Hello and welcome to another episode of the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and the Trump presidency.

I would like to remind you all that we have just launched our print edition, and I'd like to encourage you all to subscribe. You can do that

by going to www.spectator.us forward slash subscribe and there you can take advantage of our various

offers. I'm joined this morning by Paul Wood of the Spectator who has just written a snap reaction piece to the news that

Kasim Soleimani has been killed in Iraq. Paul, Kasim Soleimani is a very important Iranian figure,

somebody who is often accused of being the sort of dark hand of everything anti-Western that happens

in Iraq and indeed elsewhere. First of all, how significant is this strike, this killing of a key

Iranian figure? Well, short of killing the Supreme Leader or the President of Iran, I can think of

no more significant person that

the Americans could have chosen to kill. This will inflame Iranian nationalists and supporters of the

regime. It will be very useful to the regime in whipping up anger against America.

And he was an extremely important figure around the Middle East. One CIA officer was quoted in a

notable New Yorker piece that appeared a couple of years ago saying he's the most significant

operative in the whole region. Everybody sees the hand of Kasim Soleimani behind everything, as you said.

And there was some truth to that. He was in charge of the Kud's force of the Revolutionary

Guard Corps, which was a sort of combination of the CIA and special forces on the Iranian side.

They conducted black operations in Iraq. They funded armed and trained the Iraqi militias,

the Shiite militias, which for years have been killing American servicemen and

women, and over the past few days were behind a rocket attack that killed an American contractor.

Shiite militias, too, ultimately answering to Soleimani, were behind the armed rioting outside

the American embassy that so angered President Trump a couple of days ago. He is, as I wrote,

perhaps the person

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