 All right, good morning everyone. I'll give you just a minute to get seated and we'll get started. All right, well welcome to Carnegie. Thank you for taking time on this cold morning to join us. I'm Karim Sajid, poor senior fellow here at Carnegie. And after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani a couple weeks ago, there was a lot of eulogies coming out of Iran about his legacy. And I thought it was important that we look at his legacy and the perceptions of his legacy also in the region. So, I can't think of three better people to talk about this than my colleagues here. I'll start on the far left. Dexter Filkins is well known to most of you, Pulitzer Prize winning author and writer now at the New Yorker. His seminal profile of Qasem Soleimani has been read, downloaded something like a million times. We share a literary agent and I know she's upset. He didn't do that as a book rather than a New Yorker article. Emil Hokey, I'm in the center, is with the International Institute for Strategic Studies based in London. He and I are old colleagues from the International Crisis Group and he's one of the most incisive thinkers on the Middle East broadly, but in particular today I've asked him to talk about the Levant on Syria and Lebanon. And Arashat Bedi is somewhat newer to DC. She was born and raised in Mosul. She runs a website. She's editor-in-chief of a terrific website called Raise Your Voice. And as I said, I'll weigh in at times to talk about Soleimani's legacy in Iran, but I wanted to focus this little more on regional perceptions. And I wanna start with Dexter. Because Dexter spent a decade of his life kind of following in some ways Soleimani and his role in Iraq and Afghanistan. And just to ask you, Dexter, when did you first hear of Qasem Soleimani? When did you think to yourself, I wanna do a profile of this guy. He's worthy of a New Yorker profile. And what were the kind of one or two key insights and things you learned about him? Well, I didn't hear about him until 2012, which I think doesn't speak well for my knowledge of the Middle East. But because by then he kind of already built his big thing or he was in progress. But it was 2012 and I was sitting in the downtown Beirut home of Wali Jumblat. And he's the leader of the Druze. And I don't know how many of you sort of have seen him or met him. He looks like Edgar Allen Poe. And he's an amazing character. He's just the first person I go and see whenever I go to Beirut. He was a warlord during the Civil War. He used to shell the city from the mountain. And when you go into his house, it's like it's aligned with books. He's fluent in French. He serves, he owns a vineyard. And so you can spend the whole night talking to him. And I think we were talking about, it was yet another Lebanese government that had collapsed. And I said, well, who's, you know, how and whatever. And he said, the Lebanese people don't decide the Lebanese government. Who decides? And he said, Kasim Sulaimani decides. And I said, you know, who's Kasim Sulaimani? And so he, you know, he's the head of the Quds Force, et cetera, et cetera. And but he flies in here and, you know, he does the deal. And I kind of, you know, I kind of put that, you know, I kind of filed that. And a couple of weeks later, I was in Washington. I was talking to some intelligence guy. And we were talking about the war in Syria. So this is 2012. So it's, you know, going full war and, you know, Hezbollah is coming in and, you know, it's becoming kind of internationalized. And he said, yeah, you know, Assad's not really running the war. So I said, of course, who's running the war? It's Kasim Sulaimani who's running the war. And that's when it kind of clicked. I thought, my God, who is this guy? And, you know, my boss, David Remnick, is an old Russia hand. And so I had that, you have to go to David and pitch every, you know, you have to kind of convince him to let you do a story. And I don't know how many of you are John LaCarré fans, but all I said to David was, I said, he's Carla. He's the man in the shadows. He's the master spy who's like behind every, he's always behind the curtain, but he's the most influential player in the Middle East, which he was. And so I kind of set off and did the story. And I think you all probably know the story by now, but the, you know, he's a product, very much a product of the Iran-Iraq war, a million people dead, a kind of deeply searing experience for the Iranians. And, you know, basically when the war ended, they decided how can we make sure this never happens again, anything like this, which they viewed as a kind of, not just an Iraqi attack, but a Western attack. And so the kind of the vision, the Suleimani vision was to kind of build this sphere of influence across the Middle East, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and later on to Yemen, to kind of reach out to their Shiite brethren and kind of strengthen them and make them their allies. And so you're talking about Hezbollah, which he helped build, and he helped save Assad in Syria. And of course they were kind of deeply enmeshed in picking Iraqi governments, even when the Americans were there, and killing a lot of Americans when we were fighting there. So, and that's kind of, I think, you know, when he was killed, that was sort of, I think that was his crowning achievement, was to build this, essentially the sphere of influence that would give Iran kind of strategic depth. But in so doing, he started the great sectarian war, which is basically engulfing, it's still engulfing the region. And I think that's ultimately his legs. Thanks, so when I talk to politicians in the Middle East about Suleimani, everyone wants to share with you their stories. No one wants to do it on the record because they're terrified of saying anything that could potentially be perceived as negative. But the mob boss. Exactly, so what was, I mean, was that your experience as well? Totally, totally. I got, that's one of these stories, you know, these New Yorker stories that go on forever. And you know, I interviewed like 100 people and like, you know, like 85 people are like, look, I can't, you know, I'm happy to talk to you, but you can't use my name. And some people, like I remember I was in, I was in Northern Iraq talking to the Kurds. And they were just, we're not cooperating with us. You know, we like you, you're a good guy, but it's bad for us. Everybody's afraid of them. It really was like the mob boss. Don't cross the mob boss. There's someone like and a senior Iraqi official likened him to Don Corleone and that he was outwardly, incredibly civil and polite. And he'd say, you know, it's a nice country you got here. It's a shame if anything were to happen to it. There's always kind of these subtle, subtle threats. So let me move on, Emil, to you. And, you know, when we look at some of the key moments and Lebanese and Syrian history over the last two decades, the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the 2006 Hezbollah war, just the legacy role of Ahmad Muqmiyyah, the Russian intervention in Syria, you know, in some ways all roads, at least not necessarily lead to Saudi money, but he had a role in all of those. I was wondering if you can talk about his legacy in the Levant. Well, he was probably the most central actor in everything strategic that happened in the Levant in the past 20 years. He is the one who turned Hezbollah from this formidable insurgent group to a conventional actor today with a missile force, with a capacity to deter a superior enemy, Israel. He was very probably implicated in the Hariri assassination of 2005. The Hezbollah, there are four Hezbollah members who are currently waiting to be, they're not in the Hague, but there was an international tribunal setup that indicted for Hezbollah members and were waiting for the verdict. And among those individuals is Mustafa Badruddin, who was, with Ahmad Mourney, the two most important interlocutors of Qasem Soleimani for a very long time. Badruddin has been killed in May, 2016 in Syria, where he was heading part of the IRGC Hezbollah effort to save Assad. By his own admission, just in September, a couple of months ago, Qasem Soleimani was present during the entirety of the Hezbollah's Israel War of 2006. He was in the command center of Hezbollah. Sending text messages to David Petraeus in Baghdad. I mean, exactly. So he basically helped run the war, whether it's the escalation or the de-escalation. And he played a crucial role alongside Ahmad Mourney, who was killed in 2008 in Damascus. Starting 2011, it's essentially Qasem Soleimani with a bunch of other IRGC generals, like General Hamidani, General Shatari from the Codes Force, who basically assessed that without external help, the Assad regime would not survive this uprising. So by early 2012, Qasem Soleimani was leading the effort to shore up the Syrian regime. By 2015, however, and it's an admission of failure, he had to fly to Moscow to tell Vladimir Putin, hey, we need your bombers, we need Russian muscle, we need cover. So in a way, Qasem Soleimani, he seems, and he certainly is a formidable person, but he has also had a number of failures. And certainly Syria, up until 2015, was a failing endeavor for the Iranians. But in a way, the brilliance of Soleimani is that he admitted that and he adjusted to that. And he changed his strategy in a way that, yes, came a little bit at the expense of Iranian interest, but secured Iranian interest in the long term. And finally, and Russia will have more details about this, but you all remember the Kurdish referendum in 2017 and the battle for Kirkuk. Qasem Soleimani was involved in that. He's the one who flew to Kurdish regions and strong armed the Talibanis and the Puk and others and led the Shia militia advance into Kirkuk. So he's been operating in all these arenas. Sometimes you can find him within the same months in two or different locations, like in 2016, where he is leading the siege of Aleppo, which was extremely brutal, at the same time fixing the Lebanese presidential election and then going back to Iraq for another round of talk with politicians. So his influence is undeniable. I would consider him probably more influential than any American president or commander or Arab leader in shaping the Middle East as it is today. When Vladimir Putin woke up and got the news that Qasem Soleimani was assassinated, do you think he was concerned? He was pleased? I think he was pleased. I think he was quite useful at a certain moment. But he and Iran had emerged as a challenger to Russian designs and presence in Syria. So I'm pretty sure Putin is quite happy to have this larger-than-life figure removed from the scene. He's also happy that it contributes to greater US-Iran tensions. He's also happy that it puts the US under pressure inside Syria right now, actually, as we speak, with concerns about whether the US would stay or not, whether it would be hit or not. So he was extremely clever, and he played a great role in helping Russia achieve its aims. And I think, at some point, the Russians just prefer to run the show. And he was too big a character. He was a real obstacle in this sense. There's a lot of debate about to what extent Soleimani deserves credit in the fight against ISIS, particularly in Iraq. I've spoken to some Iraqi politicians who say that he was the first one to get there when, after ISIS captured Mosul, and he saved us. Others would argue that Soleimani actually played a role in fueling Sunni radicalism, given his support for Shia militias. And of course, Bashar Assad. But how do you think about his role in the fight against ISIS? And one of the things I'm curious about is, obviously, he played a big key role in cultivating Iraqi Shia militias, who are now assassinating, killing young Iraqi protesters in the streets. And I'm wondering if you think that the role of Shia militias in Iraq, is this just kind of a passing phenomenon, which could soon wilt away? Or is this here to stay the same way that Lebanese Hezbollah appears now, here to stay up to four decades? So again, back to the brilliance of Bashar Soleimani, was the way he sort of exploited Sistani's fatwa. It was a very ambiguous fatwa. Explain that for people who don't know. So when ISIS took over Mosul completely in 2014 and the Iraqi military and other security apparatus apparently collapsed, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued a fatwa that called on young men to join the security forces to fight. He did not say, in particular, let's form a hashith or a popular mobilization force. He said, join the security forces. This is now an obligatory jihad that you have to do to save the country. And it was a fatwa that was issued. He was very persistent about it, Qasim Soleimani. And also, his affiliates in Iraq, they manipulated that and said, and claimed that this fatwa was to actually call on the creation of these units of these militias. Now, these militias had already been in the country since 2006. Some of them had fractured from the Mahdi Army from Jaisal Mahdi. And they had been operating in the country for a while. And then low-key, since 2010, they were kind of absent, but they were already there. So this sort of reactivated them and gave them sort of an official name. And they were the ones that were definitely armed. IRGC and Iran did not choose to support the Iraqi army to rebuild itself, but it chose to support the militias. And at the time, they were the stronger force. So that's how it kind of got that formalization. And it does seem to be a legitimate force now. It's part of the government. And as you see all the killings that are happening, there has been no one, the protesters since October. No one has been held accountable. No militia leader has been at all brought to justice. Over 600 young men have died, and there has been absolutely no accountability. So they look pretty much like a force. They look like they're a force to stay. So in 2014, when the United States did not respond immediately, yes, Qasem Soleimani and Iran definitely did respond. But I was saying this a few days ago also to a friend is that Iran's strategy in Iraq is not to help Iraq without securing its goals, without securing its own interests. And these interests are not necessarily Iraq's interests. So keeping the country barely functional, but within Iran's sphere, as it was talking about earlier, within Iran's control, that has always been the main goal. So that meant keeping the Iraqi, the formal Iraqi military, or the counter-terrorism service, which is trained by the United States, keeping them as weak as possible, and strengthening the militias. That has been the strategy. Their role in fighting, I would not call it instrumental. The brunt of the fight against ISIS was carried out actually by the Iraqi army in 2016 and 17, when they managed to reform and get their act together, and also the counter-terrorism forces. The militias and the Hashid, they played an essential role in entering the cities and securing them after they were liberated. Certain elements of them played also a massive role in assassinations, retribution, killing, looting, and destroying property. We saw the footage and the videos. Everything was documented also. No one was held accountable. And Qasim Sudeimani was a huge fan of selfies. I mean, we all remember that. Every territory that had been liberated, he'd go there for half an hour, take a few photos. It was great PR. And we first heard about him. We didn't know his name. Back in late 2010, when Madiki's second term was finalized, that he was going to be the prime minister again, we heard that there was this mysterious Iranian general behind it, but no one knew his name. In 2011, towards the end of the year, there was talk in Iraq that elements of the Mehdi army, remnants of the Mehdi army and militias were going to Syria to defend the shrines. It was just a rumor on social media. Some people hinted that that was true. And they also said there is an Iranian general behind this. We did not know his name. I did not hear his name before this piece came out. And oh, that's his name. And then 2014, I think he was very out and open and public about being the man in control. In Kirkuk, as Emil mentioned, that was the moment that, in my opinion, sealed the fate for Iraq. Up until before the referendum, Iran's influence, let's say, was 85%. After that, it was 100%. Because there is a huge anti-Kurdish sentiment in Iraq that has not been addressed. And it's something that unites Sunnis and Shi'ats, unfortunately. And the way the referendum was carried out, I would vocally against it because of this particular reason. And it's not because I don't believe that the Kurds have the right to self-determine, or that's something that they should manage. But as Iraq did not know how to resolve this problem right after the fight against ISIS and right after territories have been retaken from ISIS and thousands of death in Iraq's military force and also tens of thousands of civilians that the Kurds would just come and grab land and claim independence was quite offensive to most Iraqis. And that was a sentiment that Qasem Soleimani also played on very, very smart, in a very smart way. And he managed to rally the vast majority of the country around that particular operation, not around him, but around the Iraqi military going into Kirkuk and forcefully taking it back and making sure the referendum never goes through. After that, it's almost as if Iraq pretty much conceded what was left. That, okay, you saved, you got Kirkuk back, you can now take the rest. Card blanche. So one of the, in the aftermath of his assassination, there has been a lot of talk from Iraqi officials that they want the U.S. now out of Iraq publicly, at least they've been articulating that. When I've spoken to U.S. officials privately, and Iraqi officials even have told me privately, listen, we value our partnership with the United States. And we know that if the U.S. pulls out tomorrow, NATO pulls out tomorrow, and then Exxon will pull out the next week. Companies like Exxon Mobile don't want their security provided for them by Iranian Shiite militias. And so to what extent can you talk about both Iraqi popular sentiment about whether, to what extent they want an American presence and political sentiment? It's first important to note that the United States presence in Iraq now is not an occupation. I speak to a lot of Americans who ask me, and they think that this is the American presence in Iraq now is the extension of 2003. There is no U.S. occupation of Iraq at the moment. There's a security agreement, and there's also a force that is there to assist Iraq's military to fight in the fight against ISIS. And yes, and it's small, it's 2000 to 3000, I think at 5000, and in several, and they're distributed among different Iraqi bases. There's no U.S. military base in Iraq either. So their mission has been that since 2014. They've been in great partners, obviously. The American Air Force was instrumental in defeating ISIS at a heavy cost, but they did get the job done. So this is the, first of all, the focus on American presence in Iraq now is kind of a campaign to distract from the protest, for sure. That's the political game of it, because the protests are now the main challenge for the Iraqi ruling class. It's not neither the United States nor even Iran, nor even the potential tension between Iran and the United States. The biggest threat to be the ruling class now are the protests. Popular sentiments, the protests were vocally and openly against IRGC influence, because they know the protesters know who's shooting at them, they know who's killing them. They were never against the United States, but they were never pro-American either. There were never any American flags. No one has ever called for some kind of regime change or for Americans to intervene in that sense. But at the same time, no one wants to be the battleground for a confrontation between the United States and Iran. So the popular sentiments were, at least the ones I spoke to that, well, we're happy he's gone, but we wish he was not killed in Iraq. Why did they not take him out in other places? Why not in Iran? Why is Iraq once again, sort of the battleground? We've already been through war our entire lives. That's the popular sentiment, and now the protesters have sort of been forced to say down with the United States as well, but what they mean by that is that we don't want to get dragged in an Iran-U.S. confrontation. We want to focus on our goals and our aims with these protests and not be distracted by these tensions. Sure. So I'll ask you one more question each, which will be more forward-looking, and then please have your questions ready. And I want to ask you each about the... I think all of us are on the camp that there are... This was a very risky operation, and five years from now it could look very bad, but potentially it could be viewed as a positive five, 10 years from now as well. And I guess maybe I'll start just by talking briefly about Iran internally, and I'm always reminded of my friends who work as venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. They always say that when they're going to invest in a company, they usually invest in an individual more than the idea. They feel like the individual is very dynamic. They'll invest in the company. And if the idea is very good, but the founders are very dynamic, they oftentimes don't tend to us. So the individual makes a big difference. And I also tend to believe that Basim Soleimani played a very unique role in Iran. He was someone who... He had built these relationships in the region. He had built these relationships within Iran. He was someone who was charismatic. You could put up his billboard and Baghdad and Beirut and Tehran. And for many Iranians, he was a Shia Che Guevara. And I think his successor doesn't check any of those boxes. He kind of looks like a disheveled bureaucrat. So I do think that I don't agree with the argument that it doesn't make any difference and the revolutionary guards and of course, force can just continue on as they were before. I do absolutely believe that this, in the near term at least, has really energized the most radical elements of the Iranian regime. And they are right now ready for retribution. They're in the domestic context going to use his assassination to grab even more power for themselves, be even more repressive than they were before. But as I said, I think it's going to take years to really understand what his impact is internally. And then the final thing I'll say before handing it over to all of you is that I think there was an incredible reversal of fortune, as we all saw, within a couple of days of Soleimani assassination when the Iranian government admitted that they were responsible for the shootdown of the tragic Ukraine Airlines flight. You saw, instead of pro-government protests, you started to see anti-government protests in Iran. And I attribute this to the fact that when people saw the casualties and the lives that were lost in Ukraine Airlines flight, over 100 highly educated Iranians, young people, I think as a young modern society, far more Iranians could identify with the tragic victims of the Ukraine Airlines flight than they could with a very bloody career of Qasem Soleimani. And so I think that that fact may actually constrain the regime's ability to retaliate against the United States because they no longer have the popular support for retaliation they did before the Ukraine airliners was tragically down. So Dexter, let me start with you when you think about the potential benefits and the potential risks of this operation, in particular for U.S. national security, U.S. national interests in the region, but also more broadly, if you consider. You know, you don't earn any points by saying you don't know, but I think we just don't, there's so much is opaque in that country that we just don't know, but I would say there's sort of three things that I would kind of think about. And one obviously is the supreme leader, how many is 80 years old? He could drop dead tomorrow. What happens then? And the revolutionary guards in Soleimani had sort of built themselves into the leadership to such an extent that they were gonna play a really, I think, pretty fair to say they were gonna play a very crucial role in kind of deciding who that was gonna be or how it would unfold or how it would take place. Now that's kind of what happens. And the second thing is I think really important, which is obviously what are the Iranians gonna do with their nuclear program? They basically matched the Trump administration and said we're tossing it out the window. And so, if they started enriching again to a high percentage, then we're kind of back in 2009 again when the Israelis are getting ready to go and we're kind of holding onto the leash. I kind of, the third thing I would sort of think about is like, I don't think they're done retaliating yet. And if you remember, I can't even remember what year it was, 2013 maybe, when Soleimani was going to kill the Saudi ambassador at Cafe Milano in, where's Cafe Milano in Georgetown? Yeah, so I'd be surprised if they were able to do anything like that here, but knock on wood. But yeah, I think we haven't seen the last of the retaliation. Yes, I would totally agree with that. Emil, if Mike Pompeo had called you the day before and said, listen, we have an opportunity to take out Qasem Soleimani, what are the pluses and minuses in both Syria and Lebanon, what do you say? Look, I would have advised him against the de-assassination. Oh, I thought he did call. Yeah, okay. Yeah, you don't want to call Qasem. Look, from a Middle Eastern perspective, right now Iran is well entrenched in a number of countries. And here from Washington, perhaps, there's a couple of big turning points and events that help people understand that. But those of us who are from the region and live in the region, the past 10 years have been extremely violent. You've had car bombs going off in Beirut, killing very prominent journalists and politicians. Mohammad Shatah is an example. We saw Melhassan, I mean, I can go down, and most of these can be attributed to Iran's friends in the region. So there is a level of intimidation and coercion that is part of the system. The second point is that Syria was really the central arena where the balance of power in the region was going to be set. And by coming on top in Syria, the Iranians and the Russians, primarily the Iranians, have secured a presence on the Eastern Mediterranean that is going to be very difficult to uproot. Of course, they're trying to build a military infrastructure and they're quite ambitious about it and persistent. And Israel is coming and bombing quite regularly over probably 200 to 300 strikes since 2016. This is Qasem Soleimani's own design. This is his big mission, to open yet another front against Israel, but also entrench Iran in Syrian society. The mere killing of Soleimani doesn't address the first issue. It doesn't remove the threat of intimidation against those who belong to anti-Iran political factions. And it doesn't really address the future of Syria and the ordering of the region. It was probably a one-off attack, assassination, with no real regional strategy that helps the various local and regional actor understand where the US is going for that, what is really the US appetite on it. The US may have decided to kill Soleimani because it was in US interest, I wouldn't know. But from a regional perspective, it doesn't help clarify what the US and its partners in the region are able and willing to do to contain Iran. There are those who would argue that it's too late. That there was a moment, there was a time to do that. It required a much greater and sustained investment in Syria. It required a more clear-eyed policy on Lebanon. It required a more forceful presence in Iraq. But I don't think this administration is really willing to do any of that. What we saw is actually, it was droll from Syria, contested one, partial, but still, what we see in Iraq, I'm not sure President Trump cares about Iraq. I'm pretty sure everyone else in the US system cares and wants to stay there. But if President, if the successors of Kossim Soleimani were to build a golden bridge for Trump to leave, perhaps making believe that he's leaving on his own terms, I think he may actually cross that bridge. Everyone else would be up in arms in the city. But no one really believes that the US is deeply involved in that. So no, his assassination is not, I mean, it's not a friend's burden at the moment. We heard too many analogies to World War III and past events, and we have to also be careful not to go to the extreme where this is somehow the beginning of some bloody new chapters or it's already plenty of blood that's flowing in the streets of all these Arab cities. But it is not a assassination that somehow stabilizes things. Yeah, actually, US military official in the evening that Soleimani was killed called me and said, history may have turned out differently had this been done in 2008 or 2005, but much of this history has now already been written. Well, just one quick point. I mean, what I heard from Syrians and others is to say we wish he had died on the battlefield in Syria and that would have been legitimate. It's in a war context. It wouldn't have been the US killing him, but the conditions for that were never created. Yeah, and I should, in the last few months, I think a lot of people have been surprised by the degree of anti-Iranianness and anti-Islamic Republic sentiment in the Iraqi protests and especially the burning down of the Iranian consulate and Najaf and Karbala, what were thought to be kind of Iranian strongholds. How does Soleimani's assassination play in the Iraqi goal of extricating Iran from Iraq? Does it hurt that cause or does it help that cause? Well, he also had many supporters, obviously. There were thousands also mourning him the next day and the fact that Abu Mahdi Mohandis, the second man in the PMF, was also assassinated the same night, it kind of added to that. So there's a lot of confusion. There's a slight division now within the ranks of even the protests. You have Muqt al-Sadr trying to hijack things, as he always does, and bringing in his people to kind of take over the movement and call for America to leave the country. That has kind of been now the distraction of Soleimani's death. The thing is, it's not just Iran, because Iraq never protested against Iran, it was against IRGC influence and the killing of the protesters and the fact that these influences, the influence is not just military and it's not just security, it's also politics. They interfere in literally every stage of government at every level and that has prevented Iraq from progressing and advancing. And the IRGC's goal has been maintaining the status quo because it serves its interest and the status quo has been extremely corrupt and the Iraqis have been the victims, first and foremost, from pollution, to unemployment, to massive levels of poverty, all of this. This was the core idea of the protest was to challenge this. The anti-IRGC sentiments, they happened pretty much after the assassinations and the killing of the protest. And which have continued. The political class, like I mentioned earlier, will use Soleimani's death and will use also the calls for the United States to leave the country as a destruction. The protests are the main threat of the status quo, not the United States for sure. And also, America has been in Iraq while protesters were being killed. If that tells us anything, it tells us to your point that there's very little interest. They do see this as an internal domestic issue that the United States does not want to get involved with. Where it leaves the Iraqi protesters and the country at large is, okay, what happens next? Soleimani has been killed. They want retaliation. I also don't think it's the end of it, but I do think that in Iraq, how they're going to retaliate is going to be anything they perceive as American. And for the past several months, there has been this very, very public campaign starting with IRGC leaders, starting from IRGC proxies in the country, from the Kitab, Hezbollah, from Asa Abah al-Haq, claiming that these protesters are receiving funds from the U.S. Embassy and claiming that they're Americans. They call them joker in reference to the movie, actually, as if that's a real character for some reason. And that has been an ongoing campaign and it's continued. And they are now almost saying publicly that we will avenge. So I think the retaliation, we're going to see brutality against protesters as part of that retaliation for Soleimani's death. Yeah, I mean, Iranians say the same that they and the governments bid to avenge Soleimani. They're the ones who primarily pay the cost and likewise Iraqi civilians. So ready for questions now? Please introduce yourself in the front. Sorry about that. I was supposed to tell you to wait for a microphone because we have millions of people watching online. I'm Andrew Hanna, I'm a graduate student. Soleimani's successor is Ismail Khani, who was in charge of the IRGC's operations in Afghanistan dealt with the Northern Alliance. And we know that Iran is paying close attention to the U.S. Taliban peace talks. So what do you think the impact of having a new commander whose focus has been outside of the Arab world would be on the IRGC, if any? Thanks, so you spent a lot of time in Afghanistan. How do you think that Iran views the peace talks with the Taliban? And this was one of the things, I think poorly, has been poorly understood about Iran. There's a perception that Iran is Shiite and it only supports Shi'a radicals when in reality they've had flirtations with groups like the Taliban, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, back in the day they used to call them, they used to refer to the Taliban as medieval fanatics. Be good. But look, they want the U.S. out. They want the U.S. out of Baghdad and they want the U.S. out of Afghanistan. And they're gonna push really hard. I think it's pretty simple. They're gonna try to get us out of there. And I think, you know, it is, it's the Golden Bridge. I mean, Trump is only too happy to do that. So could be a good deal or it could be a bad deal. But I think the orders are to get out. The orders from the line-outs are to get us out of there. Make a deal. Did you wanna win? Yeah, I mean, it's true that the new commander has, you know, a different profile than Soleimani. But let's keep in mind one thing. First, he has a long and quite strong relationship with the Supreme Leader of Khamenei since the 80s. And actually it's quite interesting in an effort to legitimize him. Iranian websites have been leaking pictures of him as a young man. You're talking about Soleimani. I'm talking to Kani, sorry, Kani, the new commander. The second thing is, it's true that he played a role in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I mean, overseeing, but his central role was essentially to form the Zaynabiyun and Fatimiyun militias. You know, which essentially, yeah. So the Afghans are the Fatimiyuns and the Pakistanis are the Zaynabiyuns. These are two militias that Iran, the Quds Force, started building 2012, 2013 to precisely fight in Syria. And they deployed approximately 20,000 to 22,000 men who served in Syria throughout the war and served a bit everywhere. We saw them operating in southern Syria. They were involved in the siege Aleppo. They were involved in the battles for Derizor and El-Bukamal in quite large numbers. They were often cannon fodders. They were not necessarily the best trained and the best equipped at once, but they were in a way expendable manpower for the Iranians who just needed to recruit as many people as possible to shore up the Assad regime. So the new commander played that role. He oversaw that whole effort of recruitment, organization, deployment, and operations of these militias in Syria. And that, in a way, has demonstrated Iran's ability to very quickly increase its firepower and manpower and decrease it when needed. So in future conflict, when we look at the order of battle, we can't just look at how many soldiers that are in the Artaish or IRGC members, Soleimani and Kani and others have actually expanded Iran's ability to recruit and fight. That's quite crucial. I would be surprised if the new commander adopts a different strategy than Soleimani's. At least in the short term, they need to reassure their local partners that they're staying. They need to consolidate. They need to prepare to avenge Soleimani and they need to figure out how to push the Americans out with calibrated operations or perhaps not calibrated operations. So a strategic shift from how the Coast Force and the IRGC have done business right now is not the best thing you want. If this had been an orderly transition on Iranian terms, perhaps in a different political and diplomatic context, I think right now, no, they will likely double down on what they've done. And from Tehran's perspective, that investment in those partners and proxies and so on has played off quite well. Who would have sought 40 years ago that Iran with a small investment in Hezbollah would emerge as a power on the Eastern Mediterranean and that's a reality today. So I don't think that there's any of those relationships from Iran's perspective that is worth abandoning or rethinking. Actually, I think you preserve what you want and you actually, you preserve all that and you doubled out. You probably read this report because you're a graduate student at Georgetown but there was a wonderful report that Human Rights Watch did about the Fatimidun Brigade, the Afghan Brigade that Iran assembled to fight in Syria and it's incredibly cruel. They went to these essentially destitute day laborers, Afghan laborers in Tehran and throughout Iran and gave them essentially an offer they couldn't refuse. Either we're gonna deport you back to Afghanistan or we'll double your salary if you go. They didn't even tell them why they would send them to Syria to fight. They said, we're gonna send you to go protect the Shiite shrine and Damascus and these young men who were as young as 14, 13, 15 years old had no clue why they were fighting and as Amil said, they were simply used as cannon fodder and I know that a lot of Afghans are now worried about the legacy of these young men who now they're battle hardened folks who fought in Syria and the impact they can continue to have on Afghan politics. Jessica Mathews, Michael. Oh, Jessica Mathews from Carnegie. If there is nobody who can take Soleimani's place politically inside Iran, is it possible notwithstanding the radicalization that the assassination produced, is it possible that this weakens the coups force role in the selection of how many successor and does it possibly strengthen Rouhani? Karim, you should take that. You know, there's this body as you know, Jessica called the Assembly of Experts which in theory has the constitutional authority to choose the next supreme leader. There's 84 men, I joke their average age is deceased. Like literally half of them are wheeled in on a chair and I've always thought that the Revolutionary Guards have emerged as the most powerful institution in Iran and they will play a far greater role in choosing who their next commander and chief is than this group of geriatric clerics. But I think it also depends when, how many dies. You know, at the moment he looks like he's in good health. No one is expecting him to die. If he drops dead tomorrow, you know, I'm not sure the Revolutionary Guards have a plan in place. But I also don't see a great discrepancy between the views of the top commanders of the Revolutionary Guards and the views of those clerics who make up the Assembly of Experts because they're both led and made up of people who've really been handpicked by Karim and himself and he wants someone who is going to, same way Raul Castro has kind of remained loyal to Fidel's vision for Cuba. I think that is the goal. In the short term, at least this is definitely weakened, President Hassan Rouhani, because Rouhani was actually trying to curtail the power of the Revolutionary Guards and Iran's politics and Iran's economy. And at the moment there's no way that he can get up and say we need to check the Revolutionary Guards. At the moment it's just, you know, let's indulge them as much as possible. So I think in the near term it's absolutely weakened, Rouhani, over the long term it could possibly, we could look back 10 years from now and say that that played a role in actually weakening the most radical elements of the regime in the frontier. Good morning, I'm Charles Tipo. I'm a visiting fellow at the Washington Institutes. I'm struck by the contrast between some of the comments you made and we heard also in the last weeks about the lack of follow-up about the strike against Soleimani in terms of political endeavor afterwards. And some of the discussion we heard in Washington as well about restoring U.S. deterrence in the region. So in your views, has U.S. deterrence been restored? And if yes, what kind of deterrence and deterrence of what? That's a terrific question which I'll, let me jump on to that to say last summer after Iran attacked the tankers. There was very little response. Four weeks later they shot down an American drone. President Trump thanked them for not shooting down a manned aircraft. You can draw a straight line between the shoot down of the drone to the attack on Sadio Ramco three months later. So there was a widespread perception that basically we had lost the deterrence against Iran. Now the question is, does this assassination of Soleimani restored deterrence or has it actually energized Iran to further retaliate? You wanna start next? Yeah, I mean, again, I don't know, but I agree with Karim, I think that in that region and this is just, this is sort of my gut speaking. When you draw a red line, it's kind of understood and they've kind of done that here. And the message is, when you start killing Americans, we're gonna come after you. And so I think it'll deter that. I don't know what else is gonna deter, but they got that message, absolutely. Tasha? Yeah, I would agree with that too. I think if the militia leaders in Iraq, if they continue the strikes on the US embassy and US interest and actually American interests are actually harmed and Americans die, we might see more assassinations of militia leaders and members of the PMF and that will drag, that will continue to drag Iraq into this cycle, it will continue. As for deterrence, it will not go further, it will not go beyond that. We're not gonna see a confrontation. I don't believe there will be beyond that. I also do think that perhaps the IRGC is going to also take notice that this is not the Obama administration and this is not Trump six months ago, that if he decides to retaliate, he will and it might hurt them. So there might be some double thinking before. When Iran retaliates against the United States by attacking an Iraqi military base, how was that perceived among Iraqis? Popular sentiments, a lot of anger. And it's the hypocrisy because all this talk of Iraq being a sovereign state and angry at the United States for killing Soleimani on Iraqi soil, everyone is kind of silent when Iran does that. And Iraqi soldiers are injured or killed. We don't even know because there's such a massive coverup. We're not sure. So there is a lot of anger. And when that continues, there's going to be more anger on the streets. It's going to be confronted by a defensive attitude from the militias and we're going to see more confrontation. Will the deterrence is restored or? I'm off two minds on that. I don't disagree with what both three of you have said, but it's still striking that it's the first time in 30 years that Iran uses missiles, conventional weaponry, publicly against a US military target, of course on an Iraqi base. I mean, what I'm trying to say is that the Iranians are slowly eroding what we saw. I mean, they would never do essentially, right? It's like they attack Saudi Aramco and you would have asked those of us who are in the same tank world and so on 10 years ago to write the paper about what would happen if Saudi Aramco were hit and 5% of total oil production was taking out the market and Saudi 50% and we said, oh, clearly it's war. I mean, you know, and we've kind of adjusted to what the Iranians are doing because our risk appetite has gone down because everyone is tired. Most people don't want a war, including President Trump. And although we know no war with. And in this case, I wouldn't say that deterrence is restored because of the kind of state Iran is. If Iran was only, its power was only based on conventional power and capabilities, then perhaps, you know, we would test it. But Iran is not fully invested in that. Actually, it has those networks of partners across the Middle East. It can easily justify, you know, killing non-Americans to punish Americans. I mean, I have Saudis who've told me on Aramco, it's like, we're paying the price for the US pressure on Iran and, you know, we're a proxy in that and we have no say in it and we can't retaliate. So I think it's much more complicated than that. The Iranians have a lot of tools at their disposal. And from now on, you know, the missile attack served to check the national pride box. It was clear, it was overt, it was a conventional strike against a clear American target and so on. From now on, the real vengeance starts and that one will be fought, you know, as part of the shadow wars that are fought in the region. So who knows, an embassy explodes somewhere. And would we have the same debate about deterrence if there's a hundred civilians killed? And the way back, why don't we take the final two questions? Go ahead, Afshin and then here in the front. Thank you. Thank you, Karim. And thank you to all the panelists for a very dynamic discussion today. My name is Afshin Malavi. I'm with the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins SICE. It seems like if there were a Qassem Soleimani scorecard that you guys were filling out for Iraq and Lebanon, it seems like the, you know, the marks would be very high in terms of his goals, not the national interests of Iraq or the national interests of Lebanon, but his goals. Maybe this question is directed at Mille. What would the scorecard say for Qassem Soleimani's work in Yemen? I'd like to ask you about that. And then maybe just very briefly, Dexter, if you could give us some color on those text messages sent to General Petraeus and what did Qassem Soleimani really want? And what does he want from the United States? What did he want? Gentlemen in the front of the last question right here. Thanks for all of you. My name is Aiman Abdel Noor. I'm the editor-in-chief for the main media Syrian opposition. I share with you the idea that the business with all the proxies between IRCG will not be the same as before killing Soleimani. The reporters, our reporters from Damascus succeeded to leak what happened inside the presidential palace after directly when they knew that Soleimani was killed, whom he invited, whom he sent to Tehran, what their mission was in Tehran, and how the relation totally affected by that. They refused to give us last week for the prime minister deposit for the central bank. This is why the Assad family started fighting against Iran in Syria publicly for the first time. And why Bashar Assad, when he met President Putin, after killing Soleimani, he invited an irrelevant person, no one reported in US media, why he was there that person, even though it's not his job to attend that meeting. This is because of the killing of Qasem Soleimani. Thank you. Thank you. So why don't we go in, I guess, reverse order, we'll give Russia the last word, Dexter Meel and Russia, and react to any of the questions you heard. Well, I'll just tell you about the text messages. I mean, it's kind of, well, quickly, that the text messages I know about, I think we're in 2006, and Soleimani was in, he was in Lebanon fighting the Israelis, and the violence was going up in Baghdad, and I think he and Petraeus used to talk, or used to text, and Petraeus said something like, I think we need to have a discussion about what's happening in Baghdad, and Soleimani said, I'm kind of busy, I'll get back to you, something like that. But, you know, kind of joking, but there's a kind of another part of this, which is, and it's in the category of missed opportunities when after the 9-11 attacks, and then later when the United States invaded Iraq, Soleimani was cooperating with the United States, and I mean, the Ryan Crocker, who's a really extraordinary American diplomat, he'll sort of tell you the story of meeting with these Iranian officials where before the bombing began in Afghanistan, and they're literally throwing maps down on the table and saying, you can hit the Taliban here, here, here, and here, here, take the map. So they were, and pretty much the, not quite that explicit, but it happened in 2003 when the US rolled into Baghdad, they were kind of, this was Crocker again, he was sending messages to Soleimani through intermediaries saying, literally saying like, what about this guy for the, can you live with this guy as the minister of interior, and what about him for public works? And Soleimani would say, yes, no, maybe. So there was this kind of back channel that really functioned, and all that kind of went up in smoke. I think the Crocker one, the Afghan one went up in smoke when Bush gave his famous access to the evil speech, and the Iranians said, screw you, thank you very much. Neil, Yemen hasn't been mentioned, it's an oversight on my part, so why don't you take it? I mean, before answering Yemen precisely, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, yes, Soleimani did quite well in terms of Iranian interests or the interests of the regime. At the same time, Iran today is inheriting three collapsing countries essentially, and what we need to, well, I'll get to Yemen in a second, but my point is that, yes, Iran is a dominant force, but Iran is either unwilling or unable to focus on stabilization, governance, it's not the country that can jumpstart the economies of these places, it's not that Iranian spending on humanitarian assistance in Syria is amazing, or that it's helping Iraq rebuild its infrastructure, or that it can help Lebanon figure out its massive debt problem at the moment. So yes, it's true that Iran and its partners are the most powerful actors in those countries, but they don't have any solutions to what is actually happening, and that is quite destructive at this point. We're talking about three countries that are at least for Lebanon and Syria in almost terminal state, that no economy, currency collapsing, no real international assistance because concerns about what's happening there politically, so that's essentially, Iran contributed to a large extent to creating those problems and has zero solution there. When it comes to Yemen, I still think that the Iranian investment in Yemen, although limited, has paid off handsomely as far as the Iranians are concerned. With a limited investment in technology, in funding, in missiles, in other light weaponry, they've been able to harass and keep the Saudis on their toes, and they've been able to set up a small base on Bab el-Mandeb, which could be useful in terms of a massive regional conflict if you need to go after important choke points. That's one that you would be well-served if you could fire an anti-ship missile at some tanker or some Western frigate crew using their hands. So the Yemen investment is quite big, although I would say that it's still within Saudi power and certainly responsibility to get to a deal there. I think it's easier to figure out a settlement in Yemen, and certainly the UN envoy is working very hard on that, in Yemen than elsewhere. The Iranians today, however, would be a massive obstacle. They wouldn't want this to happen unless they were trying to pry away Saudi from the U.S. I mean, if the Iranians wanted to play it smart in Yemen, they would say to the Saudis, look, we're gonna do de-escalation. We'll show you that we have good will towards you. We'll help bring the Hussis to the table, we'll calm things down, and in return, whether it's explicit or implicit, you part from the U.S. position on Iran. You start moving away. That would be the smart play, but I'm not sure that the regime, especially at a time where it is focused on seeking vengeance for Soleimani, would do that. Lesha, feel free to react to any of the questions and I have one more for you, which is for the last two decades since the invasion of Iraq, there's been this outside perception that Iraqis' sectarian identities have become, have been more powerful than their national identities. I'm curious if you think that that's now begun to change, that whether you're Sunni, Iraqi, or to a lesser extent perhaps Kurd, but that you wake up in the morning feeling more Iraqi than you do Shi'ite or Sunni. One of the phenomenons we had after phenomenons, sorry, tripping, that happened after 2014 when Soleimani sort of mobilized the Hashid, was that he tried to identify what a new sense of Iraqi nationalism would be, and that would be definitely support to al-Hashid, and any criticism of their killings of civilians, of the retribution would be considered anti-Iraqi. And the new nationalism, and we saw that play in the press, we saw that among even Iraqi researchers and analysts that any criticism of unlawful killings was immediately saying this is targeting Iraqi nationalism, this is targeting people who sacrificed. This carried on for some time until the recent protests. They definitely have formulated a new sense of nationalism. Kurds are probably out of this. It's largely a Shi'i youth who are protesting, but it's definitely Iraqi in a sense. And because the numbers of those killed are so high, and it's basically being Shi'a mobilization forces, the PMF, largely killing Shi'a protesters who have the banners of al-Hussein and have religious Shi'a slogans behind them, it's created a sense where this generation has reconciled its sectarian identity or its second identity with Iraqi nationalism. They don't see themselves as Shi'a victims anymore, they see themselves as Iraqis being victimized by corrupt governments. So that's the new sentiment, and it's definitely growing by the day, and it has replaced the sectarian identity despite everything that has happened since October. Every time something occurs, like the killing of Soleimani even before that targeting Hashid militias by the US, we think that this is going to deter the protest movement. They come back even stronger with more of a sense of more nationalism. So that's something to look out for. And they also, I believe that the vast majority of Iraqis now believe that neither the US wants escalation nor Iran does, and neither countries have the appetite for it. Iran cannot afford another confrontation, even on Iraqi soil, massive confrontation. And they feel that behind the curtains, people are talking to each other, there are negotiations or at least some kind of that might happen in the future, and Iraqis don't wanna be the victim of this. So the focus is now on, we don't wanna be a proxy for anyone. I think the future for the IRGC is gonna be tougher in Iraq, and their response to that is going to be more violent until probably at some point, the government actually might collapse, we might be in a situation similar to Syria and Lebanon. So far, the government has kind of pretended the protests are not happening, and they've gotten away with it, but that can only last for so long, because also problems of financial problems, the economy is not going well, and everything else related to that. Well, I'm happy to end on that slightly positive note, and I could keep going on for hours listening to you guys, mindful of all your time. Thank you guys for joining us, and please join me in thanking the panel. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see you. In a moment, I'm going to do that one more... I'm sorry. No, it's fine. We're gonna try it. Oh yeah, he's a great guy. Yeah, yeah. How's he doing?