The Face of Evil : Expunged

"Soleimani's martyrdom will make Iran more decisive to resist America's expansionism and to defend our Islamic values."
"With no doubt, Iran and other freedom-seeking countries in the region will take his revenge."
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force commander, Qassam Soleimani, in an Iranian TV interview, October 1, 2019 (YouTube screenshot)

"With Soleiman dead, war is coming -- that seems certain; the only questions are where, in what form and when?"
"While America dominates the world in terms of conventional military force, Iran's advantage is in the asymmetric sphere. So rocket attacks, bombings, assassinations and even attacks like the missile assault on Saudi oil facilities in September 2019 are all possible responses. There really is no underestimating the geopolitical ramifications of this."
"His death will be perceived as martyrdom in Iran and will undoubtedly fuel some form of retaliation -- but not by a disparate terrorist organization, but one of the Middle East's most powerful governments, with an unrivalled and formidable asymmetric tool kit."
"Neither ISIS nor al Qaeda ever had the capacity to expel the U.S. from Iraq and Syria and end the counter-ISIS campaign there, but Iran and its supporters most definitely do. We've entered into very dangerous territory now."
"A single attack on U.S. positions could feasibly catalyze a military withdrawal and second abandonment of the Kurds [in Syria]. The death of Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis alongside Soleimani has just mobilized tens of thousands of PMU militiamen against America's presence in Iraq like never before."
Charles Lister, director, Countering Terrorism and Extremism program, Middle East Instituee, Washington, D.C.

Image circulating on line reportedly shows Iranian general Qassem Soleimani’s severed hand following his death in a US airstrike in Baghdad, January 3, 2020. (Social media)

"The most important military commander bar none in the Middle East [as well as a] mass terrorist [describes the decapitation of the Iranian general considered the second most powerful and influential man in the Islamic Republic of Iran]."
"Iran will avenge his death, we can be sure. The key from a U.S. perspective is how well Trump has anticipated and prepared for Iran's reaction -- in Iraq, in the U.S., throughout the region and across the globe."
Bruce Hoffman, senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations

The antecedent to this event of course, is the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq with the express purpose of removing former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power, as the Sunni Islam version of the Shiite Qassem Soleimani whose fate suddenly matched that of Saddam, both mass murderers, both enablers of terrorism, both convinced they were invincible, both relieved of their delusion of being beyond the reproach of violent justice. The reference to preparedness refers to then-President Bush having no back-up plan for post-invasion with the collapse of the Saddam regime.

The outraged and outrageous language of the 'moderate' Iranian President Rouhani speaking in one breath of Iran as a 'freedom-seeking country' and the United States' 'expansionist' agenda has brought language and meaning to Orwellian heights in its contorted new levels of disingenuousness and febrile delusion. Since its occupation of Iran in 1979 the Islamic Revolution that brought the Ayatollahs to power as a theocratic imperial state focused on jihadic conquest has seen a Shiite minority among Sunni majorities reverse ages-old power structures.

Iran's intention to subjugate the Sunni majority to his Shiite Islamist agenda, restoring a historic realm of power and influence, has led to mass murder and huge population displacements in Syria and Yemen, and permanently altered the character of Lebanon's society. The brutal horror of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant that transfixed the world in amazement and fear at the depths of human depravity in the manner of the atrocious deaths visited upon their 'enemies', has its counterpart in the Shiite militias like Hezbollah, Iran's proxies.

Iraq, now completely in the thrall of Iran's web of intrigue and a willing satellite, has joined Syria, Yemen, Palestine and Qatar to counterbalance the Sunni Middle East states weight of majority, leaving the region in a state of suspense and destabilization. Iran's outreach to Africa has been equally disturbing and unsettling. Whatever territory that ISIL amassed and involuntarily vacated created a vacuum that Iran's Shiite militia proxies were swift to occupy, their intentions and violence similar to ISIL's.

Iran's malign influence has spread as far as North Korea and Venezuela. North Korea's Kim Jong Un without doubt is keenly observing events on the ground in the Middle East, to absorb a fuller understanding of American resolve that will have great meaning and consequences for his nuclear ambitions just as it has for Iran's. Perhaps he is weighing just how far he too can push America in the belief that he, like Soleimani and Iran's Grand Ayatollah Khamenei is also untouchable and there are no provocations too advanced, viewed as intolerable by the United States.