Brace for the Unintended Consequences of Killing Soleimani
A feel-good moment will complicate U.S. strategy from Israel to Africa to Latin America.
We are all Soleimani.
Photographer: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
“The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.” So says my good friend, the distinguished historian Niall Ferguson. We are seeing the wisdom of that line playing out in the days since a U.S. drone strike killed Iran’s most important military commander, Qassem Soleimani.
Certainly Soleimani was a dangerous, smart, determined enemy of the U.S. Taking his skills away from the Iranian regime is a tactical plus in the effort against Iranian aggression and Middle East terrorism. Indeed, Iran’s ability to respond to Soleimani’s killing is now handicapped — the best person to imagine, plan and oversee a revenge operation would have been Soleimani himself.