Why US assassination of Soleimani is unlikely to deter Iran
Iran’s most powerful, revered, and feared military commander long said he dreamed of being a martyr for the “resistance.” And in the early hours Friday morning that wish was fulfilled, when an armed American drone assassinated Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad.
U.S. officials portrayed the targeted killing as a “preemptive” action against the chief of Iran’s elite Qods Force and the leader of the Iraqi Shiite Kata’ib Hezbollah militia traveling with him. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said they were planning an imminent attack that he asserted would have cost “dozens or hundreds of American lives.”
Yet rather than acting as a deterrent, the U.S. strike is being seen in Iran as an acute escalation that amounts to a declaration of war and requires a military response.
It is the latest in a series of events to raise tensions in Iraq in the past week
U.S.-Iraq ties at riskMedia campaign in IranIran “set a trap”
