{"id":200336,"date":"2020-01-05T09:06:02","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T09:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=200336"},"modified":"2020-01-08T07:21:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T07:21:20","slug":"after-mossad-targeted-soleimani-trump-pulled-the-trigger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=200336","title":{"rendered":"After Mossad Targeted Soleimani, Trump Pulled the Trigger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jefferson Morley \u2013 Counter Punch Jan 3, 2020<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Last October Yossi Cohen, head of Israel\u2019s Mossad, spoke openly about assassinating Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force in Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe knows very well that his assassination is not impossible,\u201d Cohen said in an interview. <\/a>Soleimani had boasted that the Israel\u2019s tried to assassinate him in 2006 and failed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWith all due respect to his bluster,\u201d Cohen said, \u201che hasn\u2019t necessarily committed the mistake yet that would place him on the prestigious list of Mossad\u2019s assassination targets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIs Israel Targeting Iran\u2019s Top General for Assassination?<\/strong><\/span>\u201d<\/a> I asked on October 24. On Thursday, Soleimani was killed in an air strike ordered by President Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

Soleimani\u2019s convoy was struck by U.S. missiles as he left a meeting at Baghdad\u2019s airport amid anti-Iranian and anti-American demonstrations in Iraq. Supporters of an Iranian-backed militia had agreed to withdraw <\/a><\/strong><\/span>from the U.S. diplomatic compound in return for a promise that the government would allow a parliamentary vote on expelling 5,000 U.S. troops from the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Pentagon confirmed the military operation, which came \u201cat the direction of the president\u201d and was \u201caimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.\u201d The Pentagon claimed in a\u00a0statement<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0that Gen. Soleimani was \u201cactively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, under indictment for criminal charges, was the first and only national leader to support Trump\u2019s action, while claiming that that Trump acted entirely on his own.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJust as Israel has the right to self-defense, the United States has exactly the same right,\u201d Netanyahu told reporters <\/a><\/strong><\/span>in Greece. \u201cQassem Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of American citizens and other innocents, and he was planning more attacks.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed retaliation for the general\u2019s death,\u00a0\u00a0tweeting<\/strong> <\/a><\/span>that \u201cIran will take revenge for this heinous crime.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Capable Foe<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Soleimani was the most capable foe of the United States and Israel in the region. As chief of the Al-Quds force<\/strong><\/span>, <\/a>Soleimani was a master of Iran\u2019s asymmetric warfare strategy, using proxy forces to bleed Iran\u2019s enemies, while preserving the government\u2019s ability to plausibly deny involvement.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the U.S. invasions of Iraq, he funded and trained anti-American militias that launched low-level attacks on U.S. occupation forces, killing upward of 600 U.S. servicemen and generating pressure for U.S. withdrawal.<\/span><\/p>\n

In recent years, Soleimani led two successful Iranian military operations: the campaign to drive ISIS out of western Iraq in 2015 and the campaign to crush the jihadist forces opposed to Syria\u2019s Bashar al-Assad. The United States and Israel denounced Iran\u2019s role in both operations but could not prevent Iran from claiming victory.<\/span><\/p>\n

Soleimani had assumed a leading role in Iraqi politics in the past year. The anti-ISIS campaign relied on Iraqi militias, which the Iranians supported with money, weapons, and training. After ISIS was defeated, these militia maintained a prominent role in Iraq that many resented, leading to demonstrations and rioting. Soleimani was seeking to stabilize the government and channel the protests against the United States when he was killed.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the same period, Israel\u00a0pursued its program of targeted assassination. In the past decade Mossad assassinated<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0at least five Iranian nuclear scientists, according to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, in an effort to thwart Iran\u2019s nuclear program. Yossi Melman, another Israeli journalist, says that Mossad has assassinated 60-70 enemies <\/a><\/strong><\/span>outside of its borders since its founding in 1947, though none as prominent as Soleimani.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel also began striking at the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq last year. The United States did the same on December 29, killing 19 fighters<\/strong> <\/span><\/a>and prompting anti-American demonstrations as big as the anti-Iranian demonstrations of a month ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now the killing of Soleimani promises more unrest, if not open war. The idea that it will deter Iranian attacks is foolish.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis doesn\u2019t\u00a0mean<\/em>\u00a0war,\u201d wrote former Defense Department official Andrew Exum, \u201cIt will not\u00a0lead to<\/em>\u00a0war, and it doesn\u2019t\u00a0risk<\/em>\u00a0war. None of that.\u00a0It\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/a>is<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0war<\/strong><\/span>.<\/a>\u201c\u200b<\/span><\/p>\n

The Kuwaiti newspaper\u00a0Al-Jarida reported a year ago that Washington had given Israel the\u00a0green light to assassinate Soleimani<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. Al-Jarida,\u00a0which in recent years has broken exclusive stories from Israel, quoted a source in Jerusalem as saying that \u201cthere is an American-Israeli agreement\u201d that Soleimani is a \u201cthreat to the two countries\u2019 interests in the region.\u201d It is generally assumed in the Arab world that the paper is used as an Israeli platform for conveying messages to other countries in the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump has now fulfilled the wishes of Mossad. After proclaiming his intention to end America\u2019s \u201cstupid endless wars<\/strong><\/span>,\u201d<\/a> the president has effectively declared war on the largest country in the region in solidarity with Israel, the most unpopular country in the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n

This article first appeared on Jefferson Morley\u2019s\u00a0TheDeepStateBlog<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Jefferson Morley<\/em><\/strong>, author of The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, is the editor of The Deep State<\/span><\/a> blog. He is a member of the Truth & Reconciliation Committee<\/a><\/span>, founded to reopen the investigations of the assassination of JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump has now fulfilled the wishes of Mossad. After proclaiming his intention to end America\u2019s \u201cstupid endless wars,\u201d he has effectively declared war on Iran<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":191278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,51,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Iran","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200336"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200339,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200336\/revisions\/200339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/191278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}