Through the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani, Iran\u2019s notorious commander of the Quds Force \u2014 the Revolutionary Guard Corps\u2019 powerful foreign-operations arm \u2014 along with Iran\u2019s main military man in Iraq, Abu-Mahdi Muhandis, the U.S. has clipped the wings of Iran\u2019s expansionist regional policies. By the same token, this dramatic move has opened a Pandora\u2019s box for the U.S.\u2013Iran conflict amid a tumultuous geopolitical moment in the region.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, took the extraordinary step of attending a meeting of the Supreme National Security Council for the first time ever to address the emergency in Tehran. The rulers in the Islamic Republic, for understandable reasons, are in a state of shock following this unparalleled blow.<\/p>\n
There has barely been a superlative not used to describe Soleimani \u2014 from a world-renowned master strategist to a prophet-like figure led by pure devotion to the ideals of the Islamic Revolution. He was a cult hero among the IRGC and its regional Shia militias, as well as a key confidante of Khamenei.<\/p>\n
Soleimani was the personification of the Islamic Republic\u2019s revered and loathed regional policies, and served as a de facto leader in carrying it out. In the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, he was the main architect behind the expansion of Iranian regional influence and power, working to fill the vacuum created by the war. As Iran was deprived of conventional military capability as a result of sanctions, Soleimani built and emboldened Iran\u2019s asymmetric power built on a regional network of proxies and allies \u2014 known to Tehran and its allies as the \u201cAxis of Resistance.\u201d He was thus revered by his friends and foes alike, even among senior American and Israeli military strategists. As a result of his strategy centered on the idea that offense is the best defense, Iran emerged as the region\u2019s indispensable power. In Syria, it was Soleimani who helped the embattled Bashar al-Assad survive his own Arab Spring, through a reckless and bloody campaign against regime opponents.<\/p>\n
The other high-profile target killed in Friday\u2019s airstrikes, Soleimani\u2019s man in Iraq,\u00a0Muhandis<\/a>, was the deputy but de facto commander of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU, or al-Hashd al-Shaabi) \u2013 the conglomerate of Shia militias developed by Soleimani \u2013 and the commander of its most notorious component Kata\u2019ib Hizbollah (KH). As such, Muhandis was the key military confidant of Tehran. Spending most of his adult life in Iran, he began working with the IRGC during the Iran\u2013Iraq War and returned to Iraq in 2003 after Saddam Hussein was toppled. KH became Iran\u2019s most effective proxy militia.<\/p>\n