The New Yorker Radio Hour - Dexter Filkins on the Air Strike that Killed Qassem Suleimani

Episode Date: January 3, 2020

Qassem Suleimani was Iran’s most powerful military and intelligence leader, and his killing, in a U.S. air strike in Baghdad on Thursday night, will likely be taken as an act of war by Tehran. Dexter Filkins, who wrote the definitive profile of Suleimani, in 2013, spoke with David Remnick about the commander’s central role within the Iranian regime. Reprisals against the U.S., he says, might be carried out anywhere in the world, either by Iran’s Quds Force or by affiliates such as Hezbollah. The Trump Administration experiences tension between a desire for regime change and the President’s desire to avoid foreign wars; Filkins notes that embattled Presidents, like Bill Clinton during his impeachment, often have itchy trigger fingers. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. On Thursday night, American officials announced that the United States military, on orders from President Trump, had launched drone strikes over the Baghdad airport, killing, among others, Iran's most powerful military and intelligence leader, Kassim Soleimani. The officials said that the strike had been carried out because American intelligence had information that Soleimani was planning strikes against American personnel and assets in the region. It is impossible to overstate the stakes here. While Trump has said he does not want war with Iran, this will certainly be taken as an active war into Iran.

And we have already heard vows of reprisals which could take place anywhere in the region or well beyond. Soleimani was for decades the leader of the Quds Force, a division that carried out military and clandestine operations all over the world, from Syria and Iraq to more distant continents. President Trump came to office, vowing to abrogate the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran and went ahead and did so. I'm talking with the New Yorkers, Dexter Filkins, who has covered the Middle East for a long time,

and in 2013 published in the magazine a long profile called The Shadow Commander, a profile of Qasim Soleimani. Dexter, are we at war with Iran? Well, not yet, but this is not difficult to imagine how this plays out. We hit them. They hit us back. Somebody miscalculates. And then we're off to the races. And what does that mean? What does war with Iran look like? What could it look like? It's hard to imagine. And what is troubling to me is that I'm not sure that anyone else in the White House or thereabouts has thought this thing through either. Look, that's their neighborhood. There's plenty of places where the Iranians could hit the United States. They could do it.

it practically anywhere in the world, actually. They could start sinking oil tankers. The two things the Iranians are really good at are truck bombs and hostage taking, and we could see some of that, too. But, you know, this could get out of control pretty fast. And it's just not really, it's not clear to me who, if anyone in the White House, thought this through. You profiled Soleimani for the New Yorker in 2013. What made you want to write that piece? Why was he such an important figure in the region, and why will he be so deeply mourned and missed by the leadership in Tehran? I mean, all this starts at the end of the Iran-Iraq War in the late 1980s, which was a catastrophic event. A million people died. A million people dead. And essentially,

the Iranian regime, which survived, vowed never to let this happen again. And so Soleimani took charge. He set out to create a sphere of influence across. the Middle East. So running from Tehran through Iraq, through Syria, into Lebanon, to the Mediterranean. And the goal of that sphere of influence was essentially to prevent something like the Iran-Iwark War from ever happening again. And so that's been the Soleimony Vision for 30 years now, and he was incredibly effective at that. We're going to hear over and over again in the coming days. And in Robin Wright's piece, that's New Yorker.com, General David Petraeus says it, that Soleimani has the blood of hundreds of Americans on his hands. And we've heard this from other officials as well. What does that mean?

Definitely. Particularly in the later stages of the Iraq War, say, beginning around 2005, American commanders began to see this weapon that they called EFPs for explosively formed penetrator. And what that was was essentially an IED, a roadside bomb that could penetrate armor. And it basically fired a molten bullet at very high speed and could penetrate a tank. And it began to wreak havoc on American soldiers all across the country. Those EFPs, most of them were either manufactured or designed in Iran and shipped across the border and then distributed to Shiite militias across the country. So that was their principal weapon. And it was so bad at the later stages of the war that there were a lot of discussions among American commanders and even in the White House about striking Iran. His influence, he just described it in Iraq after the Iraq war, after the U.S. invasion is very clear.

His influence with Hezbollah in Lebanon is very clear. He also came to the rescue of the regime in Syria, didn't he? Yes, absolutely. The only reason that Assad is still survival. arriving in Damascus is because of the Iranian Soleimani-led intervention, which began five or six years ago, but really, really he saved them. He began sending in planes, supplies, weapons, coulds force operators, hundreds of Iranian troops. It saved the regime. And then, of course, he brought in Hezbollah, who's essentially their cat's paw, brought in Hezbollah, which began fighting directly in Syria and saved the regime.

You describe in your really unbelievable profile that Soleimani doesn't just have strategic military skills, but he has also got political skills, that his relationships in Tehran are extraordinary. Could you describe that? People talk about him, people who know Soleimani talk about him with a kind of awe, that he's a kind of person that the moment he walks into a room, you can feel his presence. He has this kind of extraordinary charisma. And he's just a short guy. But he's a great kind of legendary battlefield commander, somewhat of a cowboy showing up in the front lines all the time, but he can walk right into an embassy and chat with an ambassador just as effectively. So he can sort of go high and go low. He has a personal relationship with the Supreme Leader, Ali al-Hamini. So he's one of the most powerful people in the country. I mean, it's really hard to kind of overstate the body blow that this delivers to the regime. because he's gone.

The Pentagon has said that Sulemani was behind a series of planned attacks on U.S. officials in Iraq and maybe beyond. Is there any reason to believe that's true? Is there any evidence of that? I mean, I haven't seen the intelligence what a former official who is still very active in the region told me last night was that he said, look, the Iranians have been trying to kill American soldiers in Iraq for years. and they haven't been able to do it because the Americans are so heavily fortified. And so, you know, it's a, you can't know until you see the intel, but what, what is...

And who's going to believe the intel after our history in the Middle East, after General Colin Powell goes to the United Nations and presents seemingly incontrovertible evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? And it was a put-up job. Who is going to believe that? I mean, in many ways, it seems that the least likely place that the Iranians are going to strike against America is in a place like Iraq because we're so locked down. We're behind fortified, thick walls. They can't get at us. And so I think if the Iranians decide to retaliate, it's going to be, it's much more likely to be somewhere outside the region.

Well, what kind of attacks could they plan? Where is the United States vulnerable? Well, the Iranians have people willing to do their work all over the world, whether that's Africa or Latin America. I think their largest Iran's largest embassy outside of the Middle East is in Mexico City, for instance. They can strike the Hezbollah, for instance, is very strong in Latin America. They're very strong in Africa. They have people everywhere. So anything could happen, really anything. Now, it's been said that previous American presidents, President Bush, President Bush,

President Obama have considered the question of whether to act directly against Soleimani, to, in effect, assassinate him. And they decided both of them that that would be a far too provocative, explosive act, particularly in a region like the Middle East. And they backed away from it. President Trump has done something quite different. What's the calculus there? What's to be gained? Everyone around President Trump, if not President Trump himself, favors regime change. And so when the Trump administration came into office and one of the first things they did was to cancel the Iranian nuclear agreement and reimpose very, very intense sanctions on the regime, they believe that they can bring down the regime.

I mean, I've had these discussions with people in the White House. We think we can cripple the regime. The sense that I get is that they believe that taking out Soleimani himself is such a consequential act that it's worth the risk. that basically he's irreplaceable. And you're basically hitting the Iranian leadership right in the heart of it, right in its heart. And so that it might actually in itself be a crippling blow to the regime. And so that's what they want to do. I never got the impression that President Trump was necessarily signed on to that.

And there was always a kind of a kind of yin-yang quality to the president's foreign policy, particularly vis-vis Iran. And so I'm surprised here. I'm surprised that the president signed off on this because he must have known, well, we can imagine, did he know? Was he apprised of the likely consequences of killing Soleimani? Because I think now we're going to potentially see them. Who's pushing for this in the White House? The strongest voice for regime change in the White House was John Bolton. John Bolton is now gone.

John Bolton is now essentially at deep odds with him. President Trump. Who in the White House is behind this? Is this a Mike Pompeo? Is this the new Secretary of Defense? What is it? My sense is that Secretary of State Pompeo has always been pro-regime change. I think Brian Hook, who's the coordinator in State Department for, he's basically the lead Iran guy on the sanctions. He's for regime change. So there's a there's a a coterie of people around the president who want to do this and believe it's doable. And so it's... But it was only recently that we kept hearing that the last thing that Donald Trump wants

is more involvement in the Middle East, war in the Middle East. He sees himself as a dealmaker. Not long ago, he kept trying to get a meeting with the president of Iran. Yeah, he was begging him. Yeah, yeah, sent him... And was rebuked. So how do we understand the strike in that context? Does Trump think that this is negotiating?

I just wonder if they even had this conversation. I mean, did the president have this conversation? Did he ask the questions where they answered? It's easy to think that he didn't. You know that it was an impulsive act? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's one of the things that's remarkable about this strike is apparently there was no consultation at all. There wasn't even, as far as we know so far, there wasn't even a phone call to the Senate or House leadership.

We're going to do this. We're doing this right now. Nothing. They just went out and did it. Not a phone call to McConnell or the group of eight or Nancy Pelosi. Not that we know as of this moment. And I mean, it's interesting. There's a whole, this strike raises a whole lot of questions.

I mean, if you look back, there was a similar moment in 2006 when President Bush had authorized the killing of a senior Hasbola commander named Imad Mukhneah, very close to Soleimani. And signed the order, went through the whole legal process. The CIA and Mossad at one moment in Damascus had McNia in their sights. He was getting out of a car, but also getting out of the car was Qasem Soleimani. And President Bush decided, I don't have the legal authorization to do that, so don't take the shot. And so he walked away. Let's reel the tape back and talk about how we got to this point, beginning with the striking down of the nuclear deal. I think there's kind of two groups of people who think about Iran.

And one is, I think you could say they man the Obama administration. And they believe that kind of Iran is ultimately or can one day be a normal country that doesn't sponsor terrorism in which acts in a responsible way abroad. This was the Obama administration's hope in that they wanted to create a kind of competing spheres of influence between the Saudi sphere of. influence in Iran. Yes. Then there's the other camp, which I think is that that camp is all over the Trump administration, which believes essentially that the Iranian regime is less a government than a movement. It's a revolutionary movement and that we can never basically reconcile ourselves to them, that they will never become a responsible and mature country. And so therefore have to be done away with. That's the vision that's that guided that strike last night.

Let's look at the acts that the Iranian regime carried out in the last year. It included strikes on Saudi oil fields, moves against tankers in the Persian Gulf. What was the motivation in Tehran to do this? Why did they want to up the ante? It's hard to know the motivation exactly, But I think the sanctions that have been imposed on them are extremely tough, tougher than anything that was put in place under the Obama administration. And so when you talk to people in the Trump administration, they kind of brag about that. We are really, really hurting them. And so I think their sense is that the Iranian regime was striking out in desperation, that basically they were hurting that badly that they didn't have a choice except to act. Let's talk about reaction in Tehran.

What has it been so far as you've been reading and listening to what they've had to say? Well, they've promised retaliation. I spoke to a former American official who's very active in the Middle East last night, and he said, I don't think they're going to, they may not respond immediately at first because this has been such a harsh blow to the regime, but they will respond. And when they do respond, it will likely be. outside of the Middle East and it'll be in a way that we don't expect. It'll be a very soft American target. Is Israel a target in this? I think so. I mean, I think, you know, there's,

I think there's a lot of people in Israel celebrating today. But, you know, Iran has, under Soleimani's leadership, the Quds Force and the Iranian regime have been encroaching on, on the Israeli border in Syria and in Lebanon. And things have been very, very tense there for many, many months. The Israelis have been pretty successful in keeping the Iranians at bay, but I think the Israelis are, by and large, the security establishment there is going to be quite happy that Soleimani has been taken out. Now, beyond the Middle East, what are the expected reactions from players like Russia, Germany, France, and the rest? Well, you know, particularly with the White House strategy towards Iran, there's been, Europe has kind of stood apart. They have made very clear that they did not agree with the Trump policy of walking away from the nuclear court and they've wanted to keep it in place. And they've tried to keep it in place even as the Americans walked away from it and the Iranians began to walk away from it.

So I think this is going to make them very uncomfortable because people look at these events and they see the potential for war. What about Russia? Russia recently had naval exercises with Iran. And I think they have tried, tried in Syria and in Iran. They've, as the Americans have kind of, as the Trump administration has tried to walk away from the Middle East and pull back from them at least, the Russians have tried to move in and take advantage of that. Everybody now, and including Putin, is going to watch and wait and see what happens. What effect will this have on American domestic politics? We've got an election campaign. Well, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the president's getting impeached.

I think if you recall when President Clinton during his impeachment, he also launched military strikes into the Middle East. And if nothing else, it certainly has the effect of distracting people's attention from other things that are going on. To Trump's benefit? I think so. I mean, what are we talking about now? We're not talking about Trump being impeached. Well, look, all Thursday night and into Friday morning on Twitter, all you saw was retweets of Donald Trump's tweets during the Obama administration about how Obama was going to drag us into war with Iran.

And, you know, if we go to Fox News or the Drudge Report or Bright Bar right now, he's going to look like a hero. In that other very large conversation that's happening across the country, he's being cheered as a great leader and great commander. I've been talking with Dexter Filkin's staff writer for The New Yorker. And for more coverage of what's going on in the Middle East, go to New Yorker.com to read Robin Wright, Dexter Filkins, and others.