The Soleimani Assassination

There will be wars and rumours of wars. A good thing to remember at a tense moment like this.

And yet one hopes that Soleimani isn't the Franz Ferdinand of our hour and the unleashing of a chain reaction. Soleimani was a major figure within Iran and one whose name often surfaced when looking into Iranian foreign policy and its roles in places like Syria. Soleimani has been at the forefront of the fight against ISIS and is viewed as the major figure in keeping them out of Iran.

We have no comparison in the US system. You could say it's like Westmoreland being assassinated during Vietnam or maybe someone like Petraeus. But actually it's much bigger than that. It's probably more like a vice-president being killed, but imagine a vice-president who had been a major figure in the military, state department and maybe even the CIA.

Long hated by the US, Donald Trump ordered Soleimani's death in retaliation for the embassy attack and the series of tensions over the past couple of weeks. At least that's the immediate reason but the actual context is much larger.

Sectors within the US Establishment are frustrated by the fallout of the 2003 Iraq Invasion. As analysts pointed out at the time, the toppling of Saddam Hussein would only strengthen Iran as would bringing democracy to Iraq, which is majority Shiite. The fragmentation of Iraqi society has basically driven the Shiites into the arms of Iran and the Baghdad government has long been straddling the fence between Tehran and Washington. The Sunnis remain disenfranchised and anger continues to grow. It is the Sunnis who hate the Americans for overthrowing Saddam and yet they're also the ones celebrating tonight. They certainly hate Soleimani and the Shiite militias which have terrorised them for years.

At present the US claims to be in Iraq in order to fight ISIS and yet this only tells a small portion of the story. The US pulled out the majority of its combat troops in 2011, a move that many were upset about. The Pentagon and the Trump White House have slowly crept back into the country and have laboured to wrest control away from Iran. This is couched in somewhat dishonest terms. Just the other day I heard an American official say something to effect of....

The Iraqi government needs to decide if it's going to be a puppet of Iran or is it going to step up, meet its obligations as a sovereign state and join the community of nations...

Basically if we translate this, the language concerning obligations, sovereignty and community of nations means... submit to the US dominated order.

The US has broken Iraq and there have been rounds of monsters as a result. Civil war, AQI, ISIS and a still fragmented society have been the result. Another large-scale war will forever break the country, lead to the Kurdish independence and unleash a wider Middle Eastern war. The Saudis will resist Iranian sovereignty in the south of Iraq. The Western regions will become unstable and Sunni violence will spread to Syria and Jordan. And with regard to the Kurds, Turkey would certainly get involved. And speaking of Turkey, this all happens at a particularly bad moment as the situation in Libya is about to escalate.

But now Trump has assassinated Soleimani. What's next? We don't know. Tehran will have to respond. The tensions with Iran over Iraq were already bad enough but Trump's actions with regard to the nuclear deal and his support for the Saudis and other actions have brought us to this point. There was bound to be some kind of US-Iran conflict with regard to the ISIS fight in Western Iraq and Syria and the ground situation in Syria itself. Soleimani was one of Washington's chief villains in the whole Syria affair, overshadowed only by Putin. It surprising that some kind of serious tussle hasn't happened before now, but in light of the greater series of mishaps and tensions, this time it sparked conflict, a series of tit-for-tat responses.

But assassinating Soleimani takes it to the next level. In addition to 1914, I'm also reminded of 9 September 2001... the day when Massoud was killed in Afghanistan. The 'air' changed that day, you could tell something was about to happen.

This could quickly escalate. Trump is apparently relying on the advice of people like Lindsey Graham. His base will celebrate this. There's a campaign on. He's also wagging the dog in terms of his impeachment. There's just a bad brew at the moment.

We needn't pretend that Soleimani was a saint or that the Iranians are somehow innocent in all this. But the US started it. This didn't begin in 1979. US actions in the 1940's and 1950's led to 1979. Washington poured fuel on the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran War. The US further destabilised the Middle East by establishing a footprint in Saudi Arabia in response to the heavily manipulated and propagandised Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. US policies caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq during the 1990's and of course the US shattered the Middle Eastern order in 2003 with its invasion of Iraq... a country which had nothing to do with 9/11.

The US has supported Israel and especially its very brutal Likud administrations. It has backed Middle Eastern dictators from the House of Saud, to Mubarak and al-Sisi in Egypt and it has manipulated the politics of virtually every country within the region.

Iran for its part has been under pressure especially since the early 2000's when the US invaded and essentially conquered the countries bordering it on the east and west. Iran was targeted by Bush and the Neocons as part of the Axis of Evil. Tehran has been under threat for so long the fact that they're being proactive in the region shouldn't surprise anyone.

This move tonight has escalated the game once more. Iran of course cannot attack the United States directly but this forces their hand. Khamenei will have to strike in order to maintain his credibility as leader of the revolution. And yet what will be targeted? Troops in Syria? Americans in Iraq? Saudi-related targets? Persian Gulf oil supplies? All of the above?

I pray for peace and I also pray for wisdom and discernment as I know the American Right and its Evangelical allies will work this and manipulate the truth... the geopolitical truth and the Biblical truth of how we as Christians ought to understand these issues.

American allies will be put in a very awkward position and if they don't 'back' Trump they will be excoriated and you can be sure the agents and allies of Trump will also work this angle. These events are going to reverberate through many sectors well beyond the immediate 'on the ground' issues within Iraq and the Middle East.