Why did the US kill Iran’s spy chief?
THE Donald Trump administration killed Iran’s most powerful military commander and intelligence chief Major-General Qasem Soleimani on Thursday.
It was not only to make Tehran’s use of sub-conventional warfare expensive, but also to contain its ascendancy against its rival Saudi Arabia.
Iran, leader of Shia Muslims, has been competing for dominance in West Asia, which has for long been under the influence of Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Sunni Muslim world. Though both are major oil producers, Saudi is the largest exporter of oil in the world.
After the US imposed sanctions on Iran for the third time in 2006 for its refusal to halt its uranium enrichment programme, the economy of the country took a massive hit.
However, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of Iran’s armed forces headed by Soleimani, conceived an intricate web of cost-effective sub-conventional warfare strategies to offset the effects of the US sanctions.
A comprehensive 217-page dossier was published in November last year by London-based International Institute for Strategic Affairs (IISA) after an 18-month study based on field work. It provides detailed insight into how the Quds Force, the IRGC’s external intelligence agency, worked around the economic sanctions by using non-state allies and proxy militia (terrorists) to strengthen and expand its influence in the region.
In April last year, the Trump administration designated the Quds and its parent body, the IRGC, foreign terrorist organisations (FTOs). It was the first time the US had named a foreign government agency an FTO.
The paper said that spy chief Soleimani, who reported only to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, succeeded in turning situations in Tehran’s favour in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, all countries where the US was directly or indirectly engaged in conflict, alongside its allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The Islamic Republic of Iran first used the sub-conventional warfare strategy after the 1979 Revolution when it created Shia terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon and forged complex relationships with regional partners to fight Israel’s “occupation” of Palestine.
Though the approach to raise militant groups and strike at its rivals with impunity and plausible deniability is not new, the extent of Iran’s interventions in the region was unprecedented.
The IISA dossier claimed that since the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq in 2003, the Quds intensified operations there, providing training, funding and weapons to nonstate actors allied to Tehran.
“It has also developed unconventional forms of asymmetric warfare, such as swarm tactics, drone and cyberattacks, which have allowed Iran to offset its enemies’ superiority in conventional weapons,” the dossier said.
In Iraq, the IISA dossier said Soleimani had “armed and trained a paramilitary force called the Popular Mobilisation Units, which helped defeat the Islamic State”, but on the ground it was “a form of Iranian colonisation”.
After most of the sanctions were lifted in 2016 when Iran struck a deal with former US President Barack Obama in exchange for limits on its nuclear programme extending for at least 10 years, Soleimani’s influence expanded rapidly.
Though the Trump administration, after coming to power cancelled the deal with Iran and reimposed sanctions in 2018, Iran was able to cause immense damage to US ally, Saudi Arabia. In September, the drone and missile strikes on vital Saudi oil installations cut its production by half and caused a temporary destabilisation in oil prices.
Though the Houthi movement in Yemen claimed its involvement in the strike, the US and other Western countries were unanimous in blaming Iran.
Saudi Arabia has been at war with terror groups in Yemen. In Syria, Iran with Hezbollah and Russia were instrumental in helping President Bashar al-Assad survive and now is “embedding itself in the evolving Syrian government and informal security structures enhancing its threat to Israel”. the IISA said.
MARCH this year will mark 17 years since the Americans invaded Iraq.
Back then George Walker Bush was serving as the 43rd president of the US. He lied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that the government of Iraq planned to use them against America and her allies.
At the time many people didn’t believe him. It included our president, Thabo Mbeki, who spoke out against the invasion and offered to mediate.
Another of our former presidents, Nelson Mandela, was blunt. “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America,” he said.
“One power with a president who has no foresight – who cannot think properly – is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust,” he added.
South Africans also rallied against the invasion. A group dubbed “human shields” went to Iraq in the hope that their presence would deter the Americans.
But Bush was adamant and, on March 20, 2003, American, British and other coalition forces launched their “shock and awe” bombing campaign.
I was in the region in the days after the invasion to cover the story. This week, following the killing of Qassem Soleimani, I reflected on that period in my life.
Soleimani was the head of an elite Iranian military unit the Americans decided to kill this week. It is not the first time the Americans have opted to kill someone rather than put them on trial. It’s the way of the Wild West and, with a nationalist like Donald Trump in the White House, it was bound to happen.
Shortly after the American drone fired the missiles that killed Soleimani, the US Department of Defence put out a statement that read: “At the direction of the president, the US military has taken decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad by killing Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a US-designated foreign terrorist organisation.
“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.
“He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the past several months – including the attack on December 27 – culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel.
“General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad that took place this week.
“This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The US will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”
We don’t know enough about Soleimani to determine if he was a hero or a villain. But it has become difficult to believe what the Americans say after they lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
But there is a more pressing issue that this statement fails to address: why are there American forces in Iraq 17 years after they should never have been there?