News Right Now: Operation Saving Face

Welcome to News Right Now: Operation Saving Face!

After the assassination of Iranian Commander Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad by a US drone strike on January 3rd, many spectators and onlookers drew conclusions of the beginning of a new World War. The US attack crossed a major red line, an attack on a high-level official of a foreign country. The move was a major escalation, if not an all-out act of war.

Iran promised “severe revenge against the United States” for the move and the world watched with trepidation at the powder keg that was about to explode. However, Iran’s tepid, toothless attack on to the US removed all fears of full-on escalation between the two countries. Iran’s response to the killing of their top commander was to launch missiles on US military bases in Al-Assad and Irbil in Iraq. Satellite images revealed that the dozen missiles caused minimal damage to property and no casualties to US or Iraqi troops.

The aftermath proves that Iran missed on purpose and merely launched the attack to save face in front of their own domestic population. While international media reported no casualties, the Iranian State News Agency reported 80 deaths at the US base - a fallacious, bloated claim meant to appease the Iranian public’s desire for revenge. Most laughable of all is the fact that the Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi notified that an attack had begun or would begin shortly on US military locations, who then told the US to expect the attack.

Any future Iranian response to US aggression should be viewed from the angle of saving face in front of its own population because Iran has acted very aggressively in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen all to the benefit of the United States, by engulfing the region in the flames of sectarian conflict, maintaining a delicate balance of power. This entire publicity stunt proves that the US can use countries to its advantage and act with impunity in the region. It also proves that despite its tough talk and aggressive rhetoric, Iran has to play a submissive role or risk complete annihilation.

Iran has shown first hand how aggressively it acts and the bloodshed it will mete out to other Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen and how it will advance US interests in the region like how it helped stabilize Iraq after the 2003 US invasion and how it worked with the US to fight the Taliban in 2001. And to serve as a bogey man to keep the Gulf states in line.

This situation is another example that the only way to end US meddling in the affairs of the Muslim Ummah is to uproot the tyrant agents and the regimes the preside over and to re-establish the Khilafah on the method of Prophethood.

Jazāk Allāhu Khayran