Dexter Filkins on the Air Strike that Killed Qassem Suleimani

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

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🗓️ 3 January 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Qassem Suleimani was Iran’s most powerful military and intelligence leader, and his killing, in a U.S. air strike in Baghdad on Thursday night, will likely be taken as an act of war by Tehran. Dexter Filkins, who wrote the definitive profile of Suleimani, in 2013, spoke with David Remnick about the commander’s central role within the Iranian regime. Reprisals against the U.S., he says, might be carried out anywhere in the world, either by Iran’s Quds Force or by affiliates such as Hezbollah. The Trump Administration experiences tension between a desire for regime change and the President’s desire to avoid foreign wars; Filkins notes that embattled Presidents, like Bill Clinton during his impeachment, often have itchy trigger fingers.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:08.0	I'm David Remnick.
0:09.6	On Thursday night, American officials announced that the United States military,
0:14.4	on orders from President Trump, had launched drone strikes over the Baghdad airport,
0:18.8	killing, among others, Iran's most powerful military
0:22.0	and intelligence leader, Qasem Soleimani. The officials said that the strike had been carried
0:27.1	out because American intelligence had information that Soleimani was planning strikes
0:31.6	against American personnel and assets in the region. It is impossible to overstate the stakes
0:37.4	here. While Trump has said he
0:39.4	does not want war with Iran, this will certainly be taken as an active war into Tehran. And we have
0:45.6	already heard vows of reprisals which could take place anywhere in the region or well beyond.
0:51.3	Soleimani was for decades the leader of the Quds Force, a division that carried out military and clandestine operations all over the world, from Syria and Iraq to more distant continents.
1:02.6	President Trump came to office vowing to abrogate the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran and went ahead and did so.
1:10.1	I'm talking with the New Yorkers, Dexter Filkins,
1:12.7	who has covered the Middle East for a long time, and in 2013 published in the magazine a long
1:18.1	profile called The Shadow Commander, a profile of Qasim Soleimani. Dexter, are we at war with Iran?
1:26.2	Well, not yet, but this is not difficult to imagine how this plays out.
1:31.3	We hit them. They hit us back.
1:34.4	Somebody miscalculates, and then we're off to the races.
1:38.1	And what does that mean? What does war with Iran look like?
1:40.6	What could it look like?
1:42.3	It's hard to imagine.
	...

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