At the specific direction of the erratic and unhinged U.S. president, Donald Trump, the United States assassinated a top leader of another nation. The murder of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani is shocking for a variety of reasons; some, but not all of them, are described here.

• The U.S. proclaimed that there was an ‘imminent threat’ to the lives of U.S. citizens, and that the general’s assassination saved hundreds of people. However, no U.S. spokesman could or would detail what that threat was. So the real purpose of this assassination can only be guessed.
• General Soleimani has been called a terrorist by the U.S. government, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, of which he was a leader, is so designated by the United States. Governmental officials accuse him of interfering in the internal affairs of other nations, sometimes violently, and influencing foreign governments and their people towards more reliance on Iran. Is this not exact;u what the United States does? The CIA is forever ‘covertly’ overthrowing the governments of other nations. The U.S. currently supports foreign terrorists seeking the overthrow of the Syrian government. Sanctions against Venezuela, with the goal of ‘regime change’, are causing severe hardships there. A recent United Nations study indicated that at least a third of Afghanis are in need of urgent humanitarian aid, and millions suffer from food insecurity, a direct result of the U.S. war against that nation, which has now entered its nineteenth year. Palestine suffers under brutal occupation, financed by the United States.

It must be remembered that the U.S. has been at war for at least 223 of its bloody and violent 240-year history. Most of those wars have been invasions, sometimes under the guise of ‘humanitarian assistance’, which has seldom accomplished anything for the people being ‘assisted’. Iran has not invaded another country since 1798.

• Donald Trump & Co. predicted that Iranians would be dancing in the street with joy over the death of General Soleimani. However, the outpouring of grief that resulted dwarfed any limited number of people who may have been pleased by this crime. In Tehran alone, a city of 8 million, an estimated 6 million people poured into the streets to pay their last respects to the general.
• Following the assassination, U.S. citizens were immediately urged to leave Iraq, where the crime occurred. Additional U.S. soldiers/terrorists were dispatched to the Middle East. Apartheid Israel evacuated some popular resorts. This heightened alert and expanded military presence give the lie to any thought about protecting ‘national security’.
• Lastly, it has been said that General Soleimani was on a peace mission, that Iran and Saudi Arabia were working together to reduce tensions between them. This, of course, would be unacceptable to Donald Trump. Saudi Arabia is the U.S.’s largest purchaser of weapons, and for that to continue, tensions and threats must remain high. No, anyone attempting to bring peace to the Middle East, especially if it means reducing Saudi Arabia’s perceived threats, must be eliminated.

All in all, this assassination does not seem to have been a good idea. Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has said that the Council has developed 13 retaliation scenarios. Trump has threatened to commit additional war crimes if Iran retaliates. He said the U.S. will bomb important Iranian cultural sights. More evidence that the U.S. holds international law in complete disdain.

Trump has said he will do this ‘if’ Iran retaliates. Are he and his advisors so naïve as to believe that they could assassinate a major political and military leader of a large and powerful nation, without the risk of retaliation? Imagine, if you will, that, say, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were to be assassinated by Russia.  Can you see U.S. government spokesmen strongly condemning this action, recalling the Russian ambassador, and threatening to curtail trade with Russia, and leaving it at that? Not on this planet. Russia could expect to be carpet bombed.

So one must ask why it is that Trump and the cadre of yes-men (male and female) with which he surrounds himself believed that the assassination of General Soleimani would bring no response.

One immediate response was Iran’s jettisoning of whatever was left of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was working satisfactorily for all parties until Trump violated it and threatened the U.S.’s European allies with sanctions if they adhered to it. German government spokespeople have said they are troubled by this Iranian decision. Has reality fled from all heads of government? Why, oh why should Iran maintain its part of the agreement, when it receives no benefits by doing so? And shouldn’t Germany be more concerned about the U.S., which has run amok on the world stage for over two centuries, and its belief that it can kill any world leader it doesn’t like?

Iran will act, but unlike the U.S., its leaders will assess the options and carefully select the one that best suits Iran’s purposes. The U.S., like some deranged individual who enters a school and starts shooting, does not have ‘leaders’ who are able to see the basic relationship of actions to consequences; who have a grasp of world history, or who understand that few people outside of U.S. borders hold the U.S. in the lofty esteem that its leaders do, or who believe that it is a shining beacon on a hill. Rather, they recognize the hypocrisy of U.S. officials who proclaim with a straight face that Iran is the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism, while the U.S. is currently at war in Afghanistan, is actively supporting terrorists working against the legitimate governments of Syria and Venezuela, and is sanctioning several nations because their people want to determine their own method of governance. They recognize that U.S. officials have no interest in understanding different cultures; those officials only want to force U.S.-style democracy, which is really an oligarchy, onto anyone who doesn’t follow U.S. dictates. They hope that their nation can avoid coming to the unwanted attention of the U.S.

How ever Iran chooses to respond, and respond it will, we can expect to see Trump overreact in the most destructive ways possible. This writer does not think he has seen the world so close to a major, worldwide war at any point in his life as he sees now. And like all wars, this one could still be prevented. But with the world’s largest bully having his finger on the trigger of World War III, with no one to restrain him, there is little hope that this pending catastrophe can be prevented.

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