JANUARY 3, 2020
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
EVENING
The long knives are out.
Rachel Maddow of the MSNBC cable news network wears all black as she looks into the camera. Her guest, wearing a lavender suit, is former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice. Ms. Rice’s scheduled appearance to promote a new book coincides with the killing of General Soleimani. The two women appear on a split screen, with Maddow on the left. “The US had previously assessed that it would be more dangerous to kill Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force in Iran, than to allow him to live,” Maddow begins. “There’s a lot of discussion about that reporting now that this air strike has happened.… Is there any reason to think that calculation somehow changed?”
“Judging from what I know, and from what we’re likely to see, I think there’s real reason to believe that in all likelihood the benefits will be outweighed by the risks,” Susan Rice responds.*
On another cable channel, CNN news anchor Becky Anderson joins the list of those criticizing the decision to strike Soleimani. She is British, one of the network’s international personalities. Her comments about the late general’s assassination go out around the world.
“Earlier, we heard US president Trump justify the operation, saying he acted before Soleimani could carry out more attacks against Americans. Have a listen,” she begins. A video clip rolls, showing Donald Trump announcing the successful assassination from the White House.
“Last night, at my direction, the United States military executed a flawless strike that terminated the terrorist ringleader responsible for gravely wounding and murdering thousands and thousands of people and hundreds and hundreds, at least, of Americans. He was planning a very major attack. And we got him.”
The segment then shifts, showing images of an Iranian mob. News anchor Anderson narrates the voice-over: “These images showing you the outrage being felt in Tehran as well, where we heard chants of ‘Death to America’ and saw flags being burned. Iran is promising that it will strike back.”
Now the images on the screen change once again, showing a small, bespectacled individual. This is Majid Takht Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations:
“There will be harsh revenge,” the diplomat vows. “Iran will act based on its own choosing. And the time, the place will be decided later on.
“They should expect anything as a result of this aggression.” *
In Qom, one of Iran’s holiest cities, the red flag of revenge is being raised.
As the sun ascends on this winter morning, a bloodred standard is being hoisted above the towering dome of Jamkaran Mosque. The words “those who want to avenge the blood of Hussein” are written in large white lettering on the flag.* This mosque is a central location in the Shia religion. The flag on display during the morning call to prayer is normally blue. But as news of Qasem Soleimani’s execution becomes widely known throughout Iran, the color of revenge is chosen instead.
On Twitter, the hashtag #WorldWar3 is already trending.
One hundred miles north, in Tehran, the streets are filled with chanting mourners dressed in black. The Ayatollah Khamenei is declaring that “severe revenge” awaits the United States as three days of national grief begin. Soleimani will be buried in his hometown tomorrow, and the ayatollah will lead the service. Iran is already moving its ballistic missiles in secret, preparing to possibly strike US positions.
In Washington, US Senator Lindsey Graham issues a statement confirming his support for the Soleimani assassination—saying he had been briefed about the operation by President Trump in Florida. “We killed the most powerful man in Iran short of the Ayatollah,” Graham tweets. “This was not an act of revenge for what he has done in the past. This was a preemptive, defensive strike planned to take out the organizer of attacks yet to come.”
Some Democrats, however, disagree, stating that President Trump did not have the authority to execute Soleimani.
“[Trump] has the ability to prevent an imminent attack against the United States without coming to Congress,” Democratic senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut stated in an interview with National Public Radio. “I think we need to see if that, in fact, is true. He does not have any other standing authorization to take out a strike against a country that we have not declared war against.”
Former vice president Joe Biden, a Democrat now campaigning for the presidency, is also critical of the operation. “While Soleimani deserved to be brought to justice for his crimes against American troops, and thousands of innocents throughout the region, the assassination is like throwing dynamite on a tinderbox.” *
The world takes sides.
Israel and Saudi Arabia support the assassination. Russia condemns it. The United Nations claims the attack is in violation of its charter, stating that there is no proof Soleimani was planning an attack against Americans. Iraq claims the US action is a blow to its sovereignty.
And with every passing day, the world awaits the Iranian response.
Turbulence continues. Peace rallies are held around the world. Holding signs demanding that the United States pull its troops from the Middle East, protesters fill Times Square in New York City and stand outside the White House. In all, eighty American cities are the scene of nonviolent protests, and there are others around the globe: London, Berlin, Moscow, Prague, Istanbul.
In Baghdad, protesters are unified for the first time in three months, demanding the United States exit their country.
On the other side, the website for the United States’s Selective Service System crashes—overwhelmed by young men wishing to know how they might be affected by a potential military draft. Just as in the days after 9/11, when patriotic fervor fueled enlistments, the possibility of war with Iran has stimulated interest in the American armed forces.
On January 4, 2020, President Trump holds a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to defend the attack. “We took action to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war,” President Donald Trump tells reporters. “If Americans anywhere are threatened, we have all these targets already fully identified, and I am ready and prepared to take whatever action is necessary, and that in particular refers to Iran.”
In fact, the United States is already gearing up for conflict. Troops are heading to the Middle East. American warships in the region are on high alert. President Trump set a redline of “no US casualties” and has warned Tehran not to cross it. He is promising to defend American personnel and interests from Iranian proxies who have already killed Nawres Hamid, the US contractor in Iraq. He defends at length the decision to kill Qasem Soleimani, insisting the action was necessary to save American lives.
As criticism of Trump and America grows, the president becomes more bellicose. “Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have..….… targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD,” Trump tweets.
Later, Donald Trump ups the rhetoric even more. “They attacked us & we hit back. If they attack again, which I would strongly advise them not to do, we will hit them harder than they have ever been hit before!”
All the saber-rattling causes the left-wing American media to up the attacks against Donald Trump. The situation quickly becomes political, not one of national security, with CNN leading the dissent.
“The US has provided few details about those specific threats posed by Soleimani and failed to clearly outline the legal underpinnings,” reports the global network.
“The administration has failed to connect the dots in a way that provides a clear picture of an imminent threat, and that argument has been obscured by inconsistent messaging from US officials.
“One thing that has become relatively clear is that the operation to take out Soleimani did not hinge on some kind of golden opportunity to target the Quds Force commander, unlike the missions that killed Osama bin Laden and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”*
National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien quickly defends the president.
“Soleimani was in the Middle East, in Iraq, and traveling around the Middle East. He had just come from Damascus, where he was planning attacks on American soldiers, airmen, marines, sailors, and against our diplomats,” O’Brien states.
The national security adviser speaks the truth. CIA documents show that captured intelligence pinpointed a number of attacks being planned by Soleimani. But for the media, unfriendly to President Trump, opinion overrode fact.
In Tehran, tens of thousands of mourners gather for the funeral of Qasem Soleimani. The words of a weeping Ayatollah Khamenei, praying over the general’s wooden coffin, are broadcast by loudspeakers. An Iranian flag drapes the casket. Then, in a surprise appearance, Soleimani’s twenty-seven-year-old daughter Zeinab is given the chance to speak. She is dressed in black, her head covered by a scarf but her face visible. Zeinab is due to marry Riza Safi al-Din, a Hezbollah leader thought to be the terror organization’s second-in-command, this June. Their nuptials portend an even tighter relationship between the Lebanese terror group and Iran.
As the funeral grows in intensity, Zeinab Soleimani continues. “The families of American soldiers in West Asia,” she tells the crowd in a loud, angry tone, “will be waiting for the news of the deaths of their children.”
Zeinab’s threat is passionate but confusing. Her speech rambles. But the crowd does not care. The general’s daughter inspires them, whipping the mob into a frenzy; loud chants of “Death to the USA” are heard.
Hours after Soleimani’s body is put into the ground, Iran launches “Operation Martyr Soleimani.” Ballistic missiles target a US air base in Iraq. The attack begins an hour and a half past midnight, roughly the same time Soleimani was assassinated five days ago. Iranian Fateh-313 and QAAM short-range missiles, the length of a telephone pole, suddenly rain down on American forces. Cries of “Incoming!” send troops racing for the safety of underground bunkers—all the while reeling from the enormous blast waves as Iranian armament explodes less than thirty yards away.
The projectiles are deadly, carrying high-explosive warheads weighing almost one ton. They are designed to fragment into a thousand pieces of shrapnel upon striking a target. In the twenty-year history of America’s war on terror, these are the most powerful weapons ever fired at US forces. The Al-Asad Air Base in northern Iraq is soon a scene of fire and destruction—craters thirty feet wide, incinerated vehicles, and the taste of “ammonia-flavored moon dust,” in the words of one soldier, referring to explosive residue wafting through the night air.
But when the shelling stops and the all-clear finally sounds, Iran is frustrated. No United States troops are killed by the incoming rounds.*
“All is well,” President Trump tweets shortly after the attack.
The atmosphere in Iran is tense. Nervous soldiers of the Revolutionary Guard—the same troops led and funded by Qasem Soleimani—believe the United States will soon return fire with cruise missiles. But they are mistaken. No missiles are launched by the Trump administration. However, the Iranian military is so jumpy that it reacts impulsively to a strange image on its radar. Incompetent commanders believe it is a cruise missile over Iran. In reality, it is a Ukrainian passenger jet.
The 737 is blasted from the sky—killing all 176 passengers and crew on board. The vast majority of passengers are traveling on Iranian passports. Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 is traveling to Kyiv, the capital of that nation. The action occurs three minutes after the jet took off from Tehran. The cockpit is hit first, but flight recorders show the pilots do not die immediately, struggling for three minutes to get control of the aircraft. They fail. No one on board survives.
One day later, before international investigators comb through the rubble, Iranian bulldozers level the crash scene. The flight data boxes are recovered, but to this day, Iran refuses to share the recordings of Flight 752’s final moments. The mullahs initially claim that a fire in one of the aircraft’s engines caused the destruction. “It was nothing compared with the main event,” Iranian television boasts, referring to the missile attack on Americans.
But soon the clerics admit that “human error” spurred the launching of two Tor-M1 surface-to-air missiles which ended the lives of the passengers and crew.
In essence, General Soleimani has claimed his last victims.