Qassem Suleimani’s Reign of Terror Comes to an End https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2020/01/qassem-suleimanis-reign-of-terror-comes-to-an-end/

January 6, 2020 | Michael Doran
About the author: Michael Doran is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at Hudson Institute. The author of Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East (2016), he is also a former deputy assistant secretary of defense and a former senior director of the National Security Council. He tweets @doranimated.

As the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Qassem Suleimani has for many years directed both Tehran’s own soldiers and its network of local militias throughout the Middle East. Michael Doran analyzes his blood-soaked career and the significance of his death at the hands of the American military:

Suleimani built Lebanese Hizballah into the powerful state within a state that we know today. A terrorist organization receiving its funds, arms, and marching orders from Tehran, Hizballah has a missile arsenal larger than that of most countries in the region. The group’s success has been astounding, helping to cement Iran’s influence not just in Lebanon but farther around the Arab world.

Building up on this successful experience, Suleimani spent the last decade replicating the Hizballah model in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, propping up local militias with precision weapons and tactical know-how. In Syria, his forces have allied with Russia to rescue the regime of Bashar al-Assad, a project that, in practice, has meant driving over 10 million people from their homes and killing well over half a million.

In Iraq . . . Suleimani’s militias ride roughshod over the legitimate state institutions. They rose to power, of course, after participating in an insurgency, of which he was the architect, against American and coalition forces. Hundreds of American soldiers lost their lives to the weapons that the Quds Force provided to its Iraqi proxies.

His departure will make Iran much weaker. It will embolden the country’s regional rivals—primarily Israel and Saudi Arabia—to pursue their strategic interests more resolutely. It will also instill in the protesters in Iran, Lebanon, and, especially, Iraq, the hope that they will one day wrest control of their governments from the talons of the Islamic Republic.

Read more on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/trump-iran-suleimani-assassination-baghdad.html