When the United States and Qasem Soleimani worked together

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The U.S. government has killed one of its most significant foreign adversaries in decades, with the death of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani.

But the U.S. relationship with Soleimani, like many in the Middle East, has been a complicated one, and he wasn’t always on the opposite side. They even worked together.

As the New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins wrote in 2013, there was a time when there seemed to be hope for something amounting to an alliance between the United States and Iran in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001. And Soleimani, who led Iran’s Quds Force, which is charged with carrying out operations beyond the country’s borders, was the point person:

In the chaotic days after the attacks of September 11th, Ryan Crocker, then a senior State Department official, flew discreetly to Geneva to meet a group of Iranian diplomats. “I’d fly out on a Friday and then back on Sunday, so nobody in the office knew where I’d been,” Crocker told me. “We’d stay up all night in those meetings.” It seemed clear to Crocker that the Iranians were answering to Suleimani, whom they referred to as “Haji Qassem,” and that they were eager to help the United States destroy their mutual enemy, the Taliban. Although the United States and Iran broke off diplomatic relations in 1980, after American diplomats in Tehran were taken hostage, Crocker wasn’t surprised to find that Suleimani was flexible. “You don’t live through eight years of brutal war without being pretty pragmatic,” he said. Sometimes Suleimani passed messages to Crocker, but he avoided putting anything in writing. “Haji Qassem’s way too smart for that,” Crocker said. “He’s not going to leave paper trails for the Americans.”

-snip-

But things soon changed. Despite that cooperation, in January 2002, President George W. Bush lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea in his famous “axis of evil” speech. Crocker said he was blindsided, and that it effectively ended things:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/when-the-united-states-and-qasem-soleimani-worked-together/ar-BBYB0x4?li=BBnb7Kz

[Maine-i-acs]

1. While we're in that timeline ... don't forget Iran offered to give up all nuclear material in 2003

right after the US invasion of Iraq

But the state dept and NSC were divided as to how to respond.

Cheney and the hawks won out in the end and the offer was rebuffed - they wanted to knock down all Arab governments from Iran through Lebanon.
Condi Rice was strangely the voice of reason and she and others were blindsided just as Crocker was here.

[stillcool]

2. can't imagine living in a place....

under attack for generations. Our history is of war, but wars of our own making. The Middle-east has been under the gun from the out-side, from all-sides. They have no armies, no sophisticated weaponry like their attackers, yet they continue to hold on, and fight-off the invasions.