Major General Qassem Soleimani
Philip Kowalski, OZY: Soleimani and the United States Worked Together to Beat ISIS
Before Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed by a drone strike outside Baghdad’s international airport in the early hours last Friday, he was hardly a household name in the United States. The White House — which had ordered the killing — immediately set about framing the assassination along the same lines as the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi a few months previously, or that of Osama bin Laden in 2011. America had just defeated one of its greatest enemies, officials said.
But that Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force — the country’s elite external military wing — was a relatively unknown figure among the American public not only attests to his skill as an officer of clandestine warfare, but also the extremely complicated relationship he had with the United States. Just a few years earlier, Soleimani had been an indispensable figure in the fight against the Taliban and ISIS.
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WNU Editor: The war against ISIS did bring about some unique alliances.
