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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So much for starting off the new year with a renewed sense of optimism about the world, huh? It looks like just as the clock struck midnight, President Trump ordered a drone strike in Iraq that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
--:-- Alex Ward: In the days that followed, we got threats of revenge from Iran, more threats from President Trump. Iran said it would enrich uranium without restrictions. Trump said he would bomb cultural sites in Iran. Iraq voted to expel U.S. troops, Trump sending more troops to the region, hundreds of thousands of Iranians are taking to the streets to mourn Soleimani, and the year isn't even a week old.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, we are going to try to figure out how we got here and where we might go next. We're going to start with who this guy was.
--:-- Alex Ward: Well, depending on who you ask, he's the devil himself or a highly revered, influential person that has brought great honor to Iran. He was the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force. So the elite of the elite military intelligence arm of Iran's military.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He wasn't well known in the United States, but he was one of the most powerful figures in the Middle East, sometimes even touted as a possible future leader of Iran. I mean, if you like combine the CIA, Pentagon, special operations, like all these things, joint chiefs, like all of these kinds of elements of our system and you combine it into one organization, then that would be the Quds Force, which would make Soleimani like all of those heads of those agencies wrapped into one person and arguably the second most important person in Iran until his death.
--:-- Alex Ward: And this is the organization that the Trump administration, to much fanfare, declared a terrorist organization last year, yeah? Yeah, and the first time the U.S. had ever declared an element of a foreign government to be a terrorist organization.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Our designation makes clear to the world that Iranian regime not only supports terrorist groups but engages in terrorism itself. This designation also brings unprecedented pressure on figures who lead the regime's terror campaign, individuals like Qasem Soleimani.
--:-- Alex Ward: So how did Soleimani get to be the head of this super critical defense intelligence arm in Iran? When the Iranian Revolution started in 1979, he decided to join the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is IRGC for short. And then the year after the revolution, so 1980, we have the Iran-Iraq War start. and he gets a bit of a name for himself from going behind Iraqi enemy lines, doing some reconnaissance and occasionally coming back with goats that he would be able to feed himself and other members of his team.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He stole goats from Iraq? Yeah, he brought back goats. They ate it and they were like, well, this is a fearless guy. You know, he's making a name for himself in this war. And so he really just gets thrown into battle right away. And he starts to form a worldview at this point, one of which is that the U.S., you know, the West is not so great.
--:-- Alex Ward: You have Iraq, which is at the time a Sunni-led country, causing problems for Iran. And so he starts to kind of think, OK, maybe I need to start countering these kinds of forces. And in 1998 becomes the leader of this organization, which meant that for decades he was the head of the elite of the elite of Iran, exporting Iranian revolution throughout the Middle East and trying to lead Iran's foreign policy everywhere.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which is to say he had a direct impact over the course of the past two decades on the U.S.-Iran relationship. Arguably the most, yeah. And how did that relationship evolve under his leadership? Not great. So on one end, you have Soleimani having some common enemies with the United States, including the Taliban and ISIS. He would help the U.S. and get some information and intelligence on these organizations.
--:-- Alex Ward: He would lead proxies or his own troops to fight these organizations. But then on most things, he went against us, for example, propping up Assad in Syria, in gaining more influence in Baghdad. And on top of that, it should be said that Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, partially with explosive devices, targeting Americans with rockets, shooting them during wars. American troops. American troops and American contractors and et cetera
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so the money gone after American allies including Saudi Arabia you know attacking oil fields even trying to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U here in Washington, D.C. In a criminal complaint that was compared to a Hollywood script, officials said an Iranian-American from Corpus Christi, Texas, 56-year-old Mansour Arbabsiar, was recorded offering $1.5 million from Iran for the ambassador's murder.
--:-- Alex Ward: For many people, he's a complicated character in that sense. Like in one sense, he was helping us in some areas of mutual interest. But on the whole, he was working against us. And especially after George W. Bush gave his Axis of Evil speech in which he named Iran a member of the Axis of Evil, at which point to the line, he was like, we're not going to be working so closely with the U.S. anymore.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not. a comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
--:-- Alex Ward: Does the tension that's building between the U.S. and Iran and Soleimani ease at all when Obama signs the Iran nuclear deal? Yes and no. During negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal, tensions calmed down. And then after the deal was signed, there were no rocket attacks or any kinds of attacks on Americans after that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, Soleimani was not a fan of the Iran deal. He believed that that was a bit of appeasement by members of the Iranian government. He especially was critical of current foreign minister Javad Zarif and felt that Iran was giving up power that it deserved to have in the region. So he aimed to thwart that deal. But of course, he ultimately lost. Right.
--:-- Alex Ward: Before we get into the action President Trump took last week, I wonder, Soleimani has been around for decades. Did Clinton or Jr. or Obama ever consider going as far as President Trump just did?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was discussed. The main reason that Bush and Obama decided not to do it was because they were worried about the implications of what would happen afterward. Iranian retaliations, perhaps losing Iraq's favor, seeing that maybe the costs of killing him would outweigh the benefits.
--:-- Alex Ward: That said, we did have him in our sights, quite literally. Former General Stanley McChrystal, who ran Joint Special Operations Command, has written about watching Soleimani cross the border into Iraq to meet Kurds and thinking maybe we should take out this convoy and ultimately decided not to because the worry of what that would mean for our relationship with the Kurds.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so we let him go. But this has always been kind of in our back pocket. Should we kill the guy who was responsible for thwarting American names in the region, killing Americans, et cetera, et cetera? Should we go after him?
--:-- Alex Ward: And two administrations passed and clearly this one did not. Tell me about what led up to Thursday's assassination of Qasem Soleimani.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So on December 27th, an Iranian-backed militia known as Qatayb Hezbollah, they send rockets into a base north of the city of Kirkuk in Iraq. And what happens is one American contractor dies and others are wounded.
--:-- Alex Ward: Now, this is a big deal because the Trump administration for quite some time had been saying threatening Americans, and especially killing one, crosses this administration's red line and will lead to a pretty strong response.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the U.S. actually did respond. Two days later, on December 29th, the U.S. attacks five military sites belonging to this group, killing 25, wounding 50, roughly 50 people.
--:-- Alex Ward: And saying, like, you killed an American. We've escalated. Stop here. Don't do it again. And Trump's making these orders from Mar-a-Lago. Right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Then on December 31st, New Year's Eve, you have people led by this militia protesting, quote unquote, at the embassy, trying to scale the walls, going inside the embassy compound, setting fire to some of the reception rooms.
--:-- Alex Ward: And this is a direct response to the attacks that President Trump ordered. Yes. And it looked like they were going to stay for quite some time. Right.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there were worries that this was going to be like the embassy situation in 1979 in Tehran or maybe a new Benghazi kind of situation. But there are differences in the case that the U.S. compound in Baghdad is heavily, heavily fortified. Right.
--:-- Alex Ward: I remember this thing being built. Yeah. It's just massive. So the chance that it could be a Benghazi was minimal and the chance that it could be like Tehran was unlikely. But look at those scenes. For a second day, violent demonstrations at the U.S. embassy in Iraq. U.S. forces firing tear gas as protesters set tires on fire and tried to scale the compound's walls while Iraqi security forces stand guard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And presumably President Trump didn't like the look of it. No, he's watching this on TV and he's still angry about the dead American contractor and the attack Mirka Cook. So he's seeing this and it should be noted that we decided to retaliate on December 29th. He was given a set of options by the Pentagon.
--:-- Alex Ward: Now, one extreme option was killing Soleimani. That was on the list. That was on the list. Other options were attacking Iranian ships, missile sites, and also attacking Qatayb Hezbollah and their area. So he chose that, I guess, quote unquote, middle option. So he chose a more moderate option. He chose a moderate, yeah, more moderate option. Though, to be clear, this more moderate option involved killing a few dozen people.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. When he does that and he says no more and he sees the embassy siege and he's worried about his own Benghazi and his own legacy and, of course, Iranian escalation, then Trump goes, I want the extreme option. I want Soleimani.
--:-- Alex Ward: So preparations start. You have Secretary of Defense Mark Esper even say things along the lines like the U.S., quote unquote, will not accept continued attacks against our personnel and forces in the region. and soon after, this convoy is leaving the airport and it's going down the street and then there's this curve that brings you kind of back towards the city.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as they finish that curve and are sort of halfway up that next side, that's when they got hit. The drone strike hits a two-car convoy killing about five people and in it is Soleimani himself and actually also the leader of Qatayb Hezbollah, the Iran militia that killed the American contractor
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--:-- Alex Ward: When was the last time the United States killed a military official of another sovereign nation at this high level? World War II. World War II. When the U.S. shot down the plane carrying Japanese Admiral Iso Roku Yamamoto.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I can just imagine if Iran managed to kill the director of national intelligence tomorrow, the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, that would be a declaration of war.
--:-- Alex Ward: Did the United States just declare war in Iran? I think you could make the case that the U.S. and Iran have been in this state of proxy war for quite some time now, decades even. We've now entered a new phase, and this is arguably the most dangerous phase yet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What are the arguments the Trump administration is making for this attack? There are kind of two here. Number one is that there was an imminent threat. Imminent. Imminent. He was actively plotting in the region to take actions, a big action, as he described it, that would have put dozens, if not hundreds, of American lives at risk.
--:-- Alex Ward: A specific target overseas? I'm not going to say anything more about the nature of the attack, but know that this was not just in Iraq. It was throughout the region. And the problem is the administration here has not given a timeline as to what imminent means.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, I have talked to officials at the Pentagon, State Department, White House, and I'll tell you what one person at the White House told me when I asked, did the intelligence show that there was an imminent threat? This person responded, 100%. But then when I asked, did killing Soleimani remove that imminent threat? The official said, nope.
--:-- Alex Ward: Are they providing any evidence towards this imminent threat? Not publicly. saying that, you know, this is intelligence, this is sensitive, and that's fair and true. But you are seeing a lot of people in Congress, especially Democrats, mostly Democrats, actually, asking for this information to be declassified or to at least learn more about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Speaker Pelosi condemned the president's actions, saying, quote, America and the world cannot afford to have tensions escalate to the point of no return. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel, said the attack raises serious legal problems and that he expects now that the president will follow the War Powers Act and give Congress notification of what was going on and what's next within 48 hours.
--:-- Alex Ward: And when the administration went to Congress to brief them on this imminent threat, Democrats left going like, that doesn't seem imminent. This seems thin. And in fact, the New York Times has reported that the intelligence was razor thin.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So if you want to trust the Trump administration, then go ahead and believe that this threat was imminent. But so far, there's no public evidence to support that claim.
--:-- Alex Ward: So though this looks like an escalation towards war, the Trump administration is making the argument that this was done to prevent attacks on United States troops and contractors, potentially more, and also to prevent war. Deter further aggression from Qasem Soleimani and the Iranian regime, as well as to attempt to de-escalate the situation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, it's like escalate to de-escalate. Now, I want to be clear about something just to take a step back. We should not forget that history did not start on December 27th, right? Remember when the U.S. pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal? Sure. May 2018.
--:-- Alex Ward: Iran was looking for ways to get out of the sanctions that the U.S. had imposed. It was trying to make deals with the Europeans. It was trying to compel the U.S. to kind of get rid of this plan. And after a time, part of that effort was bombing oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. It was downing an American military drone. It was attacking oil fields in Saudi Arabia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so it's not like Iran sat idly by and then this thing happened December 27th. For quite some time, they have been taking more and more and more provocative, escalatory, aggressive moves to compel the U.S. to remove those sanctions, reimpose after leaving the Iran nuclear deal.
--:-- Alex Ward: And in somewhat fairness to the administration, they did not respond militarily to any of this. I mean, they sent some more troops to the region. They placed more sanctions on. But we kind of held our fire. Now we are not holding our fire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the assassination happens Thursday night, January 2nd. What's Iran's initial response? Iran's initial response, and we hear this from the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself, is that Iran will exact harsh revenge. against the United States. Soleimani's martyrdom will make Iran more decisive to resist America's expansionism and to defend our Islamic values.
--:-- Alex Ward: With no doubt, Iran and other freedom-seeking countries in the region will take his revenge And so you have Trump saying like if you do we will come back and target 52 Iranian sites representing the 52 American hostages taken during the Iran hostage crisis and that some of these sites will be important to Iran and the Iranian culture.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you're imagining, like, World Heritage, UNESCO-type sites, which would be a war crime, by the way. There's no reason to target those sites, saying that, you know, Iran will be hit very fast and very hard.
--:-- Alex Ward: So this is Trump escalating yet again, telling Iran, if you come after us, we're going to come back to you even harder than we just did. And then the U.S. sends more troops to the Middle East? Then we're sending 3,500 more troops to the Middle East, likely going to end up in Kuwait.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: These are members of the 82nd Airborne. And it is adding to the U.S. presence in the Middle East that, despite Trump's insistence that we're getting out, keeps adding more and more troops to the region.
--:-- Alex Ward: And do we know what mission those troops are seeking out? Not as of now, but the general theory is that this is signaling, right? that 3,500 troops is not enough to make Iran think that a war is coming, but it's enough to make them think, like, okay, they're serious and they're positioning themselves to be ready in case things get bad.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And as this is all happening, hundreds of thousands of Iranians are taken to the streets to mourn Soleimani. And this is an important point, because Secretary of State Mike Pompeo even tweeted out, like, look at these Iraqis dancing in the street for freedom, thankful that General Soleimani is no more.
--:-- Alex Ward: And there's no question that Iraqis and Iranians and a bunch of people around the world are happy that Soleimani is gone. But as you mentioned, the thousands and thousands and thousands protesting the U.S. mourning Soleimani and seeing this elsewhere in the world as well, that people are upset that the U.S. took this action, that Soleimani was killed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It shows that there is at least a popular backlash to the U.S. decision. And Iraq sort of makes this backlash official in a way. So you have the parliament convene on Sunday and vote in a non-binding resolution that U.S. forces should no longer stay in the country.
--:-- Alex Ward: And this was backed by the caretaker prime minister saying that the U.S. troops should no longer stay. Now, this is a complication because, one, of course, the U.S. likes to have a foothold in Iraq and it helps fight Iranian influence. But mainly the U.S. troops are there in Iraq to fight ISIS and to train the Iraqi troops to fight ISIS.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so if U.S. troops go, and they are by far more capable than Iraqi troops, then the space opens up for ISIS to come back, for Iran to have more influence in Iraq, and a strategic failure starts to arise, and that maybe in the longer term, U.S. interests will be harmed by that decision.
--:-- Alex Ward: What happens after Iraq passes this non-binding resolution to expel U.S. troops from the country? And then on Sunday, Iran said it will unshackle itself from one of the biggest restrictions of the Iran nuclear deal, which is the limit on uranium enrichment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's not like Iran said we are out of the nuclear deal. But what this would do is put Iran even closer – and they're still far – but closer to a nuclear weapon. And remember, that's like the entire reason we signed the nuclear deal in the first place, to keep Iran away from a nuclear bomb.
--:-- Alex Ward: Which like imagine this scenario with a nuclear Iran. It would be way, way, way, way, way worse. So in a way, it's like President Trump kind of should thank Obama for taking that scenario off the table.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Beyond what this might mean for the fight against ISIS, we now have this potential fight with Iran. Today, Soleimani's successor, Eshmael Ghani, said, God the Almighty has promised to get his revenge and God is the main avenger.
--:-- Alex Ward: What might this fight with Iran, if it continues to escalate, look like? It would be one of the worst wars in recent memory. Remember that Iran, in terms of population and size, is much larger than Iraq is. So all the challenges that we had with Iraq, multiply it by three to five.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we can bomb a lot and we can do a lot of damage. But Iran cannot deal with us conventionally because we are a much stronger military. So what they will do is basically try to come at us and degrade our desire to keep fighting and bombing and doing whatever. Asymmetric warfare. Asymmetric warfare.
--:-- Alex Ward: They're going to come after U.S. diplomats in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world, maybe even in West Africa where we have very little embassy protection. They are going to continue to attack and seize ships that are passing through the Persian Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz, which would absolutely decimate the world oil market.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Unleash their Shiite militias to possibly attack Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, a lot of countries that, you know, we have relationships with. Even if we send a bunch of troops in and start trying to like start a conventional war, we're looking at thousands and thousands and thousands dead.
--:-- Alex Ward: We're looking at thousands and likely millions of refugees dwarfing what happened in Syria and then moving further westward or elsewhere, destabilizing other countries. And then let's even imagine that we somehow, this would be near impossible, but we somehow got into Tehran, decapitated the regime, and tried to install a new government.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, there would be tons of power vacuums perhaps giving terrorists some space, Shiite militia some space, you could have clerics fighting, literally, to keep control, so you could have a civil war inside of Iran, causing even more refugee crisis, more economic collapse, and so like, what I'm laying out is a maximalist scenario, but no one should believe that a war with Iran would be quick, or easy, and wouldn't last for years and years and years, causing immeasurable human suffering.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Alex Ward is one of the hosts of Worldly. That's a podcast from Vox. I'm Sean Ramos for him. This is Today Explained. Music
