Soleimani’s Assassination: Has the Promise to Zeinab been fulfilled?

After the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani went to meet his lachrymose daughter Zeinab, she asked a simple question: who will avenge my father’s death? Rouhani promptly replied, “We would.”

Zeinab, who led millions of grieving Iranians who were shouting slogans like “ death to America” and “death to Israel”, said: “Crazy Trump, don’t think it is all over after my father’s martyrdom.”

Iranians are patient people who take their time to respond to a slight. An Indian diplomat, while recounting his view of the Iranians, claimed that they would even preserve the rock that was hurled at them by an adversary to throwback later. The Iranian government did not wait to avenge Soleimani’s killing. A few hours after his battered body was buried at his birthplace in Kerman, a dozen missiles were fired at US-controlled bases in Erbil, Iraq.

By hitting at these two bases, the Iranians were not just wreaking vengeance for the murder of their favorite son, who left even the leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, in tears, but also conveyed a message to the US that here on they cannot stay in Iraq anymore — a fact that was made amply clear in a resolution that the Iraqi Parliament passed after Soleimani’s illegal killing.

Iran, which is the first country to attack a US military base after the Vietnam War, hit the targets in Erbil precisely, but like the Indian airforce strike at Balakot in Pakistan, left a contested claim on casualties. Iranian sources quietly revealed to a friendly media that they killed 80 US soldiers, but US President Donald Trump grandly announced that no one was killed as the US army’s early warning systems (EWS) worked well. Diplomatic sources claim that here EWS means an advance warning by intermediaries seeking peace between the two countries so as to hide the soldiers before the missiles came raining in.

After the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani went to meet his lachrymose daughter Zeinab, she asked a simple question: who will avenge my father’s death? Rouhani promptly replied, “We would.”

Iran is facing severe economic distress and they did not want a war that could imperil the precious Persian civilization that has influenced South Asia and the world over centuries. The big question is that will this contested claim after the missile strike that found its target, but caused no bloodshed, satisfy Zeinab and the millions of Iranians and Iraqis who want revenge against the US?

Informed sources claim that Qasem Soleimani, who has done joint ops with Americans against Daesh, was also a key obstacle when it came to any rapprochement with Washington. He was assassinated, these sources claim, to kick-start talks between the two countries.

These conspiracy theories are gaining credibility due to the manner in which Qasem was killed. Though a fighter who never shied away from being at the frontline with his men, he took his precautions. His intel was fed by a vast Shia network in diverse countries and those who found support from him in their fight against the Islamic State or Israel. Due to this, he seldom landed at commercial airports as he did in the case of his fateful trip to Baghdad.

It seems, these sources said, he was given immunity as he was on a diplomatic mission. Even the Iraqi PM has said that he was carrying a message of peace and he was to meet US officials also – perhaps covertly. It was at this juncture that he was betrayed.

Immediately after his death, moves have picked up momentum – including Pakistan stepping in to talk with both Iran and the US. Even Saudi Arabia does not want war and has sent emissaries to prevent further escalation. The big question is whether Iran will be satisfied by its faux attack or wait for the right moment?

Trump has conveyed amply that he would not be spending too much in West Asia as his country has become self-sufficient in oil and does not want to fund the security of the region. He has hinted in his speech that NATO forces will be brought into the Gulf. If Trump goes through these promises that allow withdrawal of forces, then Iran would not be unhappy. It would allow Russia and China to leaven the evolving trilateral that recently conducted a naval exercise in the Sea of Oman – a reason for anxiety for the US, Israel, and India.

Indeed, India cannot stay away from the happenings in Iran as its first overseas investment, Chabahar, is in a West Asian country. Trump dragged India as the reason for this extreme action when he claimed that the Iranians were behind terror plots in New Delhi. Besides the attack on an Israeli diplomat in Delhi in 2013, there have been no suggestions of any terror links. On the contrary, India’s ties with Iran have improved in recent times.

Informed sources claim that Qasem Soleimani, who has done joint ops with Americans against Daesh, was also a key obstacle when it came to any rapprochement with Washington. He was assassinated, these sources claim, to kick-start talks between the two countries.

Soleimani was well known in India, had visited it a few times and worked with Indian security agencies in Afghanistan. As reported elsewhere, even the US had collaborated with the Quds force chief to engage with the Taliban and to counter the Islamic State threat.

In Afghanistan, both the US and New Delhi realize that without the support of Iran and its vast network of Hazaras, it may be difficult to bring peace in this land-locked country. Thousands of these Shia Hazaras are engaged and trained by the Quds force and serve as a military counterpoint to the expanding Islamic State of Khorasan. Tacitly, the US and Iran strategically converge on the method to be deployed to control the Wahhabi terrorism that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had been using to gain strategic depth in Afghanistan.

It may seem like a contradiction, but the Barack Obama administration in the US encouraged India to invest in Iran’s Southeastern port of Chabahar. India signed the Chabahar agreement in 2016. Later, Trump also exempted the port from sanctions suggesting a strategic convergence on how the Afghanistan issue will be settled that would allow US troops to withdraw from this battle-ravaged country.

This engagement with Iran through Chabahar has been severely resented by Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, as it was perceived as an opportunity for Tehran to enlarge its presence in Central Asia and South Asia and regain its lost influence. The arrest of Kulbhushan Jadhav by Pakistan’s ISI who worked from Chabahar was seen as a retaliation against India’s investment in this port.

It seems that Afghanistan may be Iran’s next theatre of resistance against the US and India may be compelled to take sides as it has majorly invested in Chabahar.

Some have justifiably criticized India seeking quiet approval from the US before embarking on investing in Chabahar, which is located in the Sea of Oman and faraway from the more tumultuous Strait of Hormuz, which is a 21 km narrow waterway through which one-third of seaborne oil or 21 million barrels of oil passes every day. Any conflagration between the US and Iran could shut down the Strait and create a global oil crisis. India could be paralyzed if that happens.

It was on December 22, 2019, that India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar traveled to Tehran with the good news that suggested that the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, had given permission to fast track Chabahar. Meanwhile, Tehran had begun to make moves to end its isolation and explore more purposefully a newly emerging global order by going ahead with a trilateral naval exercise with China and Russia with Chabahar as a hub. Iran alleges that the US tried to sabotage this trilateral exercise in which Soleimani played an important role.

The exercise could change the balance of power in the region. Tehran is sending a message to New Delhi: it is no longer really interested or enamored of the close ties India has with the US and is ready to withdraw the privileges that it had extended to New Delhi to keep Islamabad in check-in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The upcoming visit of Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to Delhi would be interesting from this perspective. Indeed, it seems that Afghanistan may be Iran’s next theatre of resistance against the US and India may be compelled to take sides as it has majorly invested in Chabahar.