'The US hopes that the Iranian response to Soleimani's killing will be on a smaller scale than the recent US strikes.'
In a history book recording the Iran-Iraq war, faded photos of a young Qassem Soleimani show a fighter in a khaki anorak, with dark hair and eyes. Standing in front of piles of sandbags, he’s flanked by men in sand-coloured military uniforms. It’s not clear exactly when or where the picture was taken, but it was likely during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The caption describes some of them as “martyrs” – indicating that they were subsequently killed in battle.
The photo is testimony to just how long Qassem Soleimani has been militarily active. The young man in the pictures had joined Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 1979, and rose through the ranks to become chief commander of its external branch, the Quds Force, in 1998. At the time of his death yesterday, he was Iran’s most formidable modern military commander, having masterminded campaigns in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria that ultimately led to the deaths of thousands of people.
Although they are well aware that the Islamic Republic will respond in some shape or form to Soleimani’s killing, US officials hope that Iran will de-escalate. In other words, they hope that the response will be on a smaller scale than the US strikes that killed Soleimani and Muhandis, rather than a notch upwards in terms of severity. To put that in perspective, a similar level of response to the deaths of Soleimani and Muhandis would be taking out top US generals in the Middle East.
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