NOVEMBER 20, 2017
TEHRAN, IRAN
MORNING
General Qasem Soleimani is enjoying vengeance.
He is in Syria, overseeing battlefield strategy, and this morning he writes to Iran’s supreme leader, the ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, confirming a great triumph over ISIS. This is not just a strategic victory—it is payback for a humiliating strike into the heart of Tehran.
It is Monday, and the people of Iran start the morning with outstanding news of Iranian forces capturing a significant ISIS stronghold over the weekend. The citadel at Abu Kamal was the last significant town in Syria held by the Islamic State. Not surprisingly, photos of Soleimani commanding troops on the front lines were splashed across Iranian media. The general looks calm, even professorial, wearing a black jacket and a pair of olive drab binoculars as he surveys the action, surrounded by bodyguards in combat uniforms.
Tehran is jubilant about his most recent victory. November is perhaps the best time of year in the metropolitan vicinity, one of the most populous in the world at fourteen million residents. The Iranian capital is known for its traffic jams and air pollution so thick that respiratory problems are common. There is also a constant earthquake threat, due to Tehran’s location atop the deepest seismic fault in the Middle East.
Until today, there was also another threat: the Islamic State.
Five months ago, seven ISIS terrorists launched a surprise attack within the Iranian capital. Some of the fighters even infiltrated the Iranian Parliament. Others desecrated a lavish mausoleum containing the bodies of great Iranians like the Ayatollah Khomeini, the religious leader who overthrew the shah of Iran in 1979. Seventeen Iranians were killed and forty-three wounded—the first act of ISIS terror on Persian soil. The killings caused such a shock that the city of Paris, so hard hit by ISIS, showed sympathy for the Iranian victims by turning off the lights of the Eiffel Tower for a moment of mourning.
Now Qasem Soleimani is extracting revenge.
“Claiming to be defending Islam,” the general writes about the Syrian victory, “over six thousand misled youths blew themselves up in suicide attacks with explosives-laden vehicles near squares, mosques, schools or even hospitals and public sites for Muslims.”
Then, amazingly, Soleimani pivots. After placing the blame on ISIS for the conflict, he directs his energy at Iran’s greatest enemy: the United States of America.
“All of these crimes were plotted and carried out by the leaders and organizations tied to the US, and this approach is still being pursued and implemented by the current US officials.”*
Soleimani continues: “As a soldier commissioned by your Excellency in this battlefield, I declare the end of the dominion of this accursed and malignant tree with the conclusion of the liberation operations … and by pulling down the flag of this US-Zionist group and raising the Syrian flag and on behalf of all the commanders and unknown fighters.
“Victory comes only from God Almighty, the Wise.
“Your son and soldier
“Qasem Soleimani”
The revenge Soleimani is celebrating has its origins on June 7, 2017—just another Wednesday in Tehran. The metro is filled with commuters, and the streets are tangled in the usual traffic. The rule of the Revolutionary Guard and Qasem Soleimani is repressive but has also produced a sense of security. The people of Tehran give no thought to groups like ISIS.
This is a mistake.
As the Iranian Parliament building opens for business, people waiting for paperwork to be processed sit in a small room near the main entrance. The time is 11:09 a.m., and the 290 members of the parliament are just beginning the daily session. Outside, the sun is shining.
Suddenly, four ISIS fighters wielding pistols and Kalashnikov automatic weapons burst into the waiting room, waving their guns and yelling in Farsi. People run and dive under chairs as the shooting begins. The terrorists have concealed their guns by wearing women’s clothing. On the floors above, employees lock their office doors and barricade themselves inside. Members of parliament hear the gunfire but are confused by its meaning. At 12:56, one of the terrorists detonates a suicide vest.
The other ISIS fighters take hostages and wait. But not for long.
By midafternoon they are all dead. Iranian special forces stormed into the parliament building, saved the hostages, and shot down the three remaining ISIS assailants. It was a flawless rescue.
One hour later, at a large cemetery south of Tehran, two more ISIS terrorists attack the large mausoleum holding the remains of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his family, as well as several other prominent Iranian leaders. A female suicide bomber blows herself up, even as security guards gun down a male terrorist brandishing an AK-47.
ISIS immediately claims responsibility for the attacks. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard rounds up suspects. For Qasem Soleimani, it is clear that such an attack did not happen without planning. The terrorists must have been in place for months, surveilling their targets and obtaining weapons. Soleimani is determined to prevent such an incident from ever happening again.
Meanwhile, American president Donald J. Trump fans the flames of US-Iran conflict with his personal response to the attacks: “We grieve and pray for the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks in Iran, and for the Iranian people, who are going through such challenging times,” Trump says.
“We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.”
It has been five months since ISIS attacked Tehran. And now the endgame is in motion.
Operation Fajr-3 (Dawn 3), as the assault on Abu Kamal is known, begins on October 23, 2017. Abu Kamal is a city of brown homes and flat roofs on the Euphrates River, located in eastern Syria, near the border with Iraq. Elements of the Syrian and Russian military, along with the radical Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, work together with the Revolutionary Guard as a belligerent attacking force. ISIS took control of the city after a three-month siege in 2014, and citizens have suffered grievously ever since, enduring the same beatings, rapes, and beheadings as those in other cities occupied by ISIS.
So far, more than a thousand members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard have been killed in this campaign. Yet the results please Soleimani a great deal. It was the general who sent Quds forces into Syria to prop up the faltering government of President Bashar al-Assad two years ago. Then, Soleimani accomplished a diplomatic coup—he convinced Russia to fight against Syrian rebel factions supported by the United States.
The fighting for Abu Kamal is slow in the early days of the battle.
But it picks up after Soleimani arrives from Iran.
As is his style, the general arranges for his picture to be taken at the front. “The renowned Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani has once again shown up on the Syrian battlefield,” states an Arab news service. The article includes “leaked” photos of Soleimani surrounded by enthusiastic Syrian soldiers in camouflage uniforms. “This time to help the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) crush the last Islamic State Forces.”
The mere presence of Soleimani bolsters the attack. Even as the pitched fighting goes back and forth, it is clear that his return to the battlefield is an inspiration. The stalled advance on Abu Kamal resumes anew.
Meanwhile, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi knows he is losing the battle but accesses Western social media to place propaganda.
“Islamic State Leader Reported in Syrian Town,” states the Reuters news service on November 10, completely missing the real story that is taking place.
The truth is, even though the terror group is on the defensive, ISIS remains a threat because it has heavy weapons and money—much of it accumulated by selling oil stolen from Iraq.*
However, Soleimani’s coalition is far too much for the ISIS terrorists, who are just days away from capitulation. But before that happens, there is one final gruesome display.
On November 14, four ISIS terrorists of Chechen descent breach the security perimeter at Syria’s Deir ez-Zor air base. The facility is built in barren desert, with Russian fighter jets shielded from satellite cameras overhead by concealed hangars. It is from this location that Russia launched a raid on an ISIS training base recently, killing two hundred men.
Speaking Russian with guards at the gate and dressed in Russian uniforms, the ISIS terrorists enter the facility and explode suicide vests. Fifty-eight Syrian Army soldiers are killed and several Russian aircraft destroyed. In a video shot before the attack, the four ISIS men are shown on camera praying and preparing for their deadly mission. They are fresh-faced teenagers, fair-haired and of European appearance, smiling into the camera, chatting amiably with their comrades.
The attackers die needlessly. The murders they commit do not affect the outcome of the battle for Abu Kamal; the city falls less than one week later. In the aftermath, al-Baghdadi has vanished—he is still alive and already plotting more murder.
Seven thousand miles away, US Central Intelligence Agency director Mike Pompeo is assessing the situation. He is attending the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California. Pompeo has a long history with Qasem Soleimani, dating back to his own days as an army officer in the Gulf War.
“I was a soldier,” he will say. “I’d seen how if one was focused and devoted resources and understood the mission, that you could accomplish an awful lot. And then, as a member of Congress, I just watched the entire Obama administration essentially treat this terror war event in the Middle East as if it was something that we feel bad that we’re having to do this.”
Pompeo’s remarks in California are delivered on December 2, 2017. It has been two weeks since General Qasem Soleimani defeated ISIS in Syria. Since then, Director Pompeo has made it clear to the general “that we will hold him and Iran accountable for any attacks on American interests in Iraq by forces that are under their control.”
Pompeo tells this to the Defense Forum, which responds with surprise. The admission is bold, a deliberate public attempt to take a stand against Iranian terror. It is well known that the CIA and Director Pompeo now have the authorization to operate independently of the Department of Defense in the war on terror; the director is free to authorize a strike whenever he pleases. The pragmatic Pompeo could very well be of a mind to attack Iran if circumstances demand. He is a former soldier, having graduated first in his class from West Point. Pompeo is well aware of the covert tactics and strategy employed by Soleimani and is quietly sure the general has planned the murders of US troops. And for this reason, Mike Pompeo will not back down.
Pompeo even goes so far as to send Soleimani a letter, which is hand-delivered to him. In the letter, he states that the United States will push back aggressively against any terror committed by Iran.
Soleimani replies: “I will not accept your letter, nor will I read it.”
But the message has been delivered—the United States is definitely at war with General Qasem Soleimani.
And also with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The ISIS leader has disappeared, knowing that Soleimani is closing in. Al-Baghdadi has become so careful about being caught that he often holds strategy talks with his top aides inside a minivan, surrounded by a load of fresh vegetables to remain unseen. But in an act of defiance, al-Baghdadi is making plans to murder the Iranian general.
Sunni chasing Shia; Shia chasing Sunni.
One monster after another monster.
That is not an overstatement.