Following the strikes against the ARAMCO refinery last summer, Saudi officials have sought multiple paths to reduce future risks from augmented defenses to seeking agreements from other parties not to support such attacks. One such path: asking the US (#ImPOTUS) to ask Iraq(i officials) to find secure paths to mediate with Iran to reduce tensions.

According to the Iraqi Prime Minister, the key player:  Major General Suleimani. 

Arraf is an NPR Middle East Correspondent. Here is information, reporting live from the Iraqi parliamentary debate, from a Washington Post Baghdad bureau reporter:

“I was supposed to meet Soleimani at the morning the day he was killed, he came to deliver me a message from Iran responding to the message we delivered from Saudi to Iran” Iraqi PM said.

Rather than taking action to preempt attacks on US personnel and facilities, uber-narcissist Trump killed someone who actually was on a mission to reduce risks to a major US ally and, by extension, to US forces and US civilians.

Last night, I went to see the Capital Steps. One of the bits was Trump testing campaign slogans for 2020 with the second being all too relevant, all too often: 

Trump: Win The Future

The United States is on the edge of a massively disruptive conflict, a full out war of choice that will have been chosen by someone illegally occupying the Oval Office.  

There is so much, painfully, to unravel about the attack on Suleimani:

• Why was the Pentagon (the CJCS) so idiotic to even present this ‘outlandish’ option to Trump, treating Trump with the seriousness and respect that has been given to past Presidents? Trump doesn’t have the intellectual capacity nor personality to get ‘the outlandish option to drive you to choose what we want to do’ tactic that people often use when presenting options to their bosses / superiors.  Has #Cult45 become embedded within the Pentagon’s leadership (civilian and uniformed)?
• The United States has now blatantly and openly assassinated a (major) foreign government official in another country.
  • Has this given green light to Russia, China, and others in the future?
  • How would an Iranian assassination of a US official planning strikes against Iran be any different morally or under international law?
• With the Iraqi Parliament vote to expel US forces for Iraq, the Iranians (and ISIS and ...) look to have secured what they have wanted for many years: the US out of Iraq.  Suleimani has won a major victory in his martyrdom.
• Yet again, the U.S. media has shown itself incapable of handling Team Trump disinformation.  All the emphasis and discussion of how horrible Suleimani is yet, for example, how much time spent on showing Iraqi opinions about the action on talk shows or how much space given to Suleimani’s role as an intermediary to reduce tensions in the Persian Gulf.
• And …

However, this additional news — that Suleimani was, according to the Iraqi Prime Minister, on a mission brokering paths to reduce tension in the Persian Gulf is truly stunning. If this is true, even knowing Suleimani’s past and full role in supplying insurgents fighting against the US in Iraq, his role across the region, one has to wonder whether the United States intelligence and diplomatic apparatus was aware of (even involved with) Suleimani’s peace-brokering mission and how assassinating Suleimani could have been on the table while there was any chance he would succeed in this.

BREAK — For a (perhaps painful) comedic break, if you have never heard of The Capital Steps, here is a taste: