Conflict, Middle East, United States Why Obama, Bush, and Bibi All Passed on Killing Soleimani

PWH Visiting Fellow Derek Chollet is quoted in this piece on why previous U.S. administrations ruled out an attack on Iran's Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Until the Trump administration blew him away in Baghdad in the pre-dawn dark of Friday morning, Qassem Soleimani had made the very fact of his survival part of his considerable mystique. The powerful Iranian general commanded forces that had become the scourge of Iran’s adversaries abroad, especially the United States and Israel. Yet he came and went to the war fronts of the Middle East unscathed...

Under the Barack Obama administration, the assassination of the most famous general in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps appears not to have been considered seriously.

There was never any manhunt, according to Derek Chollet, assistant secretary of defense from 2012 to 2015. “To my knowledge there was never a decision of ‘We’ve gotta go find this guy and get him.’” 

Nobody could begin to be sure what would come next if Soleimani were killed, and no scenario looked good. And in those days the priority was stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon without having to go to war. The murder of Soleimani could have scuttled the negotiations.

The calculus was a fairly simple one, says Chollet: “Do the potential risks of taking an action like this outweigh the gain of taking him off the battlefield?” The answer was yes.

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