The drone attack on Iranian General Qasem Soleimani that took his life has made ISIS very happy, as they believe it was an act of “divine intervention” that killed the militia leader who was influential in defeating the Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
No longer having to worry about Soleimani hunting them, ISIS believes they can regain their foothold in the Middle East after losing significant ground in recent years.
Thread: In the editorial of its weekly paper #AlNaba, #ISIS welcomes the death of #Soleimani in a US drone strike, but is careful not to openly credit the US for his demise but portrays it as an act of God to support IS and Muslims more broadly. pic.twitter.com/6bNXiMyOcX
— Mina Al-Lami (@Minalami) January 10, 2020
While the western media has portrayed Soleimani as a terrorist mastermind because of his close association with Iran, he actually fought against America’s worst enemies regularly throughout the Middle East while he was alive.
Soleimani fought the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but was particularly influential and effective in repelling ISIS forces as they were building momentum behind their brutal caliphate. He was responsible for some of the greatest victories against ISIS.
The public record shows that Soleimani’s militias fought side-by-side with U.S. forces in 2014 to beat back the Islamic State and help save Western Civilization:
“While the Syrian Civil War represented a nadir of American-Iranian relations, with America-backed militias fighting Iranian-backed militias, the rise of ISIS provided a marriage of convenience. Alongside ISIS’ anti-American slant, according to Adib-Moghaddam, the terror group also had a “virulently racist anti-Iranian, anti-Shia agenda.”
Perhaps no military action better displayed Soleimani’s willingness to collaborate with the United States than the September 2014 Siege of Amirli, a small Shiite Turkmen town in Iraq. Fearing that ISIS intended to commit genocide, Iran and American-backed forces, with direct air support from both countries, lifted the siege in what was to turn out to be one of ISIS’s most stinging defeats. The Siege of Amirli was just one instance of Iranian-American collaboration to fight ISIS, all of which took place alongside the warming of relations between the two countries before the signing of the 2015 nuclear agreement. But this de facto alliance had its limits. Adib-Moghaddam opined that the “politics of the conflict made it largely impossible for the two countries to integrate their strategic preferences into a coordinated approach.”
While Trump has sought the lion’s share of the credit for destroying ISIS, Adib-Moghaddam says it was Iran, along with Russian air power and Kurdish forces, that “dealt the decisive blows.” And Soleimani was the mastermind behind it. “Irrespective of the politics and biography of the man, the killing of Soleimani made the world that much more dangerous to live in,” says Adib-Moghaddam, “and this insecurity is the real bond that binds common Iranians and Americans together and which should mobilize them as a part of a global movement against war, both here and there.”‘
While Soleimani was far from a saint, his death may embolden some of the worst terrorists in the Middle East. ISIS forces are certainly breathing a sigh of relief because of Soleimani’s abrupt and unexpected assassination at the hands of President Donald Trump.
