Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

Overview

On January 3, 2020, a United States drone strike near the international airport in Baghdad, Iraq, killed Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). President Donald Trump approved the operation. It removed a central figure in the Iranian regime’s external military operations and a senior Iraqi militia leader who worked closely with him.

Soleimani had directed the Quds Force’s relationships with armed groups across the region. His death dealt a strategic setback to the regime’s ability to coordinate those groups through one commander, but it did not end their activity or Tehran’s support. In the days that followed, the Iranian regime launched ballistic missiles at Iraqi bases housing American forces, while armed factions in Iraq pressed for the withdrawal of United States troops. The confrontation raised the risk of a wider war without making one inevitable.

The killing also became a turning point in Iraqi politics. Soleimani had long pursued the departure of American forces from Iraq. After his death, Iraq’s parliament passed a nonbinding resolution demanding their withdrawal, amid pressure from militia factions. Nearly half its members were absent for the vote. The resolution gave political force to a goal Soleimani had pursued while he was alive, even as his death weakened the centralized direction he had provided to the Iranian regime’s network.

Background

The Quds Force conducts the IRGC’s operations beyond Iran. Under Soleimani, it cultivated armed partners and allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. These relationships gave the Iranian regime means to exert influence outside its borders through local forces. Soleimani was both a commander and a political intermediary: his personal ties helped connect Tehran’s priorities to militia leadership and to governments with which the regime sought influence. His work in Iraq placed him at the center of disputes over the country’s security and over the continued presence of American troops.

Al-Muhandis held a senior position in the PMF and was a leading figure in Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia aligned with Iran. His position linked a formal Iraqi security structure to armed factions closely connected to the Quds Force. Soleimani’s relationship with such groups helped the Iranian regime pursue regional objectives while complicating the Iraqi government’s control over armed activity on its territory. The effort to drive American forces out of Iraq was a longstanding priority for Soleimani and his militia partners.

Before the strike, attacks on coalition bases in Iraq had killed and wounded American and Iraqi personnel. The United States government held Soleimani responsible for orchestrating recent attacks and for approving the assault on its embassy compound in Baghdad. It also said he was developing further attacks on American personnel. The decision to kill him therefore arose from an immediate security confrontation as well as a broader American aim: to weaken the Iranian regime’s regional operations and demonstrate willingness to respond militarily to attacks on United States interests.

Washington’s decision departed from the regime’s expectation that the United States would avoid direct military retaliation against so senior an Iranian commander. It carried a substantial danger of escalation. Yet escalation depended on decisions by both governments, and Iran’s leadership had strong reasons to avoid an all-out war over the death of one commander, however powerful he had been. That distinction shaped the first days of the crisis, when both direct retaliation and efforts to limit a broader conflict became visible.

The attack

Soleimani arrived in Baghdad in the early hours of January 3, 2020. American personnel traced him and the phone he was using to the city. Intelligence cooperation with Israel contributed to the effort to locate him: Israel shared three phone numbers used by Soleimani with American intelligence, and American special operations liaisons in Tel Aviv worked with Israeli counterparts to track his phone patterns. This assistance formed part of the tracking that preceded the American decision to strike.

American drones fired Hellfire missiles near Baghdad International Airport, killing Soleimani and al-Muhandis together with others traveling with them. Soleimani was commander of the IRGC Quds Force at the time of his death; al-Muhandis was deputy commander of the PMF. Their simultaneous deaths removed two men who connected the Iranian regime’s regional command to powerful Iraqi armed factions. The operation took place on Iraqi soil, a fact that immediately made the authority and future presence of American forces in Iraq matters of intense political dispute.

The strike caught the Iranian regime off guard. It showed that Washington was prepared to target the head of the Quds Force directly after attacks involving regime-aligned groups. It also created a difficult decision for Tehran: whether to retaliate against American forces, how strongly to do so and how to avoid a conflict that could threaten the regime’s wider interests. Those questions remained unresolved in the hours after the killing, as Iranian leaders promised a response and American forces prepared for possible attacks.

Victims

Soleimani was the strike’s principal target. As Quds Force commander, he had overseen the Iranian regime’s external relationships with armed allies and had become closely identified with its campaigns in Iraq and Syria. He had supported Bashar al-Assad’s government during the Syrian civil war; Assad praised that role after his death. Soleimani’s importance lay partly in his command authority and partly in relationships built across separate arenas. Losing him therefore affected how the regime managed its regional network, even though the organizations within that network continued to operate.

Al-Muhandis was another central figure killed in the strike. His roles in the PMF and Kata’ib Hezbollah made him a consequential intermediary between Iraqi militia factions and the Iranian regime. His death intensified the reaction among those factions and became part of their campaign against the American military presence. In April 2020, Kata’ib Hezbollah announced that it had agreed with Iraqi prime minister-designate Mustafa al-Kazimi to form a committee examining the deaths of both Soleimani and al-Muhandis. The militia had opposed al-Kazimi’s nomination and accused him of involvement in their killing.

The deaths had different political meanings to different Iraqis. Regime-aligned militias treated Soleimani and al-Muhandis as leaders to be avenged, while some Iraqis who opposed Iranian influence welcomed Soleimani’s removal. The divergence reflected Soleimani’s deep involvement in Iraqi affairs and the divisions over militia power, national authority and foreign forces. It also limited any claim that one official reaction represented Iraq as a whole.

Perpetrators and responsibility

United States forces carried out the strike under President Trump’s authority. The American government described the operation as a defensive response to threats against its personnel. It identified Soleimani as the organizer of attacks on coalition bases, including an attack in December 2019, and connected him to the assault on the United States embassy compound in Baghdad. The operation aimed both to stop further attacks and to show that Washington would respond directly to provocations by the Iranian regime and its armed partners.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi condemned the strike as a violation of the terms governing the presence of American forces in Iraq. Russian officials also condemned it; Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called it a violation of international norms. Russian opposition politician Leonid Gozman defended Soleimani’s killing, citing his responsibility for deaths and threats against other states. These responses illustrated how assessments of the strike turned on both the threats associated with Soleimani’s activities and objections to an American attack carried out in Iraq.

The operation’s immediate security rationale did not settle the dispute over its consequences. Critics feared an expanding war, while supporters regarded the removal of the Quds Force commander as a necessary response to attacks on American personnel. The Iranian regime had the capacity to retaliate through its own forces and through armed allies, but an all-out war was not an automatic consequence of the strike. Subsequent events showed direct Iranian retaliation alongside continued militia activity, rather than an immediate full-scale conflict between the United States and Iran.

Response

In the early hours of January 8 in Iraq, following launches from Iran on January 7, the IRGC fired ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases housing American forces. The targets included Ayn al-Assad air base in western Iraq. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said the regime had notified Iraq’s government and armed forces before the attack. Initial reports of no American casualties gave way to reports that eleven American soldiers had been injured. The missile strike was the regime’s most direct military response to Soleimani’s death in the immediate crisis.

Iranian leaders also made the removal of American forces a political objective. On January 14, President Hassan Rouhani pledged that the regime would remember Soleimani’s killing and called for an end to the American military presence in the region. Iranian security official Ali Shamkhani likewise made that removal a priority. In Iraq, militia factions pressured parliament over a withdrawal resolution. Parliament’s vote was nonbinding, and nearly half its members were absent, but it increased pressure on the Iraqi government and on the United States-led mission. Regime-aligned militias continued attacks on American targets in Iraq after the strike to advance the same goal.

Al-Kazimi’s nomination as Iraqi prime minister became entangled with these disputes. Kata’ib Hezbollah opposed him and accused him of involvement in the killing, then announced an agreement to form a committee to examine the deaths. The sequence showed how the assassination remained a live issue in negotiations over Iraqi leadership months after the missiles were fired. It also showed that militia responses extended beyond immediate retaliation to attempts to shape Iraq’s political decisions and the future of foreign troops.

Succession within the Quds Force came quickly. Esmail Qa’ani succeeded Soleimani hours after the strike and was officially appointed commander on January 20, 2020. At his swearing-in ceremony, he promised revenge. IRGC commander Hossein Salami appointed Seyyed Mohammad Hossein Zadeh Hejazi deputy commander after Qa’ani’s promotion. Hejazi had overseen efforts to improve the precision of the missile arsenal of Hezbollah, the terrorist organization in Lebanon. The appointments preserved an experienced command structure, though no successor could immediately reproduce Soleimani’s personal network of relationships.

The regime continued supporting its regional allies. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met Assad in Syria on April 20, 2020, and pledged continued support after Soleimani’s death. Iranian officials repeated in June that the killing had not changed policy toward Syria. Under Qa’ani, the Quds Force adopted more covert methods than it had used under Soleimani, while continuing regional activity. United States Central Command chief Kenneth McKenzie assessed that Soleimani’s death weakened Tehran’s control over armed groups threatening American forces in Iraq. The longer-term effect was a less centralized system of direction, not the disappearance of the regime’s armed network. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gained influence in Tehran after Soleimani’s death.

Remembrance

The Iranian regime made Soleimani’s death an enduring political cause. Rouhani’s January pledge to remember the killing, Qa’ani’s promise of revenge and repeated demands for an American withdrawal tied his memory to continuing policy. The January missile attack gave that response a direct military form; subsequent militia pressure in Iraq and the Quds Force’s continued operations carried it into the following months. Iranian leaders invoked Soleimani while affirming that support for allies in Syria and elsewhere would continue.

In Iraq, remembrance was bound to al-Muhandis as well as Soleimani. Kata’ib Hezbollah’s proposed committee addressed both deaths, and militia factions used the killings to reinforce demands that American troops leave. For opponents of Iranian influence in Iraq, Soleimani’s death had a different meaning. Those opposing reactions remained part of the event’s legacy. The strike removed a commander who had exercised unusual influence across the Iranian regime’s regional network, while the regime, its allies and its opponents continued to contest the future of Iraq and the American presence there.