Killing Soleimani Was Worse Than a Crime
It was a blunder.
There was a case for killing Major General Qassem Soleimani. For two decades, as the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, he executed Iran’s long game of strategic depth in the Middle East—arming and guiding proxy militias in Lebanon and Iraq that became stronger than either state, giving Bashar al-Assad essential support to win the Syrian civil war at the cost of half a million lives, waging a proxy war in Yemen against the hated Saudis, and repeatedly testing America and its allies with military actions around the region for which Iran never seemed to pay a military price.
The United States, a vastly stronger power, was unwilling to strike back in a
