Posted on 01/07/2020 4:38:48 PM PST by karpov
After years of striding across the Middle East seemingly in command of the region, General Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Brigade, was finally killed by American airstrikes early Friday morning. History will not mourn one of the great mass murderers of our time who was responsible for scores of dead, mostly Arab and American. Soleimani was not just the face of Iranian terrorism—he represented its changing dimensions. The Islamic Republic has always been a violent regime, but initially its terror focused most intensely on Israel. In the past decade, Soleimani turned terrorism into an effective instrument of Iran’s imperial expansion by marshaling a transnational Shia expeditionary force that has prevailed in conflicts across the Middle East.
His death will be a blow to the Iranian theocracy but—contrary to what many observers are warning—could very likely temper the clerical oligarchs, who tend to retreat in face of American determination.
In its first decades in power, after the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic focused its furies on Israel. It nurtured Palestinian rejectionist groups and, most important, created the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. A grim record of suicide bombings, assassinations and kidnappings soon made Hezbollah a terrorist organization with an impressive global reach. Even before the rise of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah had assumed a prominent place in the world of fundamentalism; it not only introduced new tactics, such as suicide bombings, to Islamist resistance, but also ingeniously used religion to justify its indiscriminate violence. Still, however lethal Iran and its clients might have been, their violence was generally targeted, with Israel as the preferred prey.
Then came Qassem Soleimani—the shadowy commander of the elite Quds Force within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps—and the convulsions that transformed the Middle East. Soleimani was the right man for the times.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
At least not until tomorrow...
The MSM and the democrats would have everyone believe that all the major enemies of the United States will think in their hearts: “Damn it all to hell, I am tired of Trump defending the USA and fighting back at the rag heads. I will totally destroy myself and my country and civilization as we know it just to get at him.”
WW-III began with Operation Masterdom
in Vietnam
onSeptember 13, 1945
At least not until tomorrow...
Right now Iran is attacking our military sites in Iraq with missiles/rockets and a complete air shit storm/ours is heading for Iran.
We need to maintain the list.
I don’t believe Ray or someone in the Iranian military got the word? Timing is everything?
Pretty much the Russians are still fighting WWII and never stopped.
Rashida Tlaib
thanx.
Nadler, Swalwell
Remember when Clinton had the chance to get Osama Bin Laden and he didn’t. Trump acted so we wouldn’t have another 911.
The MSM is Comcast, Disney, ATT
Warren
This conflict seems more likely to remain regional than global to me, and in fact it looks very much like opening phases of the eventual “Armageddon” scenario which appears to be Israel plus allies vs Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and other Islamic forces.
The big unknown if this spreads further than Iraq (and Iran taking return fire) would be the response and posture of Russia who are already involved with Syria. It will take some finesse to continue to take the fight to Iran and its allies in the region without risking a spread of the conflict if Russia gets involved. Probably behind the scenes, NATO and Russian counterparts would be discussing rules of non-engagement so to speak.
...more of a smackdown than a war.
We just barrage their regime and economy from afar.
Any time they try to respond, we hit them with ten times more.
If they don’t tire of that game, they just run out of resources. Either way, it doesn’t go on for ever. Maybe not really long at all.
PING. Thanks Karpov. Excellent short history and perspective on Iran’s regional projection of power by proxy wars — and why they are between a rock and a hard place now.
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