Roundtable: Backdrop & Reverberations of Soleimani’s Assassination (Part 1: Iran)

بواسطة Maryam Alemzadeh, Eric Lob, and Arshin Adib-Moghaddam | يناير 23, 2020 | Roundtables, غير مصنف

On 3 January 2020, the United States assassinated Major General Qasem Soleimani of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Corps Guard (IRGC). The event was an escalation by the Trump Administration in what many critical analysts consider a decades-long war waged by the United States against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Soleimani himself joined the IRGC shortly after its establishment in the wake of the 1979 revolution. Since then, he has been involved in major battlefield engagements, including fighting in the Iraq-Iran War (1980–88), collaborating with the United States in the initial phase (2001–2002) of the US war in Afghanistan, and (at different times) directing Iranian support for allies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.

This is a two-part roundtable convened by Arash Davari, Naveed Mansoori, and Ziad Abu-Rish on the regional backdrop and (admittedly short-term) fallout from the US assassination of Soleimani. Part 1 features scholars of Iran reflecting on the place of Soleimani and the IRGC in the political and institutional dynamics of the Iranian state. They also address the reactions in Iran to the assassination and their intersection with various instances of popular mobilization, including the most recent one against the downing of Flight 752. Part 2 features scholars of regional states reflecting on the specific nature of Iranian policy and reaction to Soleimani’s assassination in those states.

1. Soleimani was a general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. What role does the IRGC, the Quds Force in particular, play in the political, military, and economic structures of the Iranian state? How autonomous is the IRGC as an institution? Has its institutional history changed since 1979? If so, did 2003 mark a turning point? How might Soleimani’s assassination materially change Iranian statecraft, foreign policy, and/or strategic decision-making?

Eric Lob: The Quds (Jerusalem) Force is the IRGC’s extraterritorial and clandestine unit that operates throughout the Middle East and beyond to extend the geopolitical influence of Iran and provide it with strategic depth and deterrence capabilities against regional and foreign adversaries, including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab Gulf or GCC countries. In the conflict zones of Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, the Quds Forces has created and supported Shi‘i militias that have become key players and power brokers in their respective states and societies. As part of the IRGC and Iranian military, the Quds Force plays a prominent role in the political and economic structures of the Iranian state. During the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013), the IRGC gained unprecedented access to state institutions (the cabinet, bureaucracy, and parliament) and expanded and diversified its portfolio of corporate assets as the government pursued crony-capitalist privatization under Article 44 of the constitution.

In April 1979, the IRGC was established as a revolutionary organization and parallel institution to the conventional army while it was purged of real and suspected monarchists or royalists. The IRGC acted as a praetorian guard whose mission was to protect or defend the fledgling revolutionary state from internal and external enemies, including ethnic insurgents and Iraqi forces. During these counterinsurgency campaigns and the Iran-Iraq War, the IRGC became increasingly experienced, battle-hardened, professionalized, and institutionalized as an elite force and a government ministry. After the war, the IRGC ceased to exist as a ministry, lending it a level of organizational dynamism and flexibility that contrasted with other revolutionary organizations (e.g., Construction Jihad), which permanently languished in the bureaucracy with its rigid centralization and red tape. Within the Islamic Republic’s factionalized and bifurcated political system, the IRGC’s de-bureaucratization reduced the influence of the president over the organization and placed it firmly, if not exclusively, under the purview of the supreme leader. Nevertheless, the IRGC continued to receive an operating budget from the government with parliamentary approval while being privy to extra-budgetary funds from the supreme leader’s office and other non-elective institutions.

The supreme leader comprises the commander-in-chief of the IRGC and the armed forces at large and is considered the ultimate decision-maker when it comes to Iran’s national security and foreign policy. That being said, this policy is deliberated over and formulated by a constellation of disparate institutions, including the Supreme Leader’s Office, Expediency Discernment Council, Supreme National Security Council, Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, Ministry of Intelligence and National Security, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. With the exception of the first two institutions (the members of which are appointed by the supreme leader), these institutions fall under the purview of the president, who appoints their heads and ministers with a parliamentary vote of confidence and after negotiations with the supreme leader and other officials. The generals and commanders of the IRGC and other branches of the military are appointed by the supreme leader and follow and execute his orders and directives with input from other clerical and civilian elites. These generals and commanders wield autonomy by weighing in on and influencing policy and carrying it out as they see fit in response to rapidly changing or fluid, geopolitical conditions and dynamics–a scenario that especially applied to Qasem Soleimani and the Quds Force.

Maryam Alemzadeh: As the epitome of a “revolutionary” organization, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has enjoyed an exalted, and eventually untouchable, status within Iran’s political leadership for almost all of its forty-one-year history. The IRGC started not as a centrally organized military, but as clusters of dedicated volunteers ready to take direct action whenever their leaders, or in many cases, themselves, saw necessary. In the midst of civil conflicts and Iraq’s invasion of Iran, this characteristic was both reinforced within the IRGC and appreciated as authentically revolutionary in political circles. This initially exalted status of the IRGC was further consolidated as Banisadr, the IRGC’s strongest critic in the early phase of Iran’s war campaign, was removed from office. After the war, the Guards and Basijis were re-mobilized in the economic sphere. The IRGC intelligence and security branch, which had already grown in size and complexity during the war, expanded as well. The organization acquired the infrastructure to become increasingly independent, further its economic interests and exert influence on presidential politics.

The extraterritorial IRGC Quds Force, however, has been rather detached from this history and political dynamics within Iran. It was established in the late 1980s, around the time when the IRGC was on the verge of being “mercantilized.” An internationally shunned Islamic Republic sought to establish new coalitions, even if non-state entities were the only possible allies. It set up the Quds Force to serve these purposes. In its first large-scale mission, the Quds Force backed Bosnian Muslims in the Bosnian war of the early nineties.[1] These efforts failed when a peace treaty urged all foreign military personnel to leave the country. The US invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq created a fertile ground for Iran’s Quds Force to reinforce and expand state-recognized Shi‘i militias outside of Iran and thus to influence regional politics in Iran’s interests.

Soleimani emerged at this point, as a trustworthy strategist and pragmatic commander who could secure Iran’s interest through a network of militias in the region. Under Soleimani, the Quds Force was considerably independent of Iran’s internal affairs. He was trusted to come up with strategies and implement them based on his direct relationships with other countries’ military and political leaders.  Under his successor, Brig. General Qa’ani, the Quds Force is likely to become more dependent on political decision-making within Iran (specifically to military advisors to the supreme leader and the Joint Chief of Staff), thereby entangling internal and foreign politics. On the other hand, in the absence of Soleimani, the Quds Force’s presence will become weaker in the region, which means that it will depend on state decision-makers even further to preserve its international position. As a result of this dependence, Quds Force affairs are more likely to influence and be influenced by internal politics.

Eric Lob: The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 marked a seminal moment for Soleimani and the Quds Force. With the political and security vacuum caused by the US overthrow of Saddam Hussein and purging of the Baʿth Party through the policy of de-Baʿthification, the opportunity presented itself for Soleimani and the Quds Force to create, finance, arm, and train Shi‘i militias inside the country, as well as to groom and guide opposition politicians (who had been living in exile in Iran) from the Islamic Dawa Party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council to assume key positions in successive governments. The goals of these activities were to: (1) Establish a congenial and tamer government in Baghdad sympathetic to Iranian interests with the specter of the Iran-Iraq War lurking in the background; (2) Render the situation in Iraq for US forces uncomfortable, if not intolerable, and prevent them from marching into Iran—which had been labeled part of the Axis of Evil by President George W. Bush in 2002; (3) Particularly after 2014, defeat ISIS in Iraq and neighboring Syria—a campaign that involved air support from the US military and tacit cooperation with it against a common enemy.

After Soleimani’s assassination, the Iranian government will sorely miss his strategic and tactical acumen, military and political leadership and experience, and long-standing relationships with politicians and militiamen in Iran, the Middle East, and beyond. On the one hand, the assassination will not cause Iranian national security and foreign policy or strategic decision-making to fundamentally change. Iran will likely continue to rely on asymmetric warfare through its arsenal of ballistic missiles, network of regional proxies and partners, and team of cyber hackers to inflict pain on the United States and its allies, compensate for their conventional superiority, and avoid a direct conventional conflict. On the other hand, the assassination will raise the urgency and accelerate the efforts of the Islamic Republic to expel an increasingly belligerent and unpredictable United States from Iraq and other surrounding countries in the region. This desired outcome constituted a chief policy objective of Soleimani as commander of the Quds Force and could potentially come to fruition with the Iraqi parliament and caretaker Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi passing a non-binding resolution to expel US forces from Iraq and by default Syria.

Arshin Adib-Mogaddam: I would describe the IRGC as a network of a particular form of militarized power, hierarchical sovereignty, and polymorphic ideological verticality. The first term speaks to its epistemological origin as a revolutionary-military institution immediately after the revolution of 1979. The institution has metamorphized into a “deep state” that operates, repeatedly, beyond the sovereignty of other institutions of the Iranian state and certainly the government. The hierarchical sovereignty of the IRGC speaks to its rootedness in the revolution, and in particular the Iran-Iraq war which baptized the organization in blood, and determined the world-view of the Soleimani generation. Its ideological verticality conceptualizes the form of power exercised, which is exactly vertical in the sense that the IRGC has transmuted into a politico-cultural institution with its own universities, media outlets, business enterprises etc., but continues to operate in a top-down fashion. 2003 marked a turning point in the sense that it galvanized all those three aspects of the IRGC giving impetus to its transnational effects. The three aspects did not so much galvanize the IRGC as a vehicle to “export the revolution” (sudur-e enghelab). Rather, they galvanized the organization’s military rationale, buttressing its role in Iranian society and beyond as a securitized and securitizing actor. 2003 made it almost impossible for the IRGC in general, and the Quds force in particular, to be “pacified.” The state embarked on the “culturalization” of the organization after the “reconstruction period” in the 1990s for precisely these purposes.

2. What can we learn from Soleimani’s biography about the relationship between Iran’s domestic and global politics? What are the continuities and discontinuities between his earlier activities in the Iran-Iraq war, his participation in the alliance between Iran and the United States in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the role he played in facilitating IRI support for Bashar al-Asad in the Syrian civil war, and his efforts in the war against ISIS? How does Soleimani’s symbolic significance internationally align with his significance in Iran as a venerated war hero? How are domestic critics of Iran’s regional role, often associated with Soleimani, interpreting this event?

Eric Lob: Soleimani rose to prominence as a young division commander during the Iran-Iraq War. During the conflict, he relied on irregular warfare and forged connections with leaders and officials of Iraqi Kurdistan and the Badr Brigade. Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, these contacts served Soleimani and the Quds Force well in helping Iran gain and expand influence inside the country, create and support Shi‘i militias under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces, wage attacks against American forces, and launch an offensive against ISIS. Soleimani was a pragmatist in the sense that he cooperated with the United States when doing so advanced Iran’s strategic objectives and national interests. In the wake of September 11, Soleimani helped US forces overthrow the Taliban and weaken al-Qa‘ida by offering logistical support and leveraging his contacts with the Northern Alliance and other Afghan militias. Beginning in 2014, US-Iranian interests again aligned in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Soleimani was instrumental to this campaign by providing ground forces in the form of IRGC-Quds Force units and Iranian-backed Shi‘i militias from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.

At the same time, other activities undertaken by Suleiman directly conflicted with the interests of the United States and its allies. After 2003, he financed, armed, and trained Iraqi Shi‘i militias, and supplied them with roadside bombs and other hardware to inflict American casualties in Iraq and prevent US forces from marching on Tehran. Soleimani continued and increased support to Lebanese Hizballah, which the Quds Force had helped create in the early-to-mid 1980s before he became its commander in 1998. During the Syrian civil war, Soleimani was instrumental in propping up the Assad regime and seizing territory from rebels and extremists by organizing and deploying IRGC-Quds Force advisers and operatives, and Shi‘i militias from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon under the umbrella of the National Defense Forces–not to mention convincing Russia to intervene militarily in 2015. The Iranian intervention involved elevated expenditures of blood and treasure, exacerbated sectarian tensions inside and outside of Syria, and created controversy in Iran. Nonetheless, Iran’s leadership considered the conflict an existential one to save its only dependable ally in the Arab world and maintain supply lines to Hizballah in Lebanon.

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam: Soleimani was the nodal point of a very particular historical constellation that delivered his aura and “charisma.” In many ways, his role was manufactured. The Iranian state actively created the metaphysical aura surrounding him, as a Trojan Horse for its strategic preferences in the region—preferences primarily geared to preventing a “Saddam Hussein effect,” i.e., rolling back against movements and leaders that would be a threat to Iran’s borders. Soleimani was made into someone that his predecessor will never be: The charismatic figurehead of Iranian efforts to reshape Syria and Iraq in accordance with Iranian transnational interests. The fact that General Soleimani had a distinguished career during the Iran-Iraq war, which included a role in the liberation of Khorramshahr, an event which is celebrated in Iran as a national symbol of “resistance” to Saddam Hussein to this day, lent itself to passing him the mantle of a “just” warrior. The mantle chimes with Iranian psycho-nationalism and its propensity to dramatize the roles of Rostam and Hussein and to reengineer contemporary, eponymous heroes of this eternal Persian battle for metaphysical justness. Once one steps out of this grandiose narrative, Soleimani could be viewed as an imperial mastermind for Iranian dominance, of course. This has been the dilemma of the aggressive push into the Arab state system that has delivered a radically altered geopolitical landscape. From the perspective of the Iranian state, however, General Soleimani functioned brilliantly, even with his death alongside Commander al-Muhandis, which has galvanized the Iranian-Iraqi dialectic along the “resistance axis” even further.

Maryam Alemzadeh: Although “exporting the revolution” has been a persistent theme in the IRGC’s official propaganda, Soleimani’s Quds Force should not be seen as an extension of the IRGC of the Iran-Iraq War. The thought of pursuing extra-territorial activities has existed since the early days of the IRGC’s establishment. A number of activists involved in the formation of the IRGC had been involved in guerrilla organizations such as the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Lebanese Amal Movement in the months leading up to the revolution. They envisioned an extra-territorial branch for the IRGC to continue liberating oppressed Muslims in neighboring countries—i.e., to “export the Islamic revolution.” The Liberation Movements Unit was soon introduced as a branch of the IRGC to realize this goal. This branch and its radical ideology were quite similar to the IRGC of early war years—passionate about the cause of the “Islamic Revolution” and ready to take extreme measures to realize it. However, the Liberation Movements Office did not last long. The majority of militiamen and politicians, including Ayatollah Khomeini himself, were inclined to focus on internal affairs, unless external activities proved to be of pressing geopolitical significance. Political conflicts and the eventual shunning and elimination of Liberation Movements leaders, including Ayatollah Montazeri and his relatives, happened partly as a result of such inconsistencies.

As opposed to the Liberation Movement Unit’s idealistic agenda, the Quds Force and the extra-territorial activities that took place before its introduction followed a more pragmatic, realpolitik approach to Iran’s regional presence.  The formation of Hizballah in the early 1980s to counter Israel’s influence in Southern Lebanon (which happened shortly after the Liberation Movements Office was dismantled) is one such move. The shifting grounds that the United States created in Afghanistan and Iraq after the September 11 attacks and, a decade later, the Syrian civil war created a chance for Iran to expand its influence in the Middle East. The pragmatism of Soleimani and the Quds Force becomes apparent here. In this time period, alliances were not formed on ideological grounds, but on practical ones. The Quds Force cooperated with the United States and its allies against the Taliban in the early 2000s and against ISIS in 2014-15; they reinforced Shi’a militias in Iraq against the US alliance before and after the war with ISIS; and they fought against US-backed forces in Syria to keep Bashar al-Asad, Iran’s longstanding ally, in power.

This is why Soleimani’s persona had greater significance in the Quds Force than in the Iran-Iraq War. Like every other prominent IRGC commander, he started his career with no military experience and training. He learned warfare by doing it. This met the requirements of a straightforward infantry war conducted mostly on home turf. In the Quds Force, however, he tackled tasks that were much more sophisticated technically and required coordinating multiple, semi-independent militias as well as various state actors. In this sense, his time as an extraterritorial agent cannot be seen as a continuation of the Iran-Iraq war experience; just as Iran’s rational goal-orientation on international grounds is not a continuation of domestic ideologized governance.

Eric Lob: The Trump administration attempted to justify the assassination of Soleimani by labeling him a terrorist and claim legality on the grounds that the IRGC had been designated a terrorist organization in 2017—even if the attack never received Congressional approval and violated Iraqi sovereignty. Apart from being a senior government and military official, Soleimani was considered a war hero in Iran with popularity or approval ratings hovering between sixty and eighty percent in domestic and international polls. One reason for his venerated status was that he was perceived as a defender or protector of Iranian interests in the region, including containing the threat of ISIS. Another was that the Quds Force operated outside of Iran and, consequently, did not repress its activists, protestors, and other citizens, unlike other branches of the IRGC. Nevertheless, given that the Iranian authorities responded in an unusually heavy-handed manner by killing hundreds and arresting countless more during the mass protests in late 2019, some citizens refuse to differentiate between the Quds Force and the rest of the IRGC, with the wounds and memories of repression still fresh and seared into the mind. Some Iranians recall that Soleimani had signed a letter with other IRGC officers threatening to crush the 1999 student protests and orchestrate a military coup against President Mohammad Khatami if he failed to take action.

Some Iranians have criticized the Iranian government and military for funding and supporting Shi‘i militias in the region and the Assad regime in Syria at the expense of domestic development and prosperity. However, such criticism has been drowned out in an increasingly securitized, geopolitical climate. Between 2017 and 2019, the Trump administration issued the travel ban against Iranians, designated the IRGC a terrorist organization, withdrew from the JCPOA or nuclear deal, and re-imposed and intensified economic sanctions against Iran as part of a campaign of “maximum pressure.” These measures were followed by escalating military tensions between the United States and Iran, culminating with Soleiman’s assassination. During this period, Iran experienced two waves of widespread demonstrations, which were met with heavy repression, and two ISIS-claimed terrorist attacks against the Iranian Parliament and Khomeini’s mausoleum in Tehran and a military parade in Ahvaz. As the Iranian government confronts rising external and internal pressures and threats, critics of Iranian foreign policy risk being stigmatized and repressed as traitors or enemies of the state.

3. What does rallying around the flag—or a national hero—tangibly mean for domestic affairs in Iran? For instance, do you see parallels between our current moment and the outset of the Iran-Iraq War, the last instance of full-scale war in Iran? Or has Iran’s domestic sphere fundamentally changed in the past forty years?

Maryam Alemzadeh: In the early rounds of mobilization for the Iran-Iraq War, revolutionary-ideological motivations and nationalistic drives had successfully converged. This convergence was not surprising, as post-revolutionary states have been historically successful in mobilizing citizens for war campaigns. With the end of the war in 1988, the tide of revolutionary fervor had already subsided and a consumerist and implicitly secular economy and culture was introduced into infrastructures. In the decades after the war, IRGC leaders recognized the need to shift from a strictly religious-revolutionary discourse to a nationalist one. A successful venue for this campaign arose with the Quds Force’s participation in the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria from 2014 onward, and Soleimani was illustrated as the national hero that was revered even by those not loyal to the government’s political Shi’ism.

But it was not simply the IRGC’s general discursive turn and the threat of ISIS that elevated Soleimani’s status to a widely respected figure. To this favorable context, we should add Soleimani’s specific positioning within the IRGC and the Islamic Republic, and the professionalism that his performance implicated. Soleimani’s dedication to Ayatollah Khamene’i and the Islamic Republic’s ideology was clearly stated. In this, he resembled every other IRGC commander that the disgruntled public has known and distanced itself from, over the years. However, he was not a figure to appear in the media frequently to emphasize this dedication. Whether intentionally or not, he appeared detached from the IRGC and the Islamic Republic’s omnipresent propaganda. Simultaneously, and heightened by his international reputation, he was perceived as a skillful and effective military commander—a characteristic which the critics of the IRGC do not generously attribute to just any guard.

With this in mind, it becomes clear that rallying around Soleimani’s figure does not necessarily signal a spike in the regime’s legitimacy. Citizens who were ideologically distanced from the Islamic Republic’s core might have been attracted to the figure of Soleimani exactly because they assessed him to stand in contrast to the average state- or military man: efficient and professional (not just loyal), and detached from the IRGC’s perceived empire of propaganda and corruption. The sharp turn of protestors against Soleimani, this time as a figure endorsed by the state, attests to this observation.

Eric Lob: It may be tempting to draw parallels between the current crisis and the outset of the Iran-Iraq War. However, the high costs of that war, which many Iranians lived through and from which they still suffer, have made them reticent to engage in another conflict, particularly against a conventionally superior adversary like the United States. Soleimani was a venerated figure, as attested to by the ubiquitous displays of public outcry and support during his funeral. By assassinating him and threatening to attack Iran’s cultural sites, the United States committed a strategic blunder by increasing Iranian nationalism and unifying Iranian elites and citizens only weeks after the Islamic Republic faced mass demonstrations at home and in other parts of the Shi‘i world, including Iraq and Lebanon. Yet, the fundamental changes that have occurred in the domestic sphere during the past forty years will likely erode this solidarity. During this period, elite factionalism has steadily intensified and will probably continue to do so ahead of the upcoming parliamentary election on 21 February 2020—even if the hardliners ostensibly possess a discernable advantage thanks to US escalation. This factionalism has permeated and polarized society with some citizens ardently supporting the state and others openly defying it during the protests of 1999, 2009, 2017, and 2019—not to mention more latent episodes and forms of resistance that occurred before and between those years.

Arshin Adib-Mogaddam: At this historical juncture rallying around the flag means that Iran is creating heroes born in war, rather than peace. Connecting to my answer to question one, this has securitizing, rather than liberalizing effects on Iranian domestic politics and foreign affairs. Soleimani was a soldier, after all, and his role was defined by the traumas and terrors of the battlefield, which he and his generation absorbed during the devastating Iran-Iraq War and thereafter. Having said that, these institutions of Iran’s contemporary political culture are continuously challenged by what I have called a pluralistic momentum, a bottom-up process from Iranian civil society acting upon the state which has repeatedly extracted concessions in favor of Iranian civil rights—less so through repeated spasms of violence in this state-society dialectic (which have not had a “democratic” dividend) but through techniques of everyday resistance to some of the confines held up by the state. It is this pluralistic momentum that has continuously differentiated Iranian institutions, to the degree that they have ceased to function in a one-dimensional mode. Even the IRGC has to engage in perception management and public relations, despite of their near-monopoly over the instruments of violence. That near monopoly can easily subdue with impunity whenever the state feels cornered, which particularly happens when the international context is deemed to be threatening to the sovereignty of the Iranian state. In these junctures, the “deep state” lashes out. But it is always also careful to embed such spasms of violence in a “justified” narrative. This speaks to a notion of public accountability, however confined, that the original IRGC did not have. Hence the cultural apparatus and media conglomerates tied into its organisational structure today.

4. How have different institutional and non-state actors in the Islamic Republic responded to past violations of Iranian state sovereignty and/or assassinations of leaders? What have been the immediate responses to Soleimani’s assassination in Iran? Are there salient discrepancies across familiar factional lines (e.g., reformists and principalists) and/or unexpected cleavages within Iranian society? Or is there an unambiguously unified front?

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam: Ironically, the differences between reformists and principlists in Iran are rooted exactly at the rhizome of the sovereignty of the Iranian state. Here, their opposing versions coalesce, whenever necessary, to rescue their common project of defending the Islamic Republic as a competing locus for a better future for Iranians. In other words: The reformists have an objectively different idea of sovereign rule in Iran, geared to notions of civil rights, democracy etc, whereas the principalists essentially hold on to a “deified” sovereignty, next to the popular one. However, despite these opposing views, the interests of both factions meet where most of their quarrels end: At the juncture of Iran’s interests, in particular the survival of the state, its legitimacy and the main tenets of the country’s strategic preferences abroad.

Eric Lob: Given the importance of Soleimani as a national figure and the dangerous precedent that the assassination sets in terms of conducting drone strikes against senior government and military officials, the incident may have momentarily unified Iranian elites across the political spectrum, along with segments of the population. Nonetheless, as indicated earlier and depending on what happens next between Iran and the United States, elite factionalism will likely continue and further intensify ahead of the upcoming parliamentary election on 21 February 2020. At the societal level, outraged and emboldened activists and citizens could mobilize again against the state in response to its heavy-handed response to protests in late 2019 and its economic mismanagement and austerity measures (among a host of other grievances) in the face of increased US sanctions. Less visible to the Iranian and international media and public were disaffected Iranians who refused to watch or partake in Soleimani’s funeral processions and mourning ceremonies. As previously mentioned, some Iranians associate the Quds Force with other branches of the IRGC that have repressed activists and citizens. These Iranians remember the letter that Soleimani signed urging Khatami to quell the 1999 student demonstrations. These Iranians also perceive the activities of Soleimani and the Quds Force as a liability to Iran’s international image and domestic development, not to mention regional and global stability.

5. How might we assess the relationship between the uprisings last month and the ostensible “rally around the flag” effect at play in Suleimani’s mourning ceremonies? Is this a moment—as was proposed in a recent article in the New York Times—when the disunity of the uprisings has turned into national unity? Likewise, provided that there are mourning ceremonies in Iran and Iraq, has the United States created conditions for solidarity? Is that solidarity likely to be expressed in interstate relations between Iran and Iraq? 

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam: Undoubtedly, the fissures in Iran’s polity will remain. But the Soleimani effect was very valuable analytically as it clearly demonstrated the deep resonance that the metaphorical power of the Iranian state continues to radiate. The millions mourning his death are exactly the constituencies that are embedded in all strata of Iranian society. Does anyone really think that the death of any of the Shah’s generals would have brought similar numbers to the streets in the 1970s? This very simple thought-exercise explains why there was a revolution in 1979, and why there has not been one since, despite the immense pressures to that end from the outside.

Eric Lob: As alluded to earlier, Soleimani’s assassination may unify and distract some Iranians in the short term, but will not necessarily mend the social fabric during the aftermath of the popular uprisings and state repression in late 2019 nor will it address or remedy their root causes. It would be a mistake to assume that Iranians rallying around the flag during a moment of national emergency and crisis in the face of escalation by the United States would cause the grievances of activists and citizens to dissipate, especially after hundreds were killed and countless more arrested during and after the Aban protests. So long as these wounds continue to fester without meaningful reform, and economic hardship endures as a consequence of US sanctions and Iranian mismanagement and corruption, it is difficult to rule out another wave of popular uprisings, which have been occurring with increasing frequency and intensity. Only one week after Soleimani’s assassination, protests have erupted in Tehran and other cities in response to the government’s failed attempt to cover up its unintentional downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet that killed 176 people, many of who were Iranians. As in the past and while making conciliatory statements and gestures, officials have not responded to these protests with resignations, reforms or other tangible actions, but with riot police, tear gas, live ammunition, and other repressive measures.

Outside of Iran and around the region, Shi‘i politicians, militiamen, and citizens mourned and condemned Soleimani’s assassination. The US drone strike not only killed Soleimani, but also Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and other senior commanders and officials of the Iranian-sponsored, Shi‘i paramilitary group, Kataʾib Hizballah, which is part of the Popular Mobilization Forces and vowed revenge. Tehran called for Kataʾib Hizballah and other militias in Iraq and elsewhere to exhibit restraint in order to avoid a direct confrontation with the United States. While funded and supported by Iran, these proxies and partners do not necessarily march to its orders. These groups could attack the United States if they deem that doing so is their prerogative and in their interests. Another factor that could disrupt or impede transnational solidarity between Iran and Iraq is the issue of Iraqi and Arab nationalism and sovereignty despite the religious affinity that exists between Iraqi and Iranian Shi‘a. As demonstrated during the widespread protests in Iraq that began last October, some Iraqi Shi‘a oppose Iran for meddling in Iraqi politics, corrupting the system, and violently suppressing the protests–in which Soleimani allegedly played a key role. Given that Suleimani’s assassination violated the sovereignty of Iraq and made it a battleground for intensified conflict between the United States and Iran, the Iraqi parliament passed a non-binding resolution to expel all foreign forces or those of both countries. In the end, Iraq’s national identity and sovereignty will continue to rival, if not supersede, its political loyalties and religious ties to Iran.

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam: One of the reasons why modern forms of psycho-nationalism have tried to think Iraq and Iran apart—Ba’thism in Iraq and Pahlavism in Iran—is exactly because the historical narratives are so conjoined. Ctesiphon is the ancient equivalent of Najaf for this common historical plane. In many ways, Iraq is to Iran, what Switzerland is to Germany. There are immensely rich transnational territories to traverse that go beyond sectarian clichés. Undoubtedly, regional peace in West Asia can only be achieved once such post-national embeddedness is diagnosed and then furthered. The Westphalian nation-state after all has done more harm than good, as it is premised on a particularly divisive form of psycho-national difference. In this sense, thinking beyond borders can only be a good thing.

6. If Soleimani’s death was, in fact, a moment of unity and transnational solidarity, how have the downing of the passenger flight and ensuing protests (if at all) changed those sentiments? That is, how would you explain the appearance of these various crowds (Aban, Soleimani funeral, Amir Kabir University) in such short proximity?

Eric Lob: Although the unintentional downing of the Ukranian passenger jet triggered the current protests at Amir Kabir University and elsewhere in Tehran and Iran, they can be viewed as an extension of those that occurred in Aban 1398/November 2019, if not before. With hundreds killed and countless more arrested by security forces, the wounds from those protests have not healed nor have their grievances related to authoritarian politics, economic mismanagement/corruption, and social restrictions been addressed. The Soleimani funeral may have provided the Iranian government with a brief respite from popular protests. However, only one week later, government and military officials have found themselves in the same predicament, if not worse, due to their lack of competence, transparency, and accountability during the incident and investigation involving the downed airliner–deficiencies that Iranians perceive as being symptomatic of the wider political establishment and system. As in the past, these officials have responded to the latest protests with riot police, tear gas, live ammunition, and other repressive measures that will likely further enrage and embolden the protesters and public. While offering their condolences, senior officials have refrained from taking the type of tangible actions–including dismissals, resignations, and reform–that many Iranians expect–an outcome that risks further inflaming tensions between these officials and the protestors. Though exacerbated externally by the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign, the Iranian government’s legitimacy crisis is the byproduct of its unwillingness to institute meaningful and substantive reform during the past forty years, as evidenced by the protestors calling for the supreme leader’s resignation and refusing to desecrate the American and Israeli flags.

Maryam Alemzadeh: For the reasons discussed above, it was not surprising that Soleimani’s assassination claimed a prime spot in many Iranian minds, replacing the violent repression of the Aban protests. In addition to Soleimani’s cross-sectional appeal among people, the fact that the killing was read as an act of war helped mobilize more citizens—at least to attend Soleimani’s funerals, if not to enlist for an actual war. When the IRGC anti-air missiles shot down a passenger plane by a disastrous mistake, everything that Soleimani’s persona had pushed to the margins came to the center of attention again. The mistake was immediately connected to the many mistakes that the IRGC’s learning-by-doing had caused during the Iran-Iraq War, including the shooting down of Iranian Army jets; it was traced to a decades-long preference for loyalty over skill.

Soleimani, although revered by non-loyal citizens because of his being detached from such flaws, was now seen as a figure heavily endorsed by the state. The state propaganda apparatus has been seizing every opportunity to benefit from Soleimani’s killing—to further demonize the United States, to repress internal dissent, and to claim all Soleimani’s mourners as its loyal subjects. Even if the plane crash had not outraged the public so shortly after the killing, the state’s move in owning Soleimani would have probably backfired eventually. For the ideologically loyal, the event and its state endorsement prompted a renewal of their allegiance. For others who respected Soleimani, however, it robbed them of the rationale for respecting him in the first place.

Roundtable: Backdrop & Reverberations of Soleimani’s Assassination (Part 2: Iraq, Syria, and Yemen)

بواسطة Omar Sirri, Stacey Philbrick Yadav, and Samer Abboud | يناير 23, 2020 | Roundtables, غير مصنف

[On 3 January 2020, the United States assassinated Major General Qassem Soleimani of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Corps Guard (IRGC). The event was an escalation by the Trump Administration in what many critical analysts consider a decades-long war waged by the United States against the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is a two-part roundtable convened by Arash Davari, Naveed Mansoori, and Ziad Abu-Rish on the regional backdrop and (admittedly short-term) fallout from the US assassination of Soleimani. In this part, Omar Sirri, Stacey Yadav Philbrick, and Samer Abboud reflect on the specific nature of Iranian policy in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria, respectively, and reactions therein to Soleimani’s assassination. Part 1 features scholars of Iran reflecting on the place of Soleimani and the IRGC in the political and institutional dynamics of the Iranian state.]

Question 1: What are the broad outlines of Iranian foreign policy in and their effects on the political, military, and economic status quo in your country of research prior to the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani?

Omar Sirri (on Iraq): Parastatal armed groups define Iraq’s political theatre. The public attention afforded these actors often stems from the Iranian support they receive—at least the most powerful ones, like the Badr Organization, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Kita’ib Hizballah, and others. Such groups have for years been implicated in violence against domestic and foreign foes alike, coercive practices that many suggest serve Iranian interests first. These Iraqi groups are key actors in the Iran-US conflict, as was most recently made clear with the US strike on Kita’ib Hizballah at the end of last year that killed at least twenty-five people.

Iran’s economic interests in Iraq, by comparison, receive little attention. Iraq is a huge recipient of Iran’s non-oil exports. Mini-marts and supermarkets in Baghdad, Basra, Suleimaniya, and elsewhere are packed with Iranian imports—including dairy products, potato chips, and chocolates. Probably the best-known good that has flooded Iraqi streets in the last decade is the Saba, an inexpensive vehicle from Iranian automaker Saipa. It is particularly popular among young and aspiring taxi drivers facing few-to-no job prospects. The car is also infamous, gaining a “rotten reputation” for its inadequate air conditioning during sweltering summer months, and for the inexperienced (and “bad”) drivers who operate them.

Such market penetration has helped to reshape social and economic life in Iraq—including the environment—in ways we have not fully appreciated or grappled with. Arguably, and ironically, the “free market” regime that Paul Bremer and the Bush Administration established in Iraq in 2003 most benefited Iranian exporters. A rudimentary understanding of macroeconomics suggests that such trade policies—which include incentivising cheap imports—make developing a productive and sustainable national economy practically impossible (let alone one crippled by decades of war and sanctions). These “free-market” policies are what helped decimate industry and agricultural production in Iraq after 2003.

This is why Iran’s support for parastatal armed actors also known as militias are not the only reason Iraq’s revolutionaries are calling for “Iran out.” It is not hard to find Iraqis who refuse to purchase Iranian goods out of principle—much like active supporters of Palestinian rights who never buy Sabra hummus. But today, such atomized resistance has found a collective outlet in the revolution, such as through grassroots “buy Iraqi” efforts being promoted by protesters in Tahrir Square and elsewhere.

Popular resistance to Iranian intervention in Iraq did not start with this revolution. For example, civil society activists have for years been organising against devastating Iranian (and Turkish) environmental policies, namely river water diversion and damming. While climate change is having catastrophic impacts on Iraq’s environment, Iranian policies are hastening these outcomes. Against minimal Iraqi government efforts to resist these hardly-neighbourly interventions, activists have sought to build a regional and international solidarity campaign to save the land of the two rivers from those whose interests are helping bring about its destruction.

Stacey Philbrick Yadav (on Yemen): Yemen’s political, military, and economic status quo is defined by a punishing civil war. The collective effects of five years of intense military conflict, diplomatic paralysis, and international indifference have left the country politically and socially fragmented with an economy in ruins as millions of civilians struggle to meet their most basic needs. Iran neither created this war, nor will Iranian policy end it (alone). Yet Iran’s alliance with the Houthi movement (Ansar Allah, as they prefer to be called today) and the former’s adversarial relationship to several of Yemen’s Gulf neighbors jointly shape the conflict dynamics that have caused so much suffering over the past five years of war. As noted in the second question, this idea—that the Houthis find an ally in Iran—differs from the proxy framing in that it recognizes that the Houthi insurgency predates substantial Iranian involvement. It has existed as an armed movement since 2004, and developed out of a broader populist movement during the 1990s. President Ali Abdullah Saleh (r. 1990–2012) alleged an outsized role for Iran throughout the 2000s in order to generate security assistance and create political cover for some of his domestic policies. (This worked, even though US officials knew Saleh’s claims were exaggerated.)

Iran’s support for the Houthi movement accelerated substantially when the movement was excluded from the externally-brokered power-sharing agreement that followed Saleh’s 2012 resignation. By the end of the 2012-14 “transitional process”—according to a framework designed by the GCC to limit the power of both the Houthi movement and Southern secessionists (al-Hirak al-Janubi)—other militias aligned with the movement already held a good deal of territory in North Yemen.

During the war itself, Iranian involvement in Yemen has been most pronounced in areas under Houthi control and has extended from military support toward governance functions. Some of the reported policies of the Houthis are not direct extensions of Iranian policies. For example, Iran’s representative institutions have not been replicated, nor are Yemeni women experiencing the kind of (circumscribed but sanctioned) mobility to which Iranian women are entitled. Houthi rule in the north appears to combine elements of martial law, practices modified from Iranian models, and some conservative social practices familiar to North Yemenis of different religious backgrounds.

Iranian policy thus appears to be less about making an Islamic Republic of Yemen in Sana’a than about adopting the low-cost strategy of supporting a winning ally as it attempts to govern. It may seem odd to describe the Houthi movement as “winners,” given that their militias have been stalled along largely stable battle lines for several years. But to the extent that they have survived a deeply asymmetric war for five years, hardened by almost a decade of insurgent war against the Yemeni state, the Houthi movement should be seen as a formidable ally. Moreover, since both military and diplomatic dynamics suggest that the Houthis do not aspire to govern the whole of Yemen but rather seek considerable regional autonomy and a part in power-sharing, any negotiated settlement that includes the Houthis would leave Iran with some path to continued political influence on the Arabian Peninsula—all with minimal direct military engagement.

Indeed, Iranian military engagement is outmatched by that of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which have played a much more substantial military role in the conflict, though it is far less common to see their relationships to Yemeni actors described in the same language of proxies. Certainly, the Gulf Cooperation Council’s desire to limit the power of the Houthi movement during Yemen’s transitional period (2012–14) had something to do with its member states’ concerns about Iranian influence on the Arabian Peninsula. Yet it was also inflected by the anti-Shi‘ism of Gulf regimes and by the domestic political preferences of some of the Gulf states’ own Yemeni allies. The Islah Party, in particular, was a significant beneficiary of the transitional process, even its relationship to the Muslim Brotherhood made this politically challenging to some Gulf allies. To treat any foreign policy—whether Iranian, Saudi, Emirati, or US—as existing outside of the pull of domestic constituencies is indefensibly statist.

Samer Abboud (on Syria): Iranian policy toward Syria has been principally focused on the battlefield and ensuring the survival of the Syrian regime. Any alternative to the current regime, especially one molded in the vision of US, Saudi, or Turkish interests, would have been strategically catastrophic for Iran. Iran has pursued a policy of regime survival through two modes. The first is military support and coordination with a whole range of military actors operating on the Syrian battlefield. There is obviously a deep connection with Hizballah and the Syrian and Russian militaries. Beyond this, Iran has supported and financed a number of militia groups composed of Syrians and non-Syrians who operated in specific Syrian locales. The Syrian regime-organized National Defense Forces (NDF) was also partially funded by Iran and some of its leaders were believed to have gone to Iran for military training. The second is a combination of indeterminable financial support, trade and barter deals, and the funneling of Iranian private sector investment into Syria. In other words, the effort to preserve the regime has been total. Since early 2017, Iran, Russia, and Turkey have been involved in a series of “talks,” commonly referred to as the Astana Process, that have the veneer of peace negotiations but are really about the management of the Syrian battlefield and in ensuring tripartite consensus over key issues of regional contention in Syria. For example, both the major Russian-led offensive in Idlib governorate that began in April 2019 and the Turkish intervention into northeastern Syria in October 2019, were military moves discussed and approved within this tripartite mechanism. This process is mostly issue- or time-specific; the parties meet to discuss specific “problems” and agree on a strategy moving forward, thus minimizing tripartite conflict and laying the basis for a Syrian future under tripartite suzerainty as the mechanism has no foreseeable termination. No major decisions about the Syrian battlefield are occurring outside of the Astana process. As such, Iranian, Russia, or Turkish capacity to act unilaterally is limited. Parallel to this, there are efforts toward some form of political transition. The best example of this is the United Nations-led Syrian Constitutional Committee (SCC), founded in 2019. But this is a mostly cosmetic process that is lower on the Iranian policy radar.

There is no serious reason to believe that these dynamics of Iranian intervention in Syria will change at all after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani. He was neither the sole architect or visionary of Iran’s role. The status quo is not seriously threatened by Soleimani’s assassination.

Question 2: Much of the discussion about Iranian-allied groups in regional states is framed within the model of proxies. What is your assessment of the utility of this model in understanding the relationship between specific power brokers and/or other groups and the Iranian regime?

Omar Sirri (on Iraq): The term “proxy” gives the sense that a local actor is solely doing the bidding of an external actor. At least this is how it is used in popular representations and mainstream media. But Iraqi political actors (armed groups among them) that are allied with and/or and backed by Iran cannot be exclusively characterized as such. This is because Iraq’s domestic political actors— Iranian-supported or otherwise—have embedded their own private interests into the everyday sources of power in the country. They derive a great deal of their private political dominance not merely from external actors, but from the ways in which they control ostensibly public resources and institutions. These micro sources of power are brought about and then reinforced through largely domestic capital accumulation and coercion—from financial profit and the exercise of violence. I try to capture the ways in which this occurs in Iraq in this POMEPS piece (the entire collection of essays on Iraq is fantastic), and in this ongoing LSE project.

Another reason why the “proxy” label is unfulfilling relates to political Islam. The power of al-Marja‘iyya in Najaf cannot be over-emphasized. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s insistence that his followers mobilize to help rout Da‘ish from Iraq did more to form al-Hashd al-Sha‘bi than Iran’s intervention. These religious actors espouse and promote particular versions of Iraqi nationalism that, while Shi‘a-centric, ultimately reject Iranian dominance. The political actors who receive support from Iran have to contend with these political-religious conditions that suggest popular legitimacy, power, and relevance come from Iraqi religious actors more than from Iranian ones.

This is to say nothing of Muqtada al-Sadr. There are few figures in Iraq who can “move the street” like he can—or at least a significant segment of it. In addition, a great deal of his popular support is derived from lower classes in and out of Baghdad. Some of those same people make up a portion of the revolutionaries in Tahrir Square demanding an end to Iranian (and US) interference in Iraq’s affairs. These intersections are kind of incredible. But they also mean that at the moment “proxy” is doing more to occlude critical details rather than illuminate them.

Stacey Philbrick Yadav (on Yemen): At a public lecture about a decade ago, I was asked why I decided to study “small and insignificant places like Yemen and Lebanon instead of important ones like Iran or Saudi Arabia.” Whenever people ask me about proxy dynamics in Yemen, I think back on that question because I find the discussion of proxies to be underwritten by a similar logic. To describe Yemeni actors as Iran’s proxies seems built on the idea that some countries (i.e., those that have proxies) “matter” more and others become significant only by association. So I have always tried to resist that moral economy, since it does not correspond to my view of what makes something—let alone someone—significant. But that is an affective response.

Conceptually, even though the idea of proxy war recognizes the central significance of sub-state actors (i.e., proxies), it simultaneously reinforces the (misplaced) centrality of states as the core units of analysis in international relations. A conflict is only described as a proxy war when another state or states is involved. In the case of Yemen, the Houthi movement matters to policy analysts (and to a surprising number of political scientists) insofar as it functions as an instrument of the Iranian state. I see several reasons to object to this. First, proxy framing underestimates the actors and forms of agency that shape relationships between allies. It directs us away from the domestic politics of both Yemen and Iran and the way each shapes alliance choices and practices. Second, scholars and policy analysts rarely use the same language to describe relationships between other states and the substate Yemeni factions with which they are aligned. For example, it’s rare to hear the Southern Transitional Council described as an Emirati proxy, even though it depends heavily on the material and political support of the United Arab Emirates. The Islah party and militias aligned with it are more often described as allies of Saudi Arabia, not Saudi proxies. We would be asking better questions if we approached all such relationships between external and Yemeni actors as alliances and sought to better understand what each party does and does not expect from its allies, how these alliances relate to domestic politics on both sides, and how competing interests are managed. The relationship between Iran and the Houthi movement does not strike me as so exceptional as to warrant different language and different analytical treatment.

Finally, this special focus on Iran’s relationship to the Houthi movement has contributed to a very lopsided approach to understanding the conflict in binary terms—a framing concretized by the UN Security Council resolution that authorized the Saudi-led coalition’s campaign in 2015. Whereas there is ample evidence that the war is being fought along several different axes simultaneously. I do not find it farfetched to say that reduction of the war in Yemen to a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran has substantively delayed a negotiated settlement to the war and prolonged the suffering of Yemeni civilians.

Samer Abboud (on Syria): The proxy argument assumes a hegemony and hierarchy between Iran and allied groups in the region that I simply do not think exists. To accept the proxy argument, we need to remove all motivations and capacities of the groups we are referring to, assuming that they simply do what Iranian leadership tell them. However, this removes any agency on the part of the so-called proxies and does not allow us to take seriously questions of negotiation, compromise, and disagreement between parties, which I think exists. A more appropriate analytic may be that of “alignment.” It allows us to understand both the coherency and tensions within the interrelationships that constitute the network of states and armed actors broadly supportive of the Syrian regime. These interrelationships are what we are trying to understand and explain. I see no good reason why we need to elevate the proxy argument whenever we see an overlap of interests and strategies.

Thinking in terms of alignment rather than proxies allows for some nuance in how we see different actors in Syria. Consider, for example, the fourth and fifth military divisions of the Syrian Army. They have been reincarnated with different names and leaderships in recent years. It is nevertheless well known that the fifth division coordinates operations with Iranian officials and receives support and training from them, while the fourth was virtually under the command of the Russian military presence in Syria. How can we account for such fissures within the Syrian army? Are these divisions merely proxies of either state? Or are they competing centers of power that are malleable to battlefield and political conditions? The proxy argument has ready-made answers to questions of power, competition, strategy, and coordination that shift our attention away from how the interrelationships between actors are constituted.

Question 3: What has been the reaction to and/or effect of Soleimani’s death in different sectors of your research country? Has this reaction reaffirmed and/or challenges certain assumptions (and if so how)?

Omar Sirri (on Iraq): Overwhelming fear. Many were right to assume after Soleimani’s assassination that Iraq would become the battlefield on which US and Iranian forces would fight and kill (if it is not already). This meant Iraqis would continue to suffer the most. Had the conflict escalated, some of the worst predictions about the ramifications of his assassination were probably the right ones—just as they were about the US- and UK-led invasion in 2003. Also understandable were the reactions of activists and civil society actors who refused to shed a tear for Soleimani’s demise. He symbolized Iranian intrusions in Iraqi political affairs precisely because he coordinated and supervised them. This is where the earlier proxy argument stems from: Iran’s support for parastatal armed actors in Iraq is real. Most citizens blame these groups for some of Iraq’s worst civil violence, in Baghdad and elsewhere. Iran’s support helped fuel that violence, hence the popular loathing directed at it.

Lost in the media mayhem around Soleimani’s killing was that of Abu Mehdi al-Muhandis. As the deputy head of al-Hashd al-Sha‘bi, his assassination is stunning in its own right. Al-Hashd al-Sha‘bi became an official state institution in 2016 and al-Muhandis is a key power broker and centralising force among the discrete, competing groups that make up the organization. It is still unclear what his killing will mean for al-Hashd al-Sha‘bi, its component groups, and their respective political-economic interests for which they all scrape.

As the geopolitical tensions ratchet down, I wonder how useful it is to suggest that these events are the “death knell” for Iraq’s revolutionary moment. The structural economic conditions that brought about this revolution persist. The political-economic elite certainly benefit from persistent “instability” and precarity; Iraq’s last decade and a half prove this. But the last three months in Iraq also suggest something entirely new and powerful has occurred and been nurtured by Iraqis of various classes and generations. The longevity of this popular mobilization indicates that a radically different political agency is here to stay—one in which its participants have withstood some of the most rank and vicious political violence carried out by Iraq’s ruling class. This is not a prediction but a reflection: The stubborn failure of Iraq’s politicians to address people’s grievances likely means those airing them are not going anywhere.

Stacey Philbrick Yadav (on Yemen): In the context of a protracted civil war, reactions to Soleimani’s death have been characteristically divided. On the one hand, some prominent Yemenis (and Yemeni Americans) explicitly celebrated his killing—which initially surprised me. Many of the same people have been deeply critical of US drone strikes conducted in Yemen. On the other hand, thousands of people turned out for official mourning proceedings in Sana’a. Some observers said this was required by Houthi authorities; it is hard to actually assess these claims from afar, but I can say that some Yemeni friends who have associations with the United States chose to leave the capital for a while to avoid the perceived risk of retaliation.

The most depressing reaction—though not unexpected—has been the policing of independent voices online. Yemenis who have tried to challenge the “celebrators” by pointing to the damage that unchecked US air strikes and drone attacks have caused in Yemen have been shouted down as Houthi “sympathizers.”  In other words, it remains very difficult for Yemenis (and non-Yemenis, frankly) to speak about the war, about Iran, about almost anything having to do with the conflict without it being interpreted in a Manichean, deeply polarized way. The independent center—never an easy place for Yemeni activists or analysts—is shrinking still.

Samer Abboud (on Syria): I think it is reasonable to assume that Soleimani’s assassination will not have a significant impact on Iranian policy in Syria more generally, or the battlefield in particular. Soleimani was indeed an important figure in Syria but he was not active merely as an individual—but as a representative of a state. Nor did he command any specific allegiances in Syria that may disrupt the network of regime-aligned groups. Nevertheless, he was a very public and polarizing figure in Syria as his presence on the battlefield was regularly documented and shared online. Soleimani thus came to personify Iran’s intervention into Syria. As such, like everything related to Syria, the range of responses to Soleimani’s assassination were polarizing and ran the gamut from celebration to mourning.

The more consequential impact of Soleimani’s assassination will be in the long-term as we see how, if at all, Hizballah’s declared strategy of ridding the region of US occupation plays out. In Syria, Russian military officials have been successful in striking a confounding balance between different forces and interests on the ground. For example, they permit regular Israeli air strikes and the presence of US military bases while maintaining alignment with Iran, other armed groups, and the Syrian regime. Should there be a shift in the strategies of Hizballah and other armed groups toward direct engagement with the US military presence in Syria, then this delicate balance will not hold and we could see the emergence of a very different conflict.

[This roundtable was originally published by Jadaliyya on 21 January, 2020. Click here to read Part 1 of this roundtable, featuring scholars of Iran reflecting on the place of Soleimani and the IRGC in the political and institutional dynamics of the Iranian state.]