His name was ubiquitous in the news. His funeral drew hundreds of thousands of mourners across Iran and Iraq. His friends vowed retaliation. In case you ignored this week’s news—or missed the hundreds of memes circulating on Reddit—know this: General Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s top general and second most powerful man was killed in a US drone strike at Baghdad International Airport. Though few shed tears in the West, America should prepare for the ramifications of the attack and revise its Iran strategy.
To understand the consequences of Qasem Soleimani’s death, one must first comprehend the vast system of alliances and Iranian influence he developed. Soleimani was an Iranian general and leader of Iran’s Quds Force—an elite branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC. He functioned as the linchpin of Iran’s Middle-East foreign policy; all of Iran’s involvements in surrounding countries—Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza—all of its power plays, revolved around him. In many ways, his role in cultivating ties with surrounding governments was more important than the foreign ministry’s; the day of his death, he was supposed to meet with Iraq’s Prime Minister, Adil Abdul-Mahi.
Iran’s Middle-East foreign policy, centered around propagating its influence while mitigating that of its enemies through constant pressure, primarily took shape following America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003—and Soleimani’s role was vital. Like other American opponents, such as Vladimir Putin, Soleimani was adept at turning US blunders into strategic victories for himself. Following the US invasion and the subsequent collapse of Iraq’s government, he outmaneuvered American intelligence and armed forces and managed to build friendly ties with Iraq’s leaders and its Shia militias (Iran and Iraq are both Shia Muslim majority countries). It is no coincidence that the day of his death he was supposed to meet with Iraq’s Prime Minister and that the car he shared when the American drone struck also contained Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, the leader of Kata’ib Hezbollah—an Iraqi Shia militia and listed terrorist group by the US State Department.
His actions elsewhere in the Middle-East mirrored his Iraq stratagem. He sought to create a pathway between Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza through Iraq and Syria to fund Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia militia, political party, and terrorist group, according to the State Department (Kata’ib Hezbollah and Hezbollah are separate entities), as well as anti-Israel organizations in Gaza, such as Hamas (also considered a terrorist group by the US). It is why he tried to mobilize Iranian power in Baghdad and explains his support of Bashar Al-Assad, Syria’s blood-stained dictator, against American-backed rebels and Sunni jihadists, such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda. (Soleimani was a silent American ally in the war on terror during the Bush and Obama administrations.) In Yemen, he funded the Houthi rebels against the Saudi-backed government. Through Hezbollah and allies in Gaza, Iran could leverage and suppress Israel’s capabilities in the region; with the Houthis in Yemen, it could do the same with Saudi Arabia.
There is no doubt Soleimani was guilty of many crimes—especially toward America and Israel. He was a vile, contemptuous man despised in the West and even among lots of Iranians. Nonetheless, he was no fool, and his careful geopolitical machinations that built Iran an expansive web of regional partners, militias, and politicians should be taken seriously. What he built will live past his death. Unlike organizations that rely solely on a strong charismatic leader, Soleimani’s Quds force—and thus the string of alliances he sewed—now disposes of the three pillars needed to survive, according to Jenna Jordan, an international affairs expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology: organized bureaucracy, local resources, and powerful ideology. The Quds are now an effective task force that can funnel resources to pro-Iran militias and paramilitaries all across the Middle-East, and perform assassinations in far-flung lands. It has a force of trained combat veterans of wars all over the region against numerous enemies—an army filled with rage after the killing of its commander.
With this geopolitical context in mind, what are the consequences of Soleimani’s death? The outcome depends on two factors: the effect of American deterrence and its impact on Iran’s regional capabilities. Start with deterrence. Iran was testing America’s limits—what it could and could not do before the USA declared war—long before the attack, ever since Trump pulled America out of the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) in May 2018. It started by bombing oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, moved on to striking Saudi oil facilities and an American drone, ordered attacks by its militias on Iraqi military bases with US personnel, which killed an American contractor, and finally started orchestrating violent protests against the US consulate in Basra and its embassy in Baghdad.
American retaliation through killing Soleimani showed the US was willing to strike back and temporarily paralyzed the country’s leaders; Iran’s missile attack on an American base in the wake of Soleimani’s death killed no US soldiers and was more an act of chest-thumping than actual retaliation. Yet that does not mean Iran will stop probing the US through airstrikes, cyber attacks, assassinations, or suicide-bombings by proxies, nor does it guarantee an end of hostilities. After all, Iran’s aggressive actions only amplified the last time America provoked it, following Mr. Trump’s departure from the JCPOA and the return of economically crippling sanctions. As for the strike’s impact on Iran’s regional capabilities, even though Soleimani was a powerful figure and one hard to replace, what he built is much larger than himself and will survive his demise. Moreover, Iran now sees no reason to abide by the terms of the JCPOA, and just started enriching uranium for a nuclear bomb—an eventuality that significantly reduces America’s leverage in the region.
In fact, the strike draws America into a situation it cannot afford to be engaged in, what game theorists call an “infinite game”. Game theory differentiates two types of games: infinite and finite. A finite game is one where all players are present at the start of the game and ends in victory for one side; an infinite one, on the other hand, drags on forever and can gain or lose players. America risks starting an infinite game with Iran—a series of hostilities that last years without end in sight—while preserving the attitude of a finite game. Mr. Trump and future administrations will look for a victory against Iran in the Middle-East, while Iran will do anything to ensure its survival. That risks getting America stuck in a no longer strategic region for years—precisely the opposite of Mr. Trump’s wishes.
America’s confusing “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran is floundering. Just as Obama failed to negotiate his way out of the Middle-East through establishing the JCPOA, Mr. Trump will not manage to leave by implementing a strategy that requires a constant American presence. Neither is war an option—Americans do not want a repeat of Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and countless other military calamities. So what should America do? Concentrate its efforts on stirring up internal resentment against the Islamic Republic instead of placing itself against Iranians by touting war and the destruction of their cultural sites. When the US assassinated Soleimani, thousands mourned his death. When Iran admitted accidentally downing a Ukrainian International Airlines flight out of Tehran that carried some of Iran’s brightest students, thousands of Iranians demonstrated against the regime’s negligence and lies—with some protestors demanding Khamenei, Iran’s dictator, step down. Iranians remained silent in misery for years, but more are protesting—over adverse economic conditions in 2017 and 2018, over rising fuel costs in 2019, and even against the government’s Islamism in all three years.
America should use growing Iranian wrath against the Islamic Republic to its advantage. It is critical, therefore, that America strikes up another agreement with Iran and gets back to the negotiation table; without an end of sanctions and the easing of hostilities, Iran will remain in an infinite game mindset—in a fight for its survival. America cannot yet start negotiations—that would weaken its image and potentially embolden Iran. Instead, Europe must urge the Iranians to keep their commitments to the JCPOA and work with Iran and the US through back-channel negotiations. As Mr. Macron, France’s president showed in the last G7 summit in August, Europe is ready to play the role of peacekeeper between the two powers and favor a rapprochement. Perhaps the dream is beyond reach during the Trump administration—the amount of bad blood between his cabinet’s hawks and Iran prevents any real breakthroughs. But with the arrival of a new president in 2020, and a partially blank slate, negotiations can start anew.
The US must not abandon its allies in the region and recall its troops, but it cannot afford to embroil itself once more in a Middle-Eastern conflict, especially not against a large opponent such as Iran. Instead, America should concentrate on re-establishing diplomatic ties with Iran and expose to Iranians the regime’s failures, just as the Iran Nuclear Deal did. Protests in 2017 and 2018 were not fueled by wealthy, upper-middle-class Iranians, who are already suspicious of the regime, but by poor and middle-class people who lamented the Islamic Republic’s prioritizing of Shia militias and despots over regular Iranians. Since the JCPOA removed most sanctions on Iran, the regime could not deflect blame for its mismanagement of the economy towards Western powers. A return to cultivating Iranian resistance against the Islamic Republic is possible, but it requires a change of American strategy. Only through internal reform is regime change in Iran possible, but the only way to initiate such reform is through building ties with Iran—not by escalating into war. America, do not destroy Iran. Help Iranians fix it.