Hello from the Heartland. My name is Jenna, and this is Smarter News, news when it matters and why it matters.

Our Smarter series features unique people who help us think and live smarter.

The headline seems clear.

America targeted and killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.

But the implications and angles of this story, dynamic to say the least,

General Soleimani was known internationally for his leadership of an elite fighting force within Iran's military, the Kud's

force, a group designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

Listen to our guests describe the stakes.

The killing of Qasem Soleimani was probably no less consequential for the U.S. and for our foreign

policy than the killing of Osama bin Laden

or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

I mean, in other words, just in terms of the sheer amount of blood that this man had on his hands

and the kind of misery that he had perpetrated around the region, I don't think just because

people had not heard of his name before, they did not realize how important of a target this man was

and how important it was for the United States to take him off the battlefield.

That's Jonathan Shanzer, senior vice president at the Think Tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

He describes Soleimani's strategy as employing a slow strangulation of other countries so Iran could

take control. Jonathan has followed Iran and its terrorism footprint for years, and he joins us to

provide some much-needed perspective on the bigger picture and why this all matters. We started with

a basic question. What exactly does Iran want? They would like to see the

world look very differently than it is. The regime views the United States as what they call

the great Satan. They talk about Western influence, Western culture, American-dominated world order as a threat

...