Analysis | As Iran attacks, the US forgets: Soleimani was once on its side

In Afghanistan and Syria, against al-Qaeda and ISIS, Soleimani once helped the American cause

Now his death at US hands is uniting America’s enemies against it

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The aftermath of the US strike on Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. Photo: AFP

Published: 11:31am, 8 Jan 2020Updated: 12:58pm, 8 Jan 2020

With Iran launching missile attacks on US-led forces in Iraq early on Wednesday, it is all too clear that its threats of retaliation against Donald Trump’s assassination of Major General Qassim Soleimani were not the empty bluster some in America had assumed.

The question the United States should now be asking is how this came to pass: it has seldom been mentioned since his assassination, but Soleimani once fought on the same side as American forces. In killing him, Trump appears to have perhaps shot himself in the foot.

Before we examine this earlier marriage of convenience, it is worth a quick recap of how we came to this juncture. On January 3, Soleimani, the chief of Iran’s al-Quds Force since 1998, was killed at Baghdad’s international airport in a US drone strike. Also killed was Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iran-backed militia, and possibly, deputy Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem. That Soleimani was landing just a few kilometres from US military bases in Baghdad perhaps hints at an impression that he felt he would be able to keep his visit secret – or that the US would not target him. But given the escalation in recent months, it is obvious major operations were being planned against US assets in Iraq.

Soon after, the Pentagon stated that President Donald Trump had ordered the killing of Soleimani to “thwart further attacks on US military personnel”.

A Houthi rebel in Yemen with a poster attached to his waist of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Photo: Reuters

This itself was unusual: Soleimani was not the leader of any terrorist entity but the head of a state organisation. Still, the US is justifying the strike by pointing to the March 2007 United Nations Security Council sanctions on Soleimani for supporting terrorism and selling Iranian weapons overseas, the US 2011 designation of Soleimani (along with other officials) as terrorists, and the April 2019 designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation – the first time the US had declared a branch of a foreign military thus.

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} In Afghanistan and Syria, against al-Qaeda and ISIS, Soleimani once helped the American cause Now his death at US hands is uniting America’s enemies against it

In Afghanistan and Syria, against al-Qaeda and ISIS, Soleimani once helped the American cause

Now his death at US hands is uniting America’s enemies against it