CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, January 13, 2020

The Forty Years’ War: Is it over?

What role did the recently deceased Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani play in Iran’s Forty Years’ War against the United States of America? Placed in the context of the Nazi efforts to exterminate Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals, Major General Soleimani was like the SS General Reinhard Heydrich. In the context of conducting unconventional warfare against the United States and its allies, Soleimani was very much like Hitler’s favorite commando leader, SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny.

Both Heydrich and Skorzeny exuded the kind of dashing charisma needed to recruit proxies to carry out dangerous and often suicidal missions. For the Islamic regime that has ruled the people of Iran since 1979, the loss of an officer with the brutality of a Reinhard Heydrich and the unconventional warfare genius of an Otto Skorzeny is a major blow to Iran’s ability to strike and punish targets beyond its borders and its territorial waters.

As a result of the losses Iran suffered during the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-1988, the projection of conventional force beyond Iran’s borders and territorial waters became almost non-existent. Nevertheless, the Mullahs were determined to pursue their twin goals of becoming the major force in the Middle East and the destruction of Israel.

The logical way forward for Iran was to use unconventional forces and that led to the creation of a special forces command, the QUDS Force. Who better to mastermind a guerrilla war outside of Iran than an officer possessing the ruthlessness and the skills of both Reinhard Heydrich and Otto Skorzeny? Answer: Qasem Soleimani.

And so, for 32 years, the wily Soleimani killed and maimed Iran’s targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Soleimani’s IEDs filled our cemeteries with the remains of hundreds of young Americans and put thousands of our troops in amputee wards.

Soleimani is mourned by our mainstream media. But he is not mourned by our Gold Star families.

Per international law, Soleimani was a war criminal. Accordingly, the G.W. Bush and Obama Administrations put the elusive Soleimani on their kill or capture list. U.N. Resolution 2231 put the terrorist Soleimani under a travel ban. A ban Soleimani routinely ignored as he left a trail of death and destruction wherever he and his proxies went.

Attempting to bring the Islamic Republic back into the community of peaceful nations, the United States spent 40 years, using both carrots and sticks. All to no avail. To his credit, and based on post-9/11 authorizations, President Obama approved the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Using the same legislative authority, President Trump removed Sunni ISIS terrorist, Abu Dakr al-Baghdadi, and the Shia Iranian terrorist, Qasem Soleimani, from planet Earth.

Iran’s feeble missile attacks on two Iraqi airbases suggest the Mullahs in Tehran are under intense pressure from the hate-America hardliners on one side and on the other side from the mass of ordinary Iranians who want to rejoin the community of peaceful nations. Plus, since January, 2017, the U.S. is no longer the nation the Mullahs could have Qasem Soleimani torture for 32 years without suffering severe consequences such as, for example, the destruction of Iran’s oil refineries and its uranium-processing facilities. This is not a good time to be in the Mad Mullah business.

©2020. William Hamilton.

William Hamilton is a laureate of the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame, the Nebraska Aviation Hall of Fame, the Colorado Aviation Hall of Fame, and the Oklahoma University Army ROTC Wall of Fame. Ten-percent of the royalties from Dr. Hamilton’s Formula for Failure in Vietnam: The Folly of Limited Warfare go to the Blue Angels Foundation. To order, call toll free: (800) 253-2187 Or, go to Amazon.com.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com