The assassination of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani was to be the culmination of Israeli-American cooperation against Iran. This is how he was presented to the public in Israel and in the United States. But behind the scenes, this event has become one of the low points in relations between the two countries during Trump’s tenure. I discovered this in an interview I conducted with the former president in July for the Trump Peace books. When I asked him if Israel was involved in the assassination of the Iranian general, he replied: “I can not talk about this story. I was very disappointed with Israel around this event.”
In the last year of Trump’s tenure, there has been a change in the president’s willingness to use force against Iran. In December 2019, after a U.S. citizen was killed in a pro-Iranian militia missile strike against a U.S. base in Iraq, the United States responded with an attack on bases of those militias on the Iraq-Syria border.
25 Shiite fighters were killed in the attack. In response, mass demonstrations began in Baghdad by supporters of Shiite militias. Thousands of activists made their way to the “green zone” in the Iraqi capital where the foreign embassies are located. They broke in and laid siege to the U.S. embassy for long hours, setting fire to guard posts and trying to climb fences.
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The attack on the US embassy in Baghdad was one step too far for Trump. He blamed Iran. The president, who was seeking the appropriate response, was faced with options for continued action against pro-Iranian militias in Iraq filed two days before the attack on the embassy. One of the more radical proposals was to eliminate the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, General Qassem Suleimani.
The Iranian general was on the intentions of Trump’s administration officials early in the president’s tenure. On December 2, 2017, the CIA chief sent, Mike Pompeo, A letter to Suleimani warning him that the United States would see Iran as personally responsible for any harm to American interests in the region. But it was only after the missile attack in Kirkuk and the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad that Trump decided to carry out the plan to assassinate Suleimani.
If half a year earlier Trump had restrained the downing of the U.S. drone and was portrayed as weak, here came the moment to respond to the rocket fire into Kirkuk, he chose the most extreme response option. A series of attacks against American targets in the Middle East – including four embassies.
Qassem Suleimani (Photo: AFP)Suleimani is considered an ally of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, And the brain behind the Iranian expansion project in the region. Suleimani’s influence was so great that the Iranian Foreign Minister, Muhammad Javad Zarif, Testified himself that the Iranian foreign policy was often set by him behind the back of the Foreign Ministry.
He was Khamenei’s exporter and bringer in Iraq, leading Shiite militias led by “popular mobilization,” and pushing efforts to push Americans out of the country. Suleimani was the main liaison between Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He initiated the Iranian establishment project in Syria and fueled the Houthi rebels in Yemen in their war against Saudi Arabia. His power, knowledge and experience were so great that his assassination had the potential to significantly weaken the Iranian regime’s ability to operate outside its borders.
U.S. governments have been able to harm Suleimani in the past, but have refrained from doing so due to his political status in Iran and the region. This is also one of the reasons why the Iranian general felt immune, and as time went on he took less precautions. He has become a real celebrity, and social networks have been filled with photos and videos of him visiting his people in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. It is Suleimani’s complacency that has largely led to his death.
On the night of January 3, 2020, Suleimani arrived in Iraq. An investigation by the Yahoo News news site revealed that Israel assisted the United States in intelligence tracking Suleimani and locating the cell phone he was holding when he landed in Baghdad. The head of the Armed Forces, Major General Tamir Heiman, confirmed in his retirement interviews that Israel had passed on information to the United States that aided the assassination of Suleimani.
Unmanned aerial vehicles from the United States Army followed Suleimani’s convoy, and at one and a half o’clock at night, a few minutes after she left the airport, the Hellfire missiles were fired at the vehicles. Suleimani had no chance. He was killed on the spot along with one of his key allies in Iraq – Abu Mahdi Mohandes – the commander of the country’s largest Shiite militia.
The assassination of Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad (Photo: Reuters)The Iranians were beaten in shock. Revenge was not long in coming. Five days later, they fired about 16 missiles at US bases in Iraq. The Iranians announced that 80 American soldiers had been killed in the attack. There was no basis for this claim. However, even Trump’s initial claims that there were no casualties in the missile attack turned out to be untrue.
A month after the attack, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that 110 soldiers had been injured in the attack, many of them suffering from head injuries and concussions. The Iranian military response amounted to rocket fire. But the Iranians’ strategic response to the assassination of Suleimani has only just begun – the Iranians have vowed to carry out the will of the Quds Force commander and expel the American forces from Iraq.
Former Chief of Staff Gadi Izenkot He told me that the assassination of Suleimani came largely as a result of Israeli activity against the Iranian establishment in Syria. According to him, during 2019, Suleimani was forced to withdraw some of his forces from Syria for fear of Israeli harm and transfer the weight of the weight of his regional activities to Iraq.
The result was a strengthening of Shiite militias in Iraq and increased tensions with the Americans. “On the one hand, Suleimani rubbed more shoulders with the Americans,” Izenkot told me. “On the other hand, the Americans have seen that we attack the Iranians in Syria three or four times a week without being able to defend or respond, and this has reduced their fear of acting against the Iranians themselves in Iraq and eliminating Suleimani.”
When President Trump told me that he was disappointed with Israel’s conduct on the Suleimani assassination I thought I did not hear it well and asked him to explain. “I can not talk about it now, but I was not happy with the way Israel behaved. Israel did not do the right thing,” he said. “People will hear about it at the right time.”
Trump’s aides were also surprised by the president’s remarks. When I tried to find out what Trump meant, I came across a similar reaction from some former White House officials. “There is no response,” they said. The general feeling was that the affair was embarrassing to anyone who was exposed to it on the American side.
At one point I was able to figure out the details, which were nothing short of amazing. Former senior US officials have told me that Trump expected a more active Israeli role in the days surrounding Suleimani’s assassination. Rightly or wrongly, he perceived Netanyahu’s conduct in those days as a good spoon and got angry. “Trump was very angry with Netanyahu and said that day that the Israelis were ready to fight Iran until the last American soldier,” a senior American official told me. “He put this case in the same category as the disappointment and alienation he had towards the NATO alliance.”
Some senior Trump administration officials have admitted that the president’s anger was not entirely justified. This was another example of Trump’s tendency to formulate a position on a particular issue based on partial information or sometimes based on a misunderstanding of events. Since then, the Suleimani affair has been burned into Trump as a negative experience in his relationship with Netanyahu.
The number of people in the Israeli government who were exposed to the president’s feelings can be counted on less than the fingers of one hand. Netanyahu’s attempt to explain and straighten things out a few months later, on the sidelines of the signing ceremony of Avraham’s agreements in the White House, also failed. Trump was not convinced and continued to think that Netanyahu had taken advantage of him.
Netanyahu and Trump (Photo: Reuters)A senior Israeli defense official rejected the claim that Israel did not want to take part in the assassination of the Iranian general. He said that in talks between the security forces of Israel and the United States, the Israelis actually offered to be the ones to act, but the Americans, he claimed, insisted on being the ones to carry out the assassination. Another senior Israeli official told me that other elements in the US administration expressed great appreciation for the role that Israel played in those days in terms of preparing for the Iranian response. Vice President Mike Pence even called National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat late at night and thanked him warmly for Israel making moves that saved the lives of American soldiers in Iraq.
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