After Suleimani: Iran's scramble to recover from general's death
Loss of revered Quds Force commander and his aides has derailed country’s momentum in region
In the early hours of 3 January, Iraq’s prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, frantically phoned his advisers. “Something big has happened,” he said, summoning them to a meeting in his office. “You need to come now.”
Like their boss, the advisers had heard the boom of the explosions that crunched into the airport road just after 1am, and their phones had been ringing incessantly. Each call had brought the unthinkable closer to shocking reality: Qassem Suleimani, the revered commander of Iran’s Quds Force and the most powerful man in Iraq, had been killed, and so had nearly all of his closest aides. Throughout 17 years of post-Saddam Hussein bedlam across the Middle East, there had been little to rival this moment.
Interviews with seven
