Caitlyn Johnstone on the murder of Soliemani
US
Assassination Of Top Iranian Military Official May Ignite World Warn
of Qassim Soleimani
Caitlin
Johnstone
3
January, 2020
The
US has
admitted to assassinating Iran’s
most beloved military leader, General Qassem Soleimani, in a drone
strike which seems very likely to ignite a full-scale war. Six others
are
also reported killed,
including Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
According
to the Pentagon, Trump personally ordered the assassination. I’ll
keep following this hugely important story and will probably be
writing a lot about it as it unfolds. I encourage everyone who values
peace and humanity to follow it as well.
“Spoke
to a very knowledgeable person about what Iran’s response to
Soleimani’s assassination might be,” The Quincy Institute’s
Trita Parsi tweeted regarding
this developing story. “This would be the equivalent of Iran
assassinating Petreus or Mattis, I argued. No, he responded, this is
much bigger than that.”
Pentagon out with a statement on the airstrike.
“This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”
“Most
Americans won’t understand the gravity of this,” tweeted journalist
Rania Khalek. “Qasem Soleimani is head of the Iranian IRGC’s
elite Quds Force, which conducts operations outside of Iran in both
Iraq and Syria. He was credited with helping turn the tide in both
countries against Al-Qaeda and ISIS.”
“This
is very serious,” Khalek added.
“The US essentially declared war on Iran by assassinating its most
revered military figure in Iraq. And by also killing the head of the
PMF, the US created more enemies in Iraq. There will be regional
retaliation. It’s unlikely it can be prevented.”
“If
true, It is not an understatement to say this could change the entire
Middle East,” tweeted Rising‘s
Saagar Enjeti.
“There’s
going to be that war now that people have been pushing for since
tanking the Iran Deal,” tweeted The
Intercept‘s
Murtaza Mohammad Hussain.
“If
this is true, the US has effectively declared war on Iran, which has
established militarily ties with Russia and China. It’s not
hyperbole to say this could start WW3. Insane,” tweeted Grayzone‘s
Dan Cohen, who also highlighted the
important fact that “Iran, Russia and China held joint naval drills
less than a week ago.”
“Iranian
sources in Iran are warning that killing Gen. Qasem Sulaimani spells
war,” tweeted Farnaz
Fassihi of The
New York Times.
“‘Official reaction will begin with a strike,’ one says.”
A
proportionate retaliatory strike would necessarily entail an attack
on US military targets, or the military targets of US allies. If that
happens, either the empire stands down or we’re looking at an
all-out war of a size that is potentially almost limitless.
Iranian sources in Iran are warning that killing Gen. Qasem Sulaimani spells war.
“Official reaction will begin with a strike,” one says.#Iraq
Months
after Donald Trump took office it
was reported that
the CIA had escalated covert operations in Iran, and the
administration has been escalating tensions with that nation further
and further ever since it announced its withdrawal from the Iran
nuclear deal in 2018 on
completely false pretenses.
The withdrawal was followed by waves of
debilitating, civilian-starving
sanctions implemented
with the goal of provoking civil unrest, a goal Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo has openly
admitted.
From there we saw increased US military presence in the region, then
the Iraqi-killing
airstrikes earlier
this week and the resulting tense
angry standoff at
the US embassy in Baghdad, and now here we are with Iran planning
retaliation for an unforgivable assassination on its most senior and
revered military official.
Many
are understandably claiming that this geostrategically pivotal
confrontation was precisely what Trump was installed to facilitate
all along. The largest donor to any campaign in 2016 was
oligarch Sheldon
Adelson,
who gave
$25 million to the Trump campaign,
and who in 2013 said
that the US should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.
After Trump’s election win, Adelson gave
another $5 million to his inauguration,
the largest single presidential inaugural donation ever made. Newt
Gingrich, another of the billionaire’s hired politicians, has
said that
Adelson’s “central value” is Israel
Make
no mistake, Iran is not Iraq or Libya. A full-scale war against Iran
would be many times more deadly, costly and destabilizing than those
interventions; the UK’s Admiral Lord West told The
Daily Star Online last
year that winning such a war would require no less than a million
troops, or nearly the total
number of active duty US military personnel in
the entire world. Even if a direct war with Iran didn’t lead to a
confrontation with China, Russia and the other unabsorbed allies, it
would still be worse than Vietnam and Iraq combined in terms of
death, destruction, expense, and regional destabilization
Last year Lord Admiral West warned that the US would need no fewer than a million troops to win a war with Iran, almost the number of total active-duty US military personnel in the whole world. Even if this doesn’t become WW3, it would still be worse than Vietnam + Iraq. https://twitter.com/dailystar/status/1130380386356170752 …
293 people are talking about this
And
now, as I sit as the mother of two teenagers watching what might be a
third world war looming on the horizon, all I can think is about how
infuriating it is that we’ve spent the last three years on Russia
bullshit and sectarian political infighting instead of building an
actual cohesive antiwar movement and pushing real opposition
to Trump’s
warmongering.
Let’s
get it together, humans. We need big changes, and we need them
yesterday.
