The US carried out a de-facto act of war against Iran after assassinating Major General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force in Baghdad last night, but despite the doomsday scenarios that many in Alt-Media are speculating that this will lead to, the commencement of World War III is extremely unlikely for several reasons.
The "Decapitation Strike" That Shook The World
Trump's approval of the US' assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force in Baghdad last night amounts to a de-facto act of war against Iran, but it wasn't the decision of a "madman" or someone whose permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies ("deep state") didn't think this completely through. Rather, it was a premeditated "decapitation strike" carried out to prove the US' conventional "escalation dominance" in its regional proxy war with Iran, one which America surely knows will elicit a kinetic response of some sort from the Islamic Republic but which the Pentagon and its regional allies are prepared for. Contrary to the narrative bandied about in Alt-Media, the US didn't "surrender" the Mideast to Russia and Iran in recent years (who, to be clear, are not "allies", but anti-terrorist "partners of convenience" in Syria) despite some regional setbacks to its grand strategy, but merely adjusted the nature through which it intends to restore its influence there.
Background Context
Instead of continuing to waste hundreds of millions of dollars a day funding the counterproductive 100,000-strong occupation of Iraq and potentially exposing that many troops ("sitting ducks") to retaliatory attacks, it decided to scale down its conventional presence there and replace it with highly trained Marines and special forces that operate with the support of targeted missile strikes. It was one such strike earlier in the week against the Popular Mobilization Units' (PMU) Kataib Hezbollah, which is integrated into the Iraqi Armed Forces, that provoked the group's supporters (allegedly with the coordination of the IRGC according to the US) into besieging the American Embassy in Baghdad. Trump responded by immediately dispatching troops to the world's largest diplomatic facility and bragging on Twitter that this was his "anti-Benghazi" moment in a clear swipe at Obama's notorious failure to protect American diplomats back in 2012 when they were in similar circumstances.
Once the unrest died down following the organizers' decision to withdraw after they declared that their "message has been heard", US Secretary of Defense ominously warned that his country could take "preemptive action" if it detects any signals that Iran is supposedly planning more anti-American attacks in Iraq. The Islamic Republic denied that it played any role in the recent events unfolding in the neighboring country, but the US obviously didn't believe it. It therefore set out to assassinate Maj. Gen. Soleimani in order to send the message that it's serious about "deterring" any forthcoming allegedly Iranian-connected anti-American attacks seeing as how it blamed him for being involved in the latest ones. It also wanted to put additional pressure on Iran to withdraw from Iraq, but probably expected that it could exploit Tehran's response to this de-facto act of war as a pretext for further intensifying its pressure campaign through more "decapitation strikes". This attack therefore dangerously escalated tensions with Iran and made many observers fear the onset of World War III.
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