Looking at the Soleimani Assassination, One Year Later

The Media Line — One year ago, two US MQ-9 Reaper drones fired Hellfire missiles that killed Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. This brazen assassination at the international airport in Baghdad also resulted in the deaths of the deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units and eight others. President Donald Trump boasted that he took care of “two for the price of one” and he spent the majority of 2020 on the campaign trail pointing to the killing of the “sadistic mass murderer” as a major foreign policy success.

Many supporters of Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign claim that the assassination of Soleimani established US deterrence over Iran. However, a number of facts undermine this argument. Last month, the Trump Administration along with Israel deployed aircraft carriers, B-52 bombers, submarines and other military assets to the Gulf to “deter Iranian attacks on US troops.” On December 23, Trump tweeted that “if one American is killed [in Iraq], I will hold Iran responsible.” It’s worth asking, why is such a huge movement of US military assets to the region necessary to deter Iran if the Soleimani killing achieved that objective? Furthermore, over the past 12 months, Iran has engaged in activities that it would not have done, had Trump’s foreign policy effectively established any real deterrence over Tehran.

On January 8, 2020, only five days after Soleimani’s killing, the Iranians hit two military bases that housed American troops in Iraq with ballistic missiles. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said this move, which resulted in no deaths, was a “partial retaliation.” Then, on March 11, 2020, 18 rockets struck Iraq’s Camp Taji base, located north of Baghdad, killing two US service members and one Brit, and wounding roughly 12 others. On April 15, 2020, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy made a “dangerous and provocative” move by sending 11 of its vessels very close to US Navy and Coast Guard ships in international waters. On June 18, 2020, Iranian-backed Iraqi militias fired rockets that struck the Green Zone in Baghdad, marking the fifth such attack within 10 days.

Iran also has benefited from ways in which Soleimani’s killing impacted Iraq’s political environment. With many Iraqi lawmakers not wanting any potential intensification of US-Iran brinkmanship to spiral out of control on their country’s soil, they have pressured Washington into reducing the US military presence in Iraq. Threats from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to close the US Embassy in Iraq if officials in Baghdad do not stop Iran-sponsored groups from waging more attacks against the compound mean that Tehran could gain even greater clout in Iraq if the US takes this step. This move “would place US diplomats out of harm’s way but could jeopardize years of efforts to both stabilize the Iraqi government and keep it from becoming too dependent on neighboring Iran,” according to The New York Times.

Biden and the Impact of Soleimani’s Killing

The Trump administration’s decision to assassinate Soleimani will have an impact that plays out in the Middle East and in US-Iran relations far into the post-Trump period. There is no denying that the killing’s illegality will undermine Washington’s ability to use international law as a means of holding Tehran accountable for Iran’s “malign” activities in the future.