Soleimani’s Killing Will Hurt U.S. Interests in the Middle East

The top news story right now is the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani by a U.S. airstrike on Iraqi soil. To get to the root of this spike in tensions between the U.S. and Iran, we need to go back to 1979. A revolution in Iran against the American-backed dictator brought a new Islamist government into power, which seized the U.S. embassy there and held its workers hostage.

The U.S. imposed sanctions, and the new Iranian government began funding terrorism in its area and around the world. In the 1980s, it helped create the Lebanese political party Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organization by many countries (including the U.S.). The country also funds and supports Hamas, the terror group that controls the Gaza strip. In more recent years Iran has funded numerous militia groups across the Middle East which have carried out attacks against American and NATO targets, in some cases at the explicit command of Iranian officials. That has been the status quo ever since, save for a lapse between 2015 and 2018 when the U.S. agreed to remove sanctions in exchange for Iran giving up its nuclear weapons program for 15 years.

But according to the Trump administration, Iran continued to fund terrorism both in neighboring countries and around the world, a factor in leading the administration to withdraw from the agreement and reimpose sanctions in mid-2018. Those sanctions severely increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran and sent the Iranian economy into a deep recession. Iran’s oil production crashed, resulting in a 13.5 percent contraction in its GDP. Inflation skyrocketed, in particular raising the price of food and fuel, heavily impacting ordinary Iranians.

Protests erupted in Iran and soon spread all over the country in November 2019. At first, they were against the terrible economic situation, but they morphed into anti-government protests as time went on. In the ensuing chaos, over 1,500 people were killed, hundreds of government buildings were razed, and the regime shut down the Internet to prevent images of the brutal crackdown from escaping into the wider world (it didn’t work). Iran needed a way out, and Iranian general Qassem Soleimani had one.

According to a recently released Reuters report, Soleimani’s strategy was simple: escalate attacks by Iran and Iranian proxies against U.S. targets to provoke a response, and then use that response to unify the Iranian people against the U.S. and in the process take pressure off of the Iranian government. Attacks by Iranian militias grew more brazen, including a recent attack which resulted in the death of a U.S. citizen contractor while the U.S. and Iran were at peace. But viewed in their proper context, the recent attacks by Iran were nothing but an act of desperation in response to a situation that was reaching its breaking point. But Soleimani’s strategy appeared to have worked, albeit at the cost of his own life. Soleimani, an Iranian national hero, was killed by a U.S. drone near an airport in Baghdad, Iraq on January 3.

Soleimani's killing had given the Iranian government the opportunity to distract its people from anger concerning the economic and political situation in the country. Millions poured into the streets in Iran to mourn the general’s passing, a stark contrast to the mass protests only weeks before, some at the coercion of Iran’s internal security apparatus, others out of a genuine sense that Soleimani had maintained stability and defended the country from ISIS and Western influences. In a tragically lucky turn of events for the Trump Administration, that mourning period came to an abrupt end after Iran admitted to accidentally shooting down a civilian aircraft and in the process killing 176 people, many of them Iranian citizens. That downing has resparked protests against the regime and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khomeni. But that downing doesn’t change the fact that the killing was a poor idea and gave many Iranians a sense of the dangers their state faced from abroad, especially the West. Conservative politician Javad Arianmanesh put it best following the killing: “Naturally […] the current national unity formed after the martyrdom of Gen. Soleimani can facilitate the victories of conservatives in upcoming elections. […] Such a martyrdom will give fresh blood to Islamic values and can help further strengthen the Islamic republic.”

And that is a chief concern: aside from temporarily defusing protests against the regime, the killing could sway Iranians to reject reformist leaders during future elections in the country.

Iran has a unique electoral system which is divided between democratic and theocratic elements. A president is directly elected, while the Supreme Leader is elected by an Assembly of Experts. That Assembly, in turn, is elected by the people and votes on a new Supreme Leader when the previous one has passed. All candidates are vetted by religious authorities, who bar women, those who are not Shi’ite Muslims, and anyone else they deem unfit from running. For years, Iran has seen an internal struggle between its reformist and conservative elements. It was those reformists, led by President Hassan Rouhani, who were responsible for negotiating the 2015 nuclear deal with the West, and who have been discredited by U.S. abandonment of the deal and the killing of Soleimani.

Here’s the thing: the conservative Supreme Leader is 80 years old and in poor health. That means that the Assembly of Experts is very likely to be responsible for selecting the next Supreme Leader soon, and that Supreme Leader will determine whether Iran pursues further conflict or rapprochement with the West. The Soleimani strike may well increase the chances of an even more confrontationalist Supreme Leader being elected in the future, with disastrous consequences for the U.S., its allies, and the Iranian people.