Another war in the Middle East won’t make the world any safer

By all accounts, Iran’s Major-General Qasem Soleimani was not a very nice person in the eyes of the Americans.

He was regarded as a terrorist in the league of the unlamented al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (al-Qaeda), Ayman al-Zawahiri, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed (the latter two linked to the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam), and Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who killed himself in Syria last October to avoid capture.

However, Soleimani was in a different class. Not only was he a full-fledged general in the Iranian military, he was also enormously popular amongst his countrymen and in most of the Shia-dominated States of the Middle East.

Now he has become a martyr, thanks to an ill-considered targeted drone attack ordered by President Donald Trump.

Soleimani was the commander of the Quds Force in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but he was reportedly much more than that – he was a super spy, whose role was to promote the expansion of Shiite influence throughout the Middle East.

His unit specialised in espionage and unconventional warfare, which can be translated to mean terrorism.

As such, he was always on the radar of Western intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies, but a darling of the Ayatollahs in Iran.

There is no love lost between Kenyans and terrorists of any description, considering that this country has suffered frequent terror attacks aimed at punishing the West and Israel for decades now.

It would, therefore, be ridiculous for any Kenyan to condemn the US for taking out a man who is reputed to have planned deadly acts of terrorism.

But there is a huge risk of escalation of violence in the Middle East, leading to war during which lives would be needlessly lost. It has happened before.

There has been speculation that Soleimani’s assassination was not prompted by any specific act of terror he was planning to harm American interests.

It has not been established publicly either that the man was on the verge of launching any terror attack specifically targeting Americans.

So why did President Trump authorise his elimination? We can only speculate.

Some say that the possible escalation of violence is meant to lead to American seizure of Iranian oil fields.

Should that be the case, then that would be very myopic, because the Middle East would burst into a conflagration that would be impossible to contain. No sane president would want that to happen under his watch.

A second possibility is that President Trump, who has already been impeached by Congress, wants to divert Americans’ attention from the embarrassment he has suffered.

But, even that speculation does not hold much water. Unless he does something extraordinarily stupid, the American Senate will not ratify his removal from office, considering that he enjoys superior numbers there.

Indeed, the only way his removal can be expedited is if he declared war on Iran illegally and it dragged on.

The third possibility is more plausible. President Trump is facing a tough re-election battle in November, and he might lose it.

Although he has a fanatical base of supporters, who will never desert him whatever he says or does, he has had too many gaffes, and the majority of Americans may be quietly craving a return to normal presidency.

What better insurance than to start a little war, whip up patriotism and win it quickly before the body bags start piling up?

The only problem is that Iran is not Iraq and any war there could drag on until Americans start asking hard questions.

Talking of Iraq, the current situation in the Gulf has close parallels with what happened in 2003, during the George W. Bush presidency.

The Iraq war, which led to the invasion of the country by a number of Western allies led by the US has, to this day, been considered a huge mistake that should not have happened because it was based on the wrong premises – that the country’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, was involved in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the US by al-Qaeda, during which 2,977 Americans died.

It later emerged that the main architect of that attack, Osama bin Laden, was a Saudi citizen and Saddam had nothing to do with it.

The second justification was that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. None was ever found.

How Bush managed to convince Britain, Australia, Spain, Poland and Denmark to join him in invading Iraq has baffled many to this day.

To their credit, Germany, France, Canada and Russia were sceptical and called for a peaceful solution to the conflict. So did Pope John Paul II, who called the war a blasphemy.

But perhaps the man who got closest to the truth was President Nelson Mandela, who pointedly told Bush that all he had really wanted was Iraqi oil. Could Trump be playing that deadly game too?