Two years on, the Soleimani Spirit gathers clout
The Americans may have assassinated Soleimani, but the illegal aggression has not thwarted the Quds Force general's plans for West Asia one bit, and may have even accelerated them.
By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and cross-posted with The Cradle
By Pepe Escobar, posted with permission and cross-posted with The Cradle
The Baghdad murders of anti-ISIS commanders Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al Muhandes triggered an unprecedented Iranian ballistic missile attack on US military bases in Iraq. Photo Credit: The Cradle
January 3, 2022
Two years ago, the 2020s started with a murder.
Baghdad airport, January 3, 00:52 AM. The assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, deputy commander of Iraq's Hashd al-Shaabi forces, by laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missiles launched from two American MQ-9 Reaper drones, was an act of war.
This act of war set the tone for the new decade and inspired my book Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism, published one year later.
The drone strikes at Baghdad airport, directly approved by then US President Donald Trump, were unilateral, unprovoked and illegal: an imperial act engineered as a stark provocation capable of triggering an Iranian reaction that would then be countered by American "self-defense," packaged as "deterrence."
Call it a perverse form of double down, reversed false flag.
The imperial narrative barrage spun it as "targeted killing:" a pre-emptive op squashing Soleimani's alleged planning of "imminent attacks" against US diplomats and troops.
No evidence whatsoever was provided to support the claim. And then-Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi, in front of Parliament, offered the ultimate context: Soleimani, on a diplomatic mission, had boarded a regular Cham Wings Airbus A320 flight between Damascus and Baghdad. He was involved in complex negotiations between Tehran and Riyadh, with the Iraqi Prime Minister as mediator, and all that at the request of President Trump.
So the imperial machine – following trademark mockery of international law – assassinated a de facto diplomatic envoy. In fact two envoys, because al-Muhandis had the same leadership qualities of Soleimani – actively promoting synergy between the battlefield and diplomacy – and was absolutely irreplaceable as a key political articulator in Iraq.
Soleimani's assassination had been "encouraged" since 2007 by US neo-cons – supremely ignorant of West Asia's history, culture and politics – and the Israeli and Saudi lobbies. Both the Bush Jr. and Obama administrations resisted it, afraid of an inevitable escalation. Trump could not possibly see The Big Picture and its dire ramifications when he had only Israel-firsters of the Jared-of-Arabia Kushner variety whispering in his ear, in tandem with close pal Saudi Crown Princeling Muhammad bin Salman (MbS).
The measured Iranian response to Soleimani's assassination was carefully calibrated to head off vengeful, unrestrained imperial overkill: precision missile strikes on the American-controlled Ain al-Assad air base in Iraq. The Pentagon received advance warning.
Yet it was precisely that measured response that turned out to be the game-changer. Tehran's message made it graphically clear that the days of imperial impunity were over: we can hit your assets anywhere in the Persian Gulf and beyond, at the time of our choosing.
So this was the first "miracle" that the Spirit of Soleimani engineered: the precision missile strikes on Ain al-Assad represented a middle-rank power, enfeebled by sanctions, and facing a massive economic/financial crisis, responding to a unilateral attack by targeting imperial assets that are part of the sprawling Empire of Bases.
That was a global first – unheard of since the end of WWII.
And that was clearly interpreted across West Asia and vast swathes of the Global South as fatally piercing the decades-old hegemonic armor of "American prestige."
Calculating The Big Picture
Everyone not only along the Axis of Resistance – Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Hezbollah – but across the Global South has been aware of how Soleimani led the fight against ISIS in Iraq from 2014 to 2015, and how he was instrumental in retaking Tikrit in 2015.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, in an extraordinary interview, stressed Soleimani's "great humility", even "with the common people, the simple people." Nasrallah told a story that is essential to place Soleimani's modus operandi in the real – not fictional – war on terror that still deserves to be quoted in full two years after his assassination:
Please go to The Saker to read more.
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Introducing the Iranian United Front (Jebheye Irangarayan) by Dr. Jason Reza Jorjani in Los Angeles, August 11, 2017:
Introducing the Iranian United Front (Jebheye Irangarayan) by Dr. Jason Reza Jorjani in Los Angeles, August 11, 2017:
Islamists are meant to be in control of Iran with Britain's tacit approval.
The City of London doing what the Venetians do best: pit one country against another.
These talks have been in a "dangerous phase" ever since the UK's "forward fire base" Israel was created in 1947:
One doesn't suppose there exists high level diplomatic channels between the City of London and Iran is there? Iran's Hassan Rouhani who served as the seventh president of Iran from 3 August 2013 until 3 August 2021 receiving a doctorate from Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland in 1999. Rouhani is currently on the assembly that decides the "supreme ruler of Iran" and he better be Islamic hopefully of the volatile persuasion. Wouldn't it be amusing to learn that the assembly Rouhini sits on in Iran makes a phone call to London to confer who the next "supreme leader of Iran" will be?
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