran's fleet.  And generally speaking, its surrogates' "retaliatory" actions against Israel for its various operations against Hezb'allah and Islamic Jihad have been weak, ineffective, and pro forma. 

The fact is, it will be difficult for an Iranian strike to actually match the ominous prognostications of the Democrats and their talking-head helpmates in the media.  Inevitably, at some point, Iran or some proxy will attack America, Israel, or another ally.  Whether that is retaliation or just another attack will be impossible to say.  But what we can say is that to a large extent, the past few days, breathless anticipation of Iranian revenge serves Iranian purposes.