On 3 January 2020, a US drone strike at Baghdad airport killed General Qasem Soleimani — commander of Iran's Quds Force and the most powerful military figure in the Middle East. For five days, the world watched the two countries walk to the edge of open war.
Who Was Soleimani?
For over two decades, Soleimani ran the Quds Force — the external operations arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. He was the architect of Iran's "axis of resistance": arming and directing Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq, the Assad government's defence in Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen. To Washington, he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of US troops in Iraq via militia attacks and advanced roadside bombs. In Iran, he was a national celebrity seen as the man who kept war outside the country's borders.
The Escalation That Led There
Through late 2019, US–Iran friction in Iraq spiralled: rocket attacks on US bases by Iran-aligned militias, a US contractor killed in December, American airstrikes on the Kataib Hezbollah militia, and a militia-led mob storming the US embassy compound in Baghdad on 31 December. President Trump then approved the strike on Soleimani — an option previous presidents had considered and rejected as too escalatory.
Iran's Retaliation — and Its Signal
On 8 January 2020, Iran launched Operation Martyr Soleimani: over a dozen ballistic missiles at bases housing US forces in Iraq, chiefly Ain al-Asad. Iran gave enough warning through Iraqi channels that no Americans were killed, though more than a hundred later received traumatic brain injury diagnoses. The choreography — real missiles, calibrated to avoid American deaths — became the template Iran reused in 2024 and 2025: retaliation that preserves honour without triggering all-out war.
The Tragedy That Followed
Hours after the missile strike, Iranian air defences on high alert shot down Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 near Tehran, killing all 176 aboard, most of them Iranian and Iranian-Canadian civilians. After days of denial, the IRGC admitted the error — igniting protests inside Iran.
The Precedent It Set
The Soleimani strike crossed a line no one had crossed: the open, acknowledged killing of a top state military commander. It demonstrated that the US would accept enormous escalation risk to act against Iran directly — a precedent Israel and the US extended in June 2025 by striking Iran's generals and nuclear scientists at scale in the twelve-day war. And it entrenched the cycle: for Iran's leadership, revenge for Soleimani remains unfinished business.
This article is part of a 20-part analysis series on the Iran–USA conflict covering the complete history, the June 2025 war, the Strait of Hormuz, oil markets, global inflation and future scenarios. Facts reflect the situation as of early 2026.
