In the ear­ly hours of Fri­day morn­ing, a pil­lar of flame unex­pect­ed­ly rose over the tar­mac at Bagh­dad Air­port. At the blaz­ing epi­cen­ter of the explo­sion was a man who – until that moment – was per­haps the most influ­en­tial geopo­lit­i­cal fig­ure in the Mid­dle East, the comman­der of Iran’s Quds Force, Gen­er­al Qasem Soleimani.

Gen­er­al Soleimani was one of Iran’s top sol­diers (Pho­to: Sayyed Sha­hab, repro­duced under Cre­ative Com­mons license)

Soleimani had many pow­er­ful ene­mies, but the killers soon made them­selves known. The Pen­ta­gon took respon­si­bil­i­ty for the bomb­ing, say­ing that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump him­self had ordered Soleimani’s death.

This is a shock­ing esca­la­tion in a region where the del­i­cate bal­ance of pow­er and peace has, in many cas­es, rest­ed on the shoul­ders of the Iran­ian general.

Soleimani mold­ed Iran­ian pol­i­cy in the Mid­dle East, a role that saw him trav­el to Iraq, Syr­ia, Lebanon and beyond to advise and direct a pletho­ra of mili­tias, armies and polit­i­cal groups towards the goal of increas­ing Iran’s geopo­lit­i­cal power.

Soleimani became the leader of the Quds Force – the for­eign affairs branch of Iran’s Islam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards Corps, com­pa­ra­ble to the CIA – in 1998 and played a key role in orga­niz­ing Shia mil­i­tants around the region.

He is known to have advised Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah orga­ni­za­tion in their war against Israel and pro­vid­ed sup­port for Shia mil­i­tants in their vio­lent resis­tance to Amer­i­can forces after the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq.

When the civ­il war in Syr­ia broke out, he orga­nized a pipeline of weapons and fight­ers to sup­port the mur­der­ous dic­ta­tor­ship of Bashar al-Assad.

Soleimani came to inter­na­tion­al promi­nence with the explo­sive expan­sion of the Islam­ic State group (ISIS) across north­ern Iraq in 2014. Before the U.S. and its allies orga­nized to take on the rapid­ly expand­ing jihadist “caliphate,” Soleimani him­self was on the ground, ral­ly­ing and advis­ing the Iraqi and Kur­dish para­mil­i­taries that would do the vast major­i­ty of the hard fight­ing in the war.

Soleimani’s strate­gic genius and tal­ent for lan­guages made him a key asset in unit­ing a diverse range of eth­nic and polit­i­cal groups against the threat of ISIS.

And now he is dead.

The killing is the lat­est and most dra­mat­ic in a series of esca­la­tions in bal­loon­ing con­flict for pow­er and influ­ence that pits Iran against the U.S. and its region­al allies (such as Sau­di Ara­bia and Israel).

The con­flict – which began to accel­er­ate after Don­ald Trump abrupt­ly aban­doned the Iran nuclear deal – has seen both sides use proxy forces from Syr­ia, Iraq and Yemen, influ­enc­ing sand pro­long­ing con­flicts that have tak­en thou­sands of lives.

In recent months, ten­sions have ratch­eted up even fur­ther, as the two sides have tak­en increas­ing­ly bold mea­sures against each other.

In May and June of last year the U.S. and Sau­di Ara­bia blamed a series of attacks on oil tankers on Iran. In Sep­tem­ber, drones launched by an Iran­ian ally struck an oil refin­ery inside Sau­di Ara­bia. A month lat­er, an Iran­ian oil tanker was struck by a mis­sile off the Sau­di coast.

Towards the end of 2019, the sit­u­a­tion devolved further.

In mid-Novem­ber, a cache of Iran­ian intel­li­gence doc­u­ments was leaked to The Inter­cept, reveal­ing the broad scope of Iran­ian ambi­tions in the Mid­dle East and aggra­vat­ing lead­ers from both sides.

Decem­ber saw the U.S. encour­age Iraqis protest­ing against Iran­ian influ­ence, as well as anti-gov­­ern­­ment pro­test­ers inside Iran itself.

The last days of the year saw a cas­cad­ing series of escalations:

• an Iran­ian-backed mili­tia launched rock­ets which killed and injured Amer­i­cans on an Iraqi Army base; t
• he U.S. respond­ed with air strikes against the militia;
• the result­ing Iraqi casu­al­ties sparked protests which over­ran parts of the Amer­i­can Embassy in Bagh­dad.

The death of Gen­er­al Soleimani moves the sit­u­a­tion into a new par­a­digm. It is the first exam­ple of the U.S. direct­ly attack­ing a mem­ber of the Iran­ian armed forces. Iran’s Supreme Leader Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamanei (report­ed­ly a per­son­al friend of Soleimani) today vowed “force­ful revenge” against the U.S.

Iran’s Supreme Leader com­forts rel­a­tives of Gen­er­al Soleimani. The two men were report­ed­ly per­son­al friends. (Pho­to: Fars News Agency, repro­duced under Cre­ative Com­mons license)

Why is all this hap­pen­ing now?

Trump has repeat­ed­ly said that, going into an elec­tion year, a war with Iran would be “a pos­i­tive from a polit­i­cal stand­point” and “the only way to get elect­ed,” espe­cial­ly since the Com­man­der in Chief “has absolute­ly no abil­i­ty to negotiate.”

Except he wasn’t dis­cussing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion; Trump’s entire career has shown that that lev­el of self-aware­­ness is entire­ly beyond him. These state­ments are in fact from 2012, an elec­tion year in which Trump believed that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma would cyn­i­cal­ly start a war with Iran to improve his polit­i­cal fortunes.

Of course, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma did not go to war with Iran, instead opt­ing to bring togeth­er a coali­tion of inter­na­tion­al part­ners (includ­ing Chi­na, Rus­sia and the Euro­pean Union) for years of painstak­ing of nego­ti­a­tion with the Islam­ic Repub­lic over its nuclear pro­gram. This effort result­ed in the 2015 Joint Com­pre­hen­sive Plan of Action (JCPOA), com­mon­ly known as the Iran nuclear deal, one of the most impres­sive acts of inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy this century.

When Don­ald Trump took over in 2017, he began gut­ting all that work.

Pre­fer­ring to dom­i­nate the spot­light, he aban­doned Obama’s approach of mul­ti­lat­er­al con­sen­­sus-build­ing between expe­ri­enced diplo­mats, and tried to con­duct per­son­al diplo­ma­cy one-on-one with the world’s lead­ers, from his enor­­mous­­ly-hyped meet­ings with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to the Sin­is­ter Glow­ing Orb inci­dent with the dic­ta­tors of Sau­di Ara­bia and Egypt.

And of course, there is Trump’s mys­te­ri­ous deter­mi­na­tion to have nobody else in the room while meet­ing with Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin.

Trump’s fond­ness for dic­ta­tor­ships does not extend to Iran. From the begin­ning of his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign there were obvi­ous signs that he would take an aggres­sive pos­ture to the Islam­ic Repub­lic, from the role of Michael Fly­nn – a vir­u­lent­ly islam­o­pho­bic and bel­liger­ent for­mer gen­er­al – in his elec­tion team to his racist efforts to ban all Mus­lims from enter­ing the U.S., to the promi­nent role of neo­con­ser­v­a­tive, islam­o­pho­bic war hawks in his ever-chang­ing cabinet.

It makes per­fect sense that this esca­la­tion is hap­pen­ing at the start of what most Amer­i­cans hope is Trump’s last year in office. Trump made clear with his 2012 state­ments that he believes in the “ral­ly round the flag” phe­nom­e­non – the idea that vot­ers will sup­port an incum­bent leader in wartime. In Trump’s mind, what bet­ter way to win over vot­ers than to start a war?

Pres­i­dent Trump may be try­ing to cre­ate a “tough guy” image ahead of Novem­ber’s elec­tion. (Pho­to: Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, repro­duced under Cre­ative Com­mons license)

How­ev­er, the phe­nom­e­non Trump seems to be plac­ing his chips on doesn’t real­ly apply to the 2020 elec­tion. “Ral­ly­ing round the flag” cer­tain­ly boost­ed the pop­u­lar­i­ty of lead­ers like Har­ry S. Tru­man and John F. Kennedy, but it rarely helps mod­ern pres­i­dents. George W. Bush won the 2004 elec­tion in spite of the occu­pa­tion of Iraq  not because of it, and his father lost the 1992 elec­tion even though he had over­seen the deci­sive U.S. vic­to­ry in the 1991 Gulf War.

Don­ald Trump him­self won elec­tion in 2016 in part because Hillary Clin­ton was seen as com­plic­it in U.S. pol­i­cy towards con­flicts in Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere.

Suc­cess­ful pres­i­dents also use wartime expe­ri­ence to pro­mote the idea that they are calm under extreme pres­sure. Even the slight­est glance at Don­ald Trump’s Twit­ter account would dis­pel that notion, espe­cial­ly if he is faced by an expe­ri­enced states­man like for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

Speak­ing of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates, they have all con­demned Soleimani’s killing in strong terms. Biden com­pared the move to “toss­ing a stick of dyna­mite into a tin­der­box,” while oth­er can­di­dates called Trump “reck­less” and promised to do every­thing to avoid con­flict. Trump him­self, per­haps see­ing the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of his action, has along with his lack­eys already made the spu­ri­ous claim that Soleimani’s killing was intend­ed “to stop a war, not start one.”

How­ev­er, the Pres­i­dent may have already set an unstop­pable process into motion. Iran is deter­mined to find any way to avenge the death of a nation­al super­hero and with the Pen­ta­gon send­ing thou­sands of troops to the region, the Quds Force and its allies will have many oppor­tu­ni­ties to inflict harm on Americans.

In that event, Trump will not only have his deep-seat­ed inse­cu­ri­ties dri­ving him towards a mus­cu­lar response, he will doubt­less have to deal with pres­sure from the lead­ers of both Israel and Sau­di Ara­bia (who have both shown an abil­i­ty to influ­ence Trump) to strike at Iran – both coun­tries have a his­to­ry of using Amer­i­can pow­er to advance their own interests.

In the com­plex and frac­tured land­scape of the Mid­dle East, destruc­tive rec­i­p­ro­cal exchanges (“an eye for an eye”) can all too often descend into some­thing far worse, and the U.S. cur­rent­ly lacks a pres­i­dent who can nav­i­gate the dan­ger with any degree of calm­ness, self-restraint or even dig­ni­ty. It is now up to Con­gress and the Amer­i­can peo­ple to avoid anoth­er dis­as­trous war.