Maj. Gen. Esmail Ghaani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' elite Quds Force, must be tossing and turning at night lately. He isn't sleeping well, and not only because he is preoccupied with commanding and funding terrorist activities outside the borders of the Islamic Republic. He certainly remembers that a little over two years ago, an American drone fired a missile at a convoy in which his predecessor – Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the rock star of Iran's intelligence apparatus – was traveling, killing him.
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In hindsight, that incident – unfortunate, for the Iranians – made it possible for Ghaani to step into the most prestigious role in Iranian intelligence, even if in retrospect he was forced to step into the very big shoes of a man who was known as a "living martyr" because of his "nine lives" and the number of attempts on his life he had survived prior to his early demise.
The instructions to kill Soleimani were issued directly by former US President Donald Trump, after intelligence revealed that Soleimani was planning an attack on Americans on Iraqi soil. Israel was also involved, at the intelligence level, in the targeted killing of the engine of Iran's entrenchment in the region and a man who had major potential to destabilize the region. Former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directors, Maj. Gen. Tamir Hyman, said as much.
Ghaani knows that Iran speaks with a forked tongue. Domestically, Iran takes a harsh stance against anyone who dares raise his head or challenge Shiite law. Abroad, Iran sometimes tries to behave like a first-class western democracy. Its performance includes the use of terminology, phrases, and organizations appropriate to a respectable member of the family of nations.
To mark the second anniversary of Soleimani's death, Iran called on the UN to take the necessary steps to condemn the US for the killing, since Soleimani had been on a "diplomatic mission" to Baghdad, and not – heaven forbid – one of his many trips to shore up terrorist groups in Syria and Lebanon that operate as Iranian proxies, whose ultimate goal the organized he headed was named after – Quds [Jerusalem].
For two years, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been promising to avenge the attack on the man who symbolized Iranian heroism. For now, talk is cheap. Two days ago, an attempt to launch Iranian drones at an airbase in Iraq where American forces were located was intercepted. Although the wing of one of the drones bore the words "Revenge for Soleimani," it's not certain that Khamenei imagined that this is how the big revenge that could ease Iran's hurt feelings would turn out, or what benefit he can gain from calling for revenge now, while his representatives are at the nuclear talks in Vienna.
Ghaani will probably continue working to strengthen Iran's position in the Middle East – in Syria, Lebanon, and of course, against the "Zionist occupier." But he also knows that like Soleimani and after him, nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh after him, it's very possible that the day isn't far off when the US or its ally here in the region will decide to speak in a single voice, and he will hear the whistle of a Hellfire missile flying toward his armored car.
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