The real reason for the assassination of Soleimani and the miscalculations

• Written by Nasser Kandil,

The US President Donald Trump provided an explanation for the assassination of the Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, he linked it with Soleimani’s plan to target four American embassies in the region. Despite the inability of Trump, his National Security Adviser, and the Secretary of State to present any intelligence proof to the Congress about the operation, the Minister of Defense Mike Espla was forced to deny the information in the statement of yesterday. Al Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah described him with a liar regarding the accusation, because he confirmed as he knows that these justifications related to the assassination are not true.
Politically reading, the most prominent spokesman of the axis of resistance, the leader of the resistance linked the assassination to the American failure in the region on all aspects and fronts, since nothing has left to Trump after the field and the political failure which means the inability to stabilize in any site or to open the door for negotiation but to play on the edge of abyss through a blow on which he bets to weaken Iran’s prestige and the resistance axis and to confuse the resistance forces and their structures in the different conflict areas, because Soleimani is the center of coordination and leadership. Therefore the bet was in order to spread panic and to pave the way for the desired negotiation. Many American resources talked about that many American officials have a bet on the popular isolation from which the regime of Iran and the resisting forces especially in Lebanon and Iraq suffer in the light of the popular movements resulting from the financial crisis due to the American sanctions. The bet on the assassination was to create a situation that benefits from this isolation through escalating the political divisions that lead to new internal balances in these arenas.
Despite the truth in the two readings, the timing which is adjusted in the beginning of the presidential term will remain related to security considerations that must be interpreted. Maybe the fact that the assassination in Iraq helps to explain; in Iraq the Americans feel that they are not stable after the tremendous progress in the Iraqi-Chinese economic cooperation accomplished by the government of Adel Abdul Mahdi which resigned under American pressure and the attempt to replace it have not succeeded yet, and after the expansion of the military positioning of the Popular Crowd on the Syrian-Iraqi borders in Al Qaem in Boukamal region not to ensure the land line between Iraq and Syria after it was an American redline, but rather to ensure a background for the military front which will open against the Americans in the eastern of Syria by the Syrian resisting units that are in preparation for such a mission; the battle of ousting the Americans from Syria waiting for the end of the battle of liberating Idlib which will be followed inevitably by the battle of their ousting from Iraq. The moral and the material symbol of the interrelationship between these battles and their leaderships is the Commander Soleimani, just for that the deterrent message to overlook or to postpone it practically was the assassination of Soleimani.
The real question facing President Trump after his lie about the targeted embassies was exposed and the clarity of his preemptive operation related to extending the presence of the American troops in Syria and Iraq and his fear from a battle before his presidential elections is whether the assassination operation made that battle close or far. It is a not a secret that the slogan adopted by the resistance axis and which Al Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah reassured as a path is that the ousting of the American troops from the region especially from Syria and Iraq is the fair retribution for the crime of assassination. This linkage stems from an equation that the goal which Soleimani was trying to achieve is only the appropriate response to the assassination. It became clear that this goal has the momentum, dash, readiness, and legitimacy not all of which were available in that strength before the assassination. Therefore, Trump has to deal with the expected inevitable outcome which is the moment of departure especially before the US elections through searching for an appropriate exit vertically because the return in coffins is postponed but under preparation as Al Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said.
Translated by Lina Shehadeh,