'Shaheed-e-azam' Qassem Soleimani (1957-2020), will be remembered by history as one of the greatests strategic minds of all time, someone who out-fought and out-thought the world power of his day.
In Iraq, Soleimani confronted the illegal US occupation pragmatically. Rather than completely reject the political process, Iran supported it, producing a government in 2005 that was friendlier to them than to the United States. The US was defeated in Iraq because the local population had a neighbour, Iran, that was willing to take on greater US hostility to help Iraqis plant the seeds of national resistance deep inside the 'officially' collaborationist state apparatus.
How did the US counter this political defeat? By giving the go-ahead from 2006 onwards for the Saudis to ramp up funding for al-Qaeda, to wage an "all-out war" (to quote Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) against Shia Muslims who are the majority of Iraq. Therefore, to deal with Soleimani's strategy, the US resorted to allowing its own occupying soldiers to get killed by Saudi backed militias like al-Qaeda in Iraq. Now Trump is trying to make Americans believe that those deaths were Soleimani's doing, all the while protecting the Saudi monarchy while it commits genocide against Yemen.
The 'shallow' US state, particularly the army occupying Iraq, was 'officially' an ally of the Iraqi government, while the 'deep' US state was covertly overseeing the arming of groups, like al-Qaeda, that stand accused of killing far more Americans than anything Soleimani has been accused of doing. No wonder then why US army vets are so disillusioned and also why Tulsi Gabbard is popular. She is someone who joined the 'war on terror', thinking it was to fight al-Qaeda "for 9/11", only to see the 'deep' state side with al-Qaeda quite openly under Obama.
Many Americans also thought they were bringing democracy to the Iraqi people, they didn't, rather the Iraqis forced the US occupation to give them democracy as a concession, precisely because men like Soleimani stood in the shadows, fomenting Shiite rebellion. Without that IRGC-backed leverage, the Iraqis would have found it much harder to take back their state from the occupation, which is why today, the consequence of the US terrorist attack in Baghdad will be the Iraqi parliament demanding a US withdrawal. Thus even his death will deal the Americans a humiliating defeat, that too by a democracy they're forced to recognise as a consequence of their own stated aims.
Recently Trump met some pro-war "Christian" Zionists who endorsed his terrorism, one of whom, Peter Burns cluelessly accused Soleimani of having "wreaked havoc on Christians" in Iraq. What? No, that was ISIS, which Soleimani played a key role in crushing. Maybe these US "Christians" should remember the story of the Good Samaritan? The story told by Jesus of someone in need who gets more solidarity from foreigners than members of their own nation.
While the US, a country that LARPs as "Christian" when it's convenient, was arming and funding al-Qaeda/ISIS in Syria, Hezbollah, a beneficiary of IRGC training, fought to liberate the ancient Christian town of Ma'aloula, thus saving one of the cradles of Christianity from being destroyed by Wahhabi extremists who have since looted the town of its priceless artefacts to fund their war against the Syrian state.
Soleimani had the ability to transform local, relatively inexperienced recruits into effective, professional and disciplined units. So, when Syria was being invaded by mercenaries from Turkey/Jordan during the opening phase of the war (2011-onwards), the need to train local populations to defend territory while the army went on the offensive was met by the IRGC, producing the Syrian NDF, once again, teaching local populations to fight for themselves.
Throughout history, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Turks have successfully invaded the Iranian plateau from the flat plains of Iraq, but the US will not join that 'Hall of Fame' because of men like 'Sardar' Soleimani, that's his legacy. By contrast his murderers including Trump will be remembered as lying cowards with no honour who were hated by their own people.
Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un
Roohet shad