Why did Trump Decide to Assassinate Iranian General Qasem Soleimani?
The Iranian use of Proxy Forces and the IRGC
Just after midnight in the early hours of the 3rd of January 2020 hellfire missiles were launched from a US predator drone and landed on a convoy of vehicles outside of Baghdad airport. Inside were two high profile figures, one being the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and the other being the leader of Kata'ib Hezbollah Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. This would soon go viral with #WW3 trending and many people expecting escalation. For the average person who is not plugged into geopolitical matters this killing was quite confusing. Who was this man? Why was he so important? Why is the US killing generals of a country they are not at war with? What is an Iranian general doing in Iraq? As such this piece seeks to explain the story behind this assassination, who this giant in Middle Eastern politics was, and how Iran spreads its influence in the Middle East.
Sunni Shia Split and the Greater Middle East
To understand Iran’s foreign policy, it is vitally important to understand the Middle East as a whole. There are two sects of Islam known as Sunni and Shia. The split goes back 14 centuries and revolves around who was to take up the mantle after the death of the Prophet Mohammad. The Sunnis believed that elite members of the Islamic community should have chosen his successor whereas the Shia believed that it should be hereditary and his son in law Ali should have taken over. The modern conflicts around these groups tend to come more from the cultural history of the identity rather than the religious beliefs themselves in the same way that the conflict in Northern Ireland is not about transubstantiation. The Shia are the numerical minority in the Middle East and as such make up sizeable minorities in many countries (as seen below).
Iran is one of the three majority Shia nations with Iraq and Bahrain being the other two. Iran is also ethnically different to much of the Middle East with Iran being majority Persian. As such Iran stands often as the self-proclaimed leader of the Shia groups across the Middle East.
IRGC Quds Force
The official name of Iran is the Islamic Republic of Iran and unlike countries like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) both these descriptors are very important to understand the politics of Iran. The supreme leader of Iran currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the political and spiritual leader of the nation. Then Iran also has a parliament and a president, who is currently Ebrahim Raisi. Iran has elections and could potentially look like a true democracy from the outside. In reality control truly lies with the Supreme Leader. If one wants to run for president, they need the approval of the Ayatollah. Control of the Iranian military lies with the parliament, but the Ayatollah has his own separate military known as the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp).
The IRGC has five branches the Ground Forces, Navy, Air Forces, The Quds Force, and the Basji Force. The first three of these is quite self-explanatory but the last two are not seen in other nations. The Basji force is a civilian militia that is attached to the IRGC. They have military training and can be brought up like reserve forces in times of war, but their primary function is to put down civil unrest. They have on multiple occasions violently suppressed protests against the government. Many of their fighters would be sent to Syria to assist IRGC forces there.
The Quds force is Iran’s foreign influence force. This force funds, trains, and commands proxy forces across the Middle East. Iran uses a form of Hybrid Warfare similar to what is seen by Russia in the Donbass with the funding of the Peoples Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Groups such as Hezbollah (Lebanon), The Badar Brigades (Iraq), Liwa Fatemiyoun (Afghanistan), Ansar Allah (Yemen) and Liwa Zainebiyoun (Pakistan) all have strong ties with Iran through the IRGC. These groups are Shia groups that come from these different nations where they are often minorities. Iran also works with other ethnic and religious groups if it suits its aims. The IRGC has been involved in supporting Kurdish groups and Sunni extremist groups such as Hamas (Palestine), Ansar Al Islam and Al Qaeda if they serve their interests. It has fought proxy wars against the US, Israel and the Saudis and has also worked closely with the Russian and Syrian governments.
One man has been responsible for creating the Quds Force in its current form and that is Qasem Soleimani the leader of the force from 1998 until his death in 2020. Soleimani would be nicknamed the “Shadow Commander” in Western governments, and he was considered to be more myth than man. He would be continuously moving seamlessly across borders working with and forging ties with Iran’s allies across the Middle East. Curiously he would be instrumental in helping the US plan its invasion of Afghanistan and also convincing Putin to intervene to protect the Syrian regime of Bashar Al Assad. These two examples alone would make someone extremely notable, but Soleimani would do much more and would be involved in wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, and Lebanon.
He could arguably be one of the top contenders for being responsible for the most deaths of US troops in the Middle East. On paper there are many people that were higher ranked than him in more senior positions of power in Iran, but the truth was that he was the second most powerful man within Iran and the Ayatollahs right-hand man. He had long been a target for the US with the Obama administration on multiple occasions trying to capture him alive to no avail and as will be seen later in the piece, events would lead Washington to take out this infamous commander that has shaped the Middle East.
Iranian Influence in Iraq
The influence that Iran brings to bear in Iraq began under the Bush administration. One would assume that the natural start point of this situation was the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 however it began earlier in the Bush administration after 9/11 and Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech. There was an unwritten pact that began to form between the US and Iran after 9/11 in which the IRGC assisted in laying the groundwork for the US invasion of Afghanistan through ties that they possessed with groups there such as the Northern Alliance. During the Afghan civil war, Iran assisted the more moderate groups and personal connections were made between figures such as Ahmad Shah Masoud and Soleimani. Iran’s interests aligned with the US as the Taliban had been a danger to Iran’s interests in the region. As well as work conducted within Afghanistan some meetings were held including battle planning between the IRGC and US diplomats. This was the best that relations between the US and Iran have been since 1979.
This however was torpedoed when the Bush administration decided to list Iran along with Iraq and North Korea in an “Axis of Evil” against the US. This laid the groundwork for Iran seeing that the “Great Satan” could not be trusted and must be resisted. When the US invaded Iraq it became the perfect candidate for Iran to challenge the US and its interests. There was a culture that was bred within the Bush administration that led to a caviller attitude to facts and intelligence. Most powers were centralized around the three figures of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.
One of the key pieces of intelligence that were overlooked by the administration was the differences between the different ethnic groups in the region. As the war became an occupation and a nation-building operation began there was a blooming of sectarian violence that Iran began to use to its advantage. Preparations were being made as early as 2002 by Iran to install what was termed “secret cells” which were IRGC and Lebanese Hezbollah advisers that were involved with the Badar Brigades. Many of the famous battles of the Iraq war such as Fallujah or Ramadi were centred around Sunni groups however as these were suppressed the frequency of conflict between US troops and Shia groups increased. 2006 and 2007 were high points for battles against Shia groups for the Bush administration with battles in Najaf and Sadar City. This was the first example of a larger trend that would continue of tensions flaring up between Shia groups and the US once the threat of Sunni extremists subsided.
Faith has been one of the cornerstones that Iran has used to its advantage to gain influence in Iraq. As aforementioned throughout this piece, Iraq is made up of a Shia majority with a sizeable Sunni population. There have been many ways that Iran has played into the interests of the Shia majority in the country. The first of these has been the protection of Shia religious shrines in Karbala and Najaf. The most important holy sites in Shia Islam sit within Iraq’s borders and these are the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf and the Imam Husayn Shrine in Karbala. The importance of these sites should not be understated to the Shia as the numbers that travel to them every year is the highest of any pilgrimage site in the world dwarfing even the numbers that travel to Mecca every year. As well as the sheer numbers that travel to the region there is an emotional resonance that these sites hold for many of the followers of the Shia faith.
“Tears ran down Ahmed’s face; his eyes were red with crying and his hands were shaking. This was a moment he had waited for all his life. He was standing in the courtyard built for the greatest man to have ever lived: the Lord of Martyrs, the Master of Tears, the Blood of Allah, the third Shia Imam, Hossein, son of Ali and grandson of the Prophet Mohammad”
The above quote is taken from Arash Azazi’s the Shadow Commander and the Ahmed that was mentioned was attached to the first Iranian diplomats that entered Iraq after the fall of the Saddam regime however Ahmed, in reality, was a member of the IRGC Quds force and was answerable to Qasem Soleimani. This was the first of many regular visits by IRGC commanders to these sites including the mastermind behind the Quds forces operations general Qasem Soleimani himself. It is obvious from the reaction that many of these devout men have to the shrines that they are of deep significance to them. This would later become invaluable as ISIS would take power as these Shia groups had something to ideologically and emotionally fight for especially considering the reputation ISIS had for destroying religious and historical symbols that they considered to be heretical. As such the IRGC backed groups were some of the best quality fighters against ISIS before Operation Inherent Resolve began.
As aforementioned the Shia are not the only force that Iran supports. There is a fear among the Sunni population of reprisals after the treatment of the Shia under the Saddam regime. Iranian influence exacerbates this problem as the imposition of an external Shia force as well as the numerical majority of Shia can be seen as a threat. This can lead to people joining extremist groups such as Al Qaeda or ISIS.
All this being said some strange strategic alliances exist between radical groups and Iran. It is important to state at the offset when discussing this that the spectre of the Bush administrations justifications for the invasion of Iraq looms large over this topic as there were very tenuous links made between the Saddam regime and Al Qaeda to justify the invasion of Iraq. As such it is important not to take allegations from the US of this activity happening at face value as there may be ulterior motives for discussing this link. However, there does seem to be some concrete examples of this happening in Iraq.
In 2004 US and British intelligence reported that Iran was funding supplying and even training in camps within Iran’s borders the Sunni fundamentalist group Ansar Al-Islam. There was also some limited support for Al Qaeda in Iraq. This was done as these groups were attacking US troops and as such Iran would offer support. In recent years Iran has been tolerating AQ as long as they do not pose a threat to Iran. They have put aside their differences such as AQs rabid sectarianism as they both have the same goal of expelling the US from the Middle East. This however is still very far away from being any sort of an alliance.
The War Against ISIS
In 2008 Barrack Obama would come into office on a promise to leave Iraq and as such in 2011 US troops would withdraw. Two things would happen in the same year that would lead to the rise of a new group in Iraq. In March a pro-democracy movement would sweep through the Middle East known as the Arab Spring. This would topple many regimes across the Middle East such as Libya’s Qaddafi and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. In Syria this would be the catalyst that would start a long and brutal civil war. The second thing that occurred in 2011 was Osama Bin Laden was assassinated by the Obama administration. This was a large blow to the Jihadist world. In 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would take over control of Al Qaeda in Iraq also known as the Islamic State of Iraq. In 2013 he would break away from Al Qaeda and declare a caliphate under the banner of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Baghdadi would use the chaos in Syria from the on-going civil war and a weak Iraq that wasn’t supported by the US to sweep across vast amounts of territory and capture it.
Iran would be one of the only actors aside from the US that would fight ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. Iran would be the first to act against ISIS as it began to spread. In Iraq, many disparate Shia militias were all consolidated by General Qasem Soleimani in what was termed the Popular Mobilization Front or Hashad Al Shabi. These groups were put together to put forward a consolidated front against ISIS. Parts of this group such as Kata’ib Hezbollah have not just been used inside of Iraq but have been sent to Syria to help in the combined effort of the Syrian army, Iranian groups, and Russian forces to combat revolutionary forces in Syria.
There has been an undercurrent of Iranian backed militias going back to the 2003 invasion with tensions with these groups severely bubbling up in 2006-2007. Around this time there were a large number of weapons and IEDs being funnelled into the area surrounding Saddar city such as explosively formed penetrators (EFPs). These were being used in the Badar Corp which is the longest running of these Iranian backed groups.
Many of the leaders of these groups such as Abu Madi Al-Mohandes former leader of Kata’ib Hezbollah and Hadi Al Amri leader of the Badar Brigades were both Shia Iraqis that fought on the Iranian side during the Iran-Iraq war and made their ties with Iran during that period. These groups however gained a significant amount of power with the failure of the Iraqi army in its response to the rise of ISIS. The PMF played a pivotal role in the fight against ISIS as they did not face the challenges that the Iraqi army did such as a lack of discipline and unit cohesion.
Iran would also assist the Iraqi Kurds. The Kurds became a large ally to the US after the 2003 invasion. The establishment of a semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq controlled by the Kurds including its military (the Peshmerga) and its police force. After the US troop draw-down, this region came under pressure from the expansion of ISIS in the region. Despite its frosty relationship with the Kurds of this region including the shelling of the PJAK along the border of Iran and Iraq during the battle of Erbil the KRG requested help from Tehran and got assistance from Qasem Soleimani with multiple field commanders and even part of Iran’s Sukhoi jet fleet. This was done by Tehran for two reasons. The first of these was to continue its operations against ISIS. This was a new front that it could operate against the Islamic State and as such would take the opportunity to stop ISIS before it got a chance to expand. The second reason however is directly tied to US interests which was the symbolism of a US ally needing to reach out to Iran for help and Iran being able to help when the US was not. This was a powerful message that would be noticed by other US allies in the region and as such was a large propaganda win for Iran.
Iran was involved in Syria before the rise of ISIS. In April 2011 Barrack Obama would accuse Iran of secretly assisting the Syrian government to put down civil unrest at the height of the Arab Spring. This ended up being true with Iran providing riot control equipment and intelligence collecting techniques to Syria. By 2012 the first evidence began to surface of Iran sending its proxy forces and its own forces to train and assist the Syrian Army as 48 Iranians were captured by the Free Syrian Army. According to the UN Iran was illegally arming Syria and the Turkish authorities in February would intercept and confiscate Iranian built weapons that were being smuggled into Syria. This would continue throughout the year and coming toward the end of the year Iran would ramp up its operation to the point where it was providing drones to Syria. By 2013 Iran would command over 4,000 troops in Syria. This influence would see the Syrian government begin to retake territory from some of the rebel groups in the country.
By 2015 the numbers of IRGC members and proxy forces in Syria had skyrocketed to over 20,000. On July the 24th Soleimani would visit Moscow and meet with Putin. He was instrumental in convincing Putin to intervene in Syria as Putin was at first apprehensive of Bashar Al Assad. This would lead to Russia providing training to Iran’s proxies, providing air support and joint operations being carried out such as both the Russian Naval Infantry and Hezbollah’s Special Forces carried out an assault against an IS controlled air base on the 24th of September 2015. Iran’s proxy forces in Syria would be made up of fighters from Hezbollah (Lebanon), Kata’ib Hezbollah (Iraq), Liwa Fatemiyoun (Afghanistan) and Liwa Zainebiyoun (Pakistan).
Iran would continue to fight in Iraq and Syria throughout the war against ISIS. In 2019 ISIS was routed from its last stronghold in Baghuz in Syria by the SDF and the caliphate that at its prime stretched over a territory of 88,000 square kilometres had now lost its entire territory. That coupled with the later assassination of ISIS’ leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi by US special operations was the last nail in the coffin for ISIS.
Attack on US Embassy in Baghdad and Assassination
As was seen in 2006 and 2007 in Iraq when Sunni extremist groups get suppressed in Iraq it leads to tension between Shia groups and US forces. The same tensions would begin to manifest after the defeat of ISIS. On December the 21st 2019 a US contractor would be killed, and four US and two Iraqi servicemen would be injured in an attack on an Iraqi military compound near Kirkut. The US would accuse Kata’ib Hezbollah of carrying out the attack. On the 29th the US would conduct five airstrikes on Kata’ib Hezbollah positions in retaliation for the attack on US troops. This would lead to 25 members of the militia being killed. On New Year’s Eve massive protests would descend on the US embassy in Baghdad that was led by the PMF. These would soon turn violent with protesters trying to break their way into the embassy. The Iraqi army stepped down and refused to help quell these protests. As such the US carried out fly overs of the embassy with Apache gunships. They would also send a MAGTF (Marine Air to Ground Task Force) to secure the embassy as seen below disembarking Ospreys inside the embassy compound.
The next day protests would once again ramp up and the Marines would use tear gas to disperse the crowds. By this stage Iraqi federal police, counter-terrorism forces and soldiers would all be involved in trying to secure the embassy but there were no clashes between these forces and the PMF. In the wake of this Trump would lay the blame squarely on Iran and vowed that they would be held fully responsible.
The US would gain intelligence that Qasem Soleimani was to fly into Baghdad from Damascus to link up with the PMF and Kata’ib Hezbollah in the wake of the embassy attack. Early in the morning on the 3rd the strike on Soleimani’s convoy would be carried out by a US predator drone that would kill ten including the leader of Kata’ib Hezbollah Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis as well as Soleimani. The US Department of Defence would put out a statement in the wake of the assassination.
“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region … General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more”
Aftermath
This event in the West would go viral with many praising and many condemning the assassination. The ominous #WW3 was trending that wouldn’t be seen again until the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This would also spark a series of memes such as the below one.
In Iraq, the parliament voted one hundred and seventy to zero to expel US troops from the region. There however were many members of parliament that did not show up for the vote including one hundred and fifty moderate Shia and Kurdish members. It is thought that some of those that did not show up for the vote could have been intimidated by pro-Iranian militias. This was also a non-binding resolution, so it had no legal force behind it.
Biden came into office a year later and would deal with some of the fallout. Despite criticism of the Trump policy, the first course of action that the administration took was the sanctioning of airstrikes on Iranian backed groups in both Iraq and Syria. This seems to have been carried out to show that despite trying to have a softer relationship between the US and Iran that he would not be pushed over either and was capable of being tough if needed. This trend may continue despite the talk of a troop draw down. Unlike Afghanistan, the “draw down” in Iraq is in response to the previously mentioned resolution that was passed by the Iraqi parliament. The Pentagon has stated that it will remove a small number of the 2500 troops and the rest will have their mission altered so that on paper there are no combat troops on the ground.
This has been done for two reasons. The first of these is that Biden is trying to not repeat the mistakes of the previous administration that he was in with the Obama administration’s decision to withdraw troops in 2011. The second of these is the current Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Khadhimi is more open to relations with the US and as such has been cracking down on Iranian backed groups. As such he needs to balance power between himself and the Iranian flank in parliament. Getting a symbolic victory without much of a change on the ground helps him to keep political power.
A question still exists of whether the Quds Force can really be as powerful as it was without the man at its core that built it to the organization that it is today. Time will tell if we see another figure that can pull off what Soleimani did. One thing is for certain though, the power of the Quds Force has been significantly diminished with his death.
Most informative. Well done. Great read.