Trump's Assassination of Iran's Soleimani

President Trump has indicated that he was trying to prevent a war by assassinating Iran's top terrorist general, Soleimani, a man hated around the Western world for killing many in Iranian sponsored terrorist attacks via proxy forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon.

WW1

Any student of history, which obviously Trump is ignorant about, is that assassinations or murders cause World Wars. WW1 began when a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. This seemingly small scale murder perpetuated by a small local terrorist group called the Black Hand, had a few cells with the same purpose in mind, should any one fail in their mission. At the time, Russia and Serbia were allied, so it seems Russia promoted the idea to kill the would be heir to the German ally, Austria-Hungary. Within two months after this murder, war was declared for this and other reasons. Prior to this event, tensions were moderate, but the murder was the red line.

Today

Judging from the responses of Iran, while Trump tried to prevent a war, in his own mind, Iran calls it an act of war. To think Trump really thought he was doing the right thing in trying prevent a war by taking out one man is naive. Soleimani has already been replaced by his #2 man, also responsible for numerous of terror attacks. If this man is killed, another one will take his place and Iran will continue to make life dangerous. While the death of Soleimani IS a good thing, it changes nothing but create even more tension between the countries. How Iran responds will be interesting.

Distraction

President Nixon and Clinton used distraction methods while both were being impeached. Nixon traveled to many foreign countries just prior to him resigning to keep the news cycle diverted. Clinton did the same by ordering NATO aircraft attacking in Serbian conflict in 1998. Trump is following the same playbook. Why did not Trump order this before now, during an election year? Others have said there have been numerous opportunities to kill this guy. Well, obviously, Trump wants the impeachment news cycle to be drowned by this assassination and whatever Iran's response will be. To him, the risk is worth it even though it may stumble the region into a regional war with others getting involved as in WW1. Iraq may evict all US presence from the county, giving Trump a talking point about how he got America out of Iraq (on bad terms).

Depending on how this evolves with Iran, the impeachment trial may never happen or nobody will care if real war does occur. It would seem secondary to many based upon how those proceedings have been perceived. Trump may end up regretting this distraction tactic if things go sideways (bad) for US forces or their allies. Iran has plenty of things they can do and how Trump then responds will dictate events.