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The U.S. airstrike that killed a top Iranian commander at Baghdad\u2019s airport in Iraq has created an earthquake that will have \u201creverberations around the globe,\u201d according to Jason Brodsky, policy director of the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran. \u201cQassem Soleimani was not just a symbol. He also had substantive power and authority in the Islamic Republic,\u201d he said. Brodsky said in an interview with VOA Persian that Soleimani had achieved rock-star status in the region, developing a \u201ccultlike following.\u201d Soleimani was Iran\u2019s top military strategist and head of the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force. U.S. President Donald Trump said he ordered the strike to prevent imminent attacks against Americans in the region.<\/p>\n
Institutional knowledge<\/strong><\/p>\n Soleimani was \u201cthe face of the resistance axis,\u201d Brodsky said. \u201cI think it\u2019s an interesting move by the supreme leader to appoint his deputy, Esmail Qaani as his successor. Qaani has been with Soleimani since the beginning of his tenure. There is an attempt, at least by the regime, not to lose any institutional knowledge or expertise at this critical moment in the life of the Islamic Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n The death of Soleimani is \u201cmuch more important\u201d than the killings of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,\u201d Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told VOA Persian.<\/p>\n Their organizations \u201chad been severely degraded by the time they were killed,\u201d Doran said. \u201cBut the Iranian threat is a much more serious threat, because Iran is on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n Iran \u201chas these militias all around the region to which it\u2019s distributing precision-guided weapons, which can threaten the United States and its allies,\u201d Doran said. \u201cThat\u2019s a real strategic threat. And Qassem Soleimani was the architect of that entire strategy.<\/p>\n \u201cSo this is a shift in regional politics,\u201d he said, in a way that the other assassinations were not.<\/p>\n Comparisons to bin Laden<\/strong><\/p>\n Ilan Berman, the senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, disagreed with Doran, telling VOA Persian the killing of Soleimani is \u201con par\u201d with the Obama administration\u2019s killing of bin Laden and the Trump administration targeting of al-Baghdadi.<\/p>\n \u201cSoleimani\u2019s involvement in regional instability, his direct orchestration and coordination of an array of terror proxies throughout the region is well known, certainly well known to the U.S. government. And the strike, I think, is a very important signal that the Trump administration is prepared to exact consequences on individuals like Soleimani who engage in this sort of behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a great blow against Iran\u2019s interests,\u201d political analyst Ayeed al-Manna\u2019l told VOA, \u201cbecause Qassem Soleimani was the first Iranian extreme commander to spread religious and political ideology in the region and grow the influence of his country at the expense of other countries in the region.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said Trump \u201cwas faced with a difficult decision, which is, is America safer with Qassem Soleimani dead or alive, and the president decided that the world was safer with him dead.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The U.S. airstrike that killed a top Iranian commander at Baghdad\u2019s airport in Iraq has created an earthquake that will have \u201creverberations around the globe,\u201d according to Jason Brodsky, policy director of the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran. \u201cQassem Soleimani was not just a symbol. He also had substantive power and authority in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}