The Rubicon: Qasem Soleimani’s Assassination And Its Consequences.
The decade that, on paper, began in 2000 and ended in 2009 really only started on 9/11. If one looks back at politics, culture, entertainment and the popular mood between December 31, 1999 and September 10, 2001, there is a striking amount of continuity. Music acts most commonly associated with the late 1990s, such as NSYNC to give one pertinent example, continued on making hits in their familiar style throughout this period, even though they are exclusively associated with the late 1990s. Within months after 9/11, the iconic boy band was gone, replaced by the darker, more mature sound of Justin Timberlake’s solo career, a more appropriate soundtrack to a darker era. Obviously 9/11 did not directly cause any individual group to break up, but it ushered in a new era of culture where certain acts either had to evolve — as Timberlake shrewdly did- or be rendered irrelevant.
The impact on the average American’s world of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the late commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, will not be nearly as obvious for a long time yet to come. But there is a good chance that, in the end, it will be no less profound and all-encompassing. As everyone knows, the terrorist attack of 9/11 led directly to American military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have proved to be nothing short of disastrous for the United States.
The toll of this disaster cannot be measured solely in the lives lost, and lives are still being lost in Iraq and especially Afghanistan. The latter has surpassed Vietnam as the longest war in American history, to the point where, as of last year, young Americans born after the 9/11 attacks will now be sent over to still fight in Afghanistan, in spite of the fact that Osama bin Laden is now nearly a decade in his grave. Nor can it even be measured in the trillions of dollars spent with practically nothing to show for it.
The failure in the Middle East have taken a toll on the American public’s psyche, especially given the revelations that the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein did not, in fact, have the weapons of mass destruction that the public was told he did by the Bush Administration. Combined with domestic factors such as the 2008 financial crisis, there has been a breakdown of public trust in institutions and authority figures that spans the political divide. In 2008, Barack Obama disarmed charges of inexperience by his then rival Hillary Clinton by pointing out that he had opposed the Iraq invasion while she supported it. Eight years later, Donald Trump steamrolled the Republican primary not just because of immigration policy or trade, but also because he was the only Republican in the field to openly denounce the war as a mistake. Obviously, the Soleimani attack shows that he has now forgotten this, along with so many of his other campaign promises.
Even though Trump pulled out of the Iran deal and in general promoted a more hawkish policy towards that nation, he still made rhetorical gestures towards the idea of a summit with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. As recently as September, this was a somewhat realistic possibility. Any hope of that died with Soleimani, and there is only one way things go from here- towards war.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, warned of “severe revenge” that Iran would take in response to the killing. In response, Trump threatened attacks against 52 Iranian historical and cultural sites, which would be yet another act of war on top of the one that Soleimani’s killing already was. And to any who hold on to a slim hope that “responsible” people in Trump’s government would rein in his instincts here, watch the linked video clip of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo fully endorsing the President’s tweet. To be perfectly blunt, Pompeo is every bit a brutish, knuckle-dragging thug as the man who appointed him. He would carry out any order given him by this President, no matter how destructive, without a moment’s hesitation. So would have John Bolton, James Mattis, or any of the other now-departed White House officials who some in the media now mourn as “responsible” statesmen putting a check on Trump.
What makes matters worse is that, unlike Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003 or the Taliban in 2001, Iran is more than capable of defending itself against American attack. American war games conducted in 2002, simulating an attack against Iran, ended in disaster for “Team Blue” aka the United States. Debate exists on the exercises and just how representative they would be of real life, especially eighteen years later. That remains to be seen, but what we know is that Iran has not been idle in upgrading its military capability. That capability may have already been field tested- Iran is alleged to have provided Yemen’s Houthi rebels with the means to launch an attack against Saudi oil facilities in September of 2019 that knocked out half the Kingdom’s oil production.
Iran also has something else it did not back in 2002: allies capable of coming to its aid. Mere days before the Soleimani killing, Iran conducted its first-ever joint naval exercises with China and Russia, and while some commentators downplay the possibility of those nations coming to Iran’s aid, others disagree- and the mere possibility of those two nuclear powers doing so should terrify anyone.
When the Yom Kippur War broke out between Israel, Syria and Egypt, Richard Nixon and his administration worked frantically to contain the spread of conflict, fearful that it would draw the United States into nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union, at the time an ally of the two Arab belligerents. Trump is often compared to Nixon, and there is no doubt that in this respect at least he is far, far worse. Even if the worst case scenario of nuclear confrontation is avoided, a full-scale war with Iran would be a disaster that would dwarf Iraq and Afghanistan. And this may well be the path that Trump’s assasination of Qasem Soleimani has irrevocably set the United States towards.
