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January 3, 2020

US military strike kills major Iranian military officials UPDATED

By Andrea Widburg

On Tuesday, December 31, the Iranian-backed Kataeb Hezb'allah militia attacked the American embassy in Baghdad.  Because an American embassy is always considered American soil, no matter where the embassy is located, the attack was the same as an attack on America itself. 

Following the attack, Trump eschewed diplomatic talk and immediately promised serious reprisals:

 

 

Fox News reports that Trump, unlike some who drew rhetorical red lines without meaning them, has already made good on that promise:

President Trump ordered a game-changing U.S. military attack that killed Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force, among other military officials at Baghdad International Airport early Friday, the Pentagon confirmed.

Soleimani is the military mastermind whom Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had deemed equally as dangerous as Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In October, Baghdadi killed himself during a U.S. raid on a compound in northwest Syria, seven months after the so-called ISIS "caliphate" crumbled as the terrorist group lost its final swath of Syrian territory in March.

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Friday's Baghdad strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, a source told Fox News.

In all, at least seven people were killed and at least three rockets were fired, officials told The Associated Press. An official with the Popular Mobilization Forces said its airport protocol officer, Mohammed Reda, also died.

Although Trump did not tweet explicitly about the attack, several hours later he tweeted out an American flag:

 

 

As of this writing (Jan. 2 at 10:30 P.M. EST), Iran has not yet responded to the attack.

UPDATE: Iran is promising "harsh retaliation" and has announced three days of mourning after General Qassim Soleimani was killed on Iraqi soil.  Mostly, though, it is critiquing U.S. actions in language usually seen on the editorial page of the New York Times.  Take, for example, the tweet from Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister:

 

 

Iran may be upset, but the Iraqis could not be happier.  Secretary of state Mike Pompeo tweeted out footage of them celebrating wildly:

 

 

Iraqi happiness is not surprising, for Soleimani, leader of an elite intelligence ring in Iran's Quds Force, was a prolific killer:

Soleimani was the long-running leader of the elite intelligence wing called the Quds Force — a special forces external arm of the IRGC responsible for supporting terrorist proxies across the Middle East. It reports directly to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and was itself designated a terror group in 2007. The group is estimated to have amassed a militia of 20,000 fighters.

American officials have condemned the Quds Force as being responsible for spreading Iran's Islamic revolution, supporting terrorists, subverting pro-Western governments and waging Iran's foreign wars.

[snip]

Outgoing U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told Fox News in an exclusive exit interview in 2015: "Qassem Soleimani is the one who has been exporting malign activities throughout the Middle East for some time now. He's absolutely responsible for killing many Americans. In fact, I would say the last two years I was there, the majority of our casualties came from his surrogates, not Sunni or Al Qaeda."

In April 2019, the State Department announced that Iranian and Iranian-backed forces led by Soleimani were responsible for killing 608 U.S. troops during the Iraq War.

The Democrats responded predictably.  As with al-Baghdadi's death, the Washington Post adopted a respectful tone, describing Soleimani not as a terrorist with American blood on his hands, but as a "revered" man:

In response to a tweet from Rep. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) voicing what proved to be a common Democrat fear about acting decisively against an enemy, Ilhan Omar accused Trump of pulling a "wag the dog" tactic — that is, using a military strike to distract from his domestic troubles:

 

 

Rep. Murphy, incidentally, is incorrect that Congress had a say in this, just as it had no say in top secret operations to take out al-Baghdadi or Osama bin Laden.

Joe Biden's press release probably spoke for most Democrats, when he said, in so many words, that "Soleimani was a really bad guy, but if we stand up to bad guys (as opposed to throwing money at them), they might get more bad":

Churchill would have understood the Democrats' concerns, for on January 20, 1940, he famously described appeasers:

Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear greatly that the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar ever more loudly, ever more widely.

UPDATE II: Trump has released two tweets explaining who Soleimani was, why he deserved to be the subject of a targeted military strike, and how many ordinary Iranians are as happy as anyone else that Soleimani is dead:

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