Trump's New Year killing of Soleimani finally blows up the fake Russiagate narrative

Trump’s ordered assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds force, not only means a dangerous escalation of tensions with Iran, but also ends fiction that Russia was controlling him.

Just imagine….. If Iran’s President Rouhani had authorised a New Year drone strike on General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, as he was being driven to the airport in Canada.

Would anyone even be suggesting that the attack was done in ‘self-defense’? But that’s exactly the line we’re being fed now about the killing of Qasem Soleimani.

The undeniable truth is that for all his posthumous neocon demonization as the most evil man on the planet, the silver-haired Soleimani played a key role in the defeat of the barbaric death-cult ISIS and other al-Qaeda affiliates in the Middle East. He helped mastermind secular, Christian-protecting, Syria’s against-the-odds survival in the face of a ferocious onslaught by some of the most powerful countries in the world, who unleashed an alphabet soup of jihadist proxies and death squads to try and achieve a violent ‘regime change’. Soleimani’s reward for fighting the groups that have targeted western civilians around the globe- including American citizens on 9-11, and British tourists in Tunisia in 2015, was to be blown up right at the start of 2020. Remind me again, who are the terrorists here?

The airwaves are full of talk about the likelihood of a war on Iran, but the fact is that hostilities have already started. Trump provocatively pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal, boasted that his new sanctions on Iran were ‘the highest ever imposed on a country,’ and now has ordered the killing of a man regarded by many as the most powerful figure in the country. Soleimani threatened US forces in Iraq we are told, by means of a justification. But what are US forces doing in Iraq in the first place? We’re meant to forget that they came there at the head of an illegal invasion force in 2003 which was supposed to be about getting rid of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction which didn‘t actually exist. What right did the US and its allies have to invade Iraq seventeen years ago? Absolutely none, under international law. But Iraqi WMDs was not the only deception. Far from it.

We’ve been told (ad nauseum) the past few years that Donald Trump was under the control of Putin. That he was a de facto Russian agent. A marionette of Moscow.

At least now, not even the most credulous inhabitant of planet Earth will believe that one. Iran is a key Middle Eastern ally of Russia, an important strategic partner. By assassinating Soleimani and putting us on a military collision course with Tehran, Trump is not only menacing the Islamic Republic, he is poking the Russian bear in the chest, back and face too. Today’s events, for anyone who still had any doubts, shows that the foreign country which have the greatest influence in US politics is not Russia, but Israel (and after Israel, Saudi Arabia).

The killing of Soleimani — and the strong likelihood of Iranian retaliation against US targets, makes no sense from a US viewpoint, but it makes plenty of sense from an Israeli one. The Iranian general has had his card marked for a long time by Tel Aviv. The Jerusalem Post notes that the Quds supremo „was a key part of Iran’s support for Hezbollah during the 2006 war with Israel“. He also stressed Iran’s continuing support for the Palestinians.

If you were a staunch Zionist there’s probably no one in the world you’d want out of the way more than Soleimani. But here’s a great truth which is rarely if ever spoken in US public discourse, or indeed in Britain: Israel’s priorities (smashing the Iran-Syrian-Hezbollah axis- and eliminating leading figures from those countries/movements), actually weakens the broader fight against radical Islamist terror groups. If a ‘War on Terror’ was really being fought, you wouldn’t be droning those who have done the most to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, would you? But that’s what Donald Trump is doing. All the time liberals were getting into a strop over non-existent ‘Russian interference,’ Israel and its lobby were pushing for tougher action against Iran, the strongest regional foe of ISIS and al-Qaeda.

In November 2011, Trump went on Twitter to ‘predict’ that President Obama would start a war with Iran to get re-elected.

But Obama didn’t. Not only that, but the Obama administration twice discouraged Israel from going ahead with plans to kill Soleimani when they had the opportunity. Trump is undoubtedly the most pro-Israel President America has ever had. That means the dangers of a major conflagration breaking out in 2020 are greatly increased, for all the pre-election rhetoric about ending Middle Eastern wars.

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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.