As I said yesterday, the Trump regime 100% wants impeachment off the front page, and the best way to do that is to escalate the conflict with Iran. Trump just may have gotten his way, and he just may have entered America into a dangerous conflict with Tehran.
An air strike has killed Iranian Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani and another senior Iranian-linked figure in Baghdad, Iraqi state television reported on Thursday.
No one claimed immediately responsibility for the strike, which Iraqi television also said killed Abu Mehdi al-Muhandas, an Iraqi militia commander, near the Iraqi capital’s airport, but the death of Iran’s most revered military leader appeared likely to send tensions soaring between the United States and Iran.
Soleimani, who has long been Iran’s most prominent military figure and is closely linked to the country’s foreign proxy groups, has taken on an enhanced role in Iraq as the country’s Shiite militia groups have gained new clout in recet years.
Pentagon officials declined comment on the strike.
The strike comes amid already increased friction between Washington and Iran over what U.S. official say is a campaign of sustained agrees sin against the United States and its allies.
As Soleimani is the most powerful military person in Iran, second in power only to Supreme Leader Ali Khameni. If this airstrike truly killed him, then Iran will almost certainly see it as an act of war, an assassination by the US, and they will respond in kind. Iran arrested three people in October in connection to what they say was an Israeli plot to kill Soleimani.
Soleimani has been Iran's point man in Syria assisting the Assad regime, supporting the Syrian government with both military and paramilitary assistance. Having said that, Iran has other military leaders who can step in to run Qods Force, so it's not going to break Tehran's back, but if Iran wants to take Trump's bait here and lash out, this was the bait to use.
One thing to get straight however: this man was behind Iran's terrorist military and proxy operations for twenty years.
From the start of the Syrian civil war, General Suleimani was one of the chief leaders of an effort to protect President Bashar al-Assad of Syria — an important Iranian ally — that brought together disparate militias, national security forces and regional powers, including Russia in recent years.
But that was far from the only front he operated on. American officials accuse General Suleimani of causing the deaths of hundreds of soldiers during the Iraq war, when he provided Iraqi insurgents with advanced bomb-making equipment and training. They also say he has masterminded destabilizing Iranian activities that continue throughout the Middle East and are aimed at the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“General Suleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “General Suleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”
It did not elaborate on the specific intelligence that led them to carry out General Suleimani’s killing. The highly classified mission was set in motion after the American contractor’s death on Dec. 27 during a rocket attack by an Iranian-backed militia, a senior American official said.
In killing General Suleimani, Mr. Trump took an action that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had rejected, fearing it would lead to war between the United States and Iran.
While many Republicans said that the president had been justified in the attack, Mr. Trump’s most significant use of military force to date, critics of his Iran policy called the strike a reckless unilateral escalation that could have drastic and unforeseen consequences that could ripple violently throughout the Middle East.
“Soleimani was an enemy of the United States. That’s not a question,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, wrote on Twitter, using an alternate spelling of the Iranian’s name. “The question is this - as reports suggest, did America just assassinate, without any congressional authorization, the second most powerful person in Iran, knowingly setting off a potential massive regional war?”
We'll see what Iran's response will be. This could get very ugly, very quickly. Will they risk a real shooting war over the assassination of their equivalent of DNI/Secretary of Defense?
Whoever talked Trump into giving this order may be counting on it.
But let's not forget.
Just two days into the new decade and an impeached president, facing a Senate impeachment trial for his crimes, has most likely started a bloody shooting war with Iran that will set back Middle East relations for years, endanger Americans all over the globe, and may end in direct military confrontation. He did not inform Congress, nor did he seek approval of the assassination of a foreign target. He just started a war with Iran in order to justify the Senate GOP dismissing his impeachment trial.
This is the crisis scenario we warned you was coming four years ago if Trump was elected.
Here there be dragons. We're into the worst-case scenario section of the book now, and I don't know how this ends. None of us do.
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