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Welcome to a special edition of the commentary magazine podcast.

I am John Pudhord's the editor of commentary with me as always though through the miracle of Skype and not in studio.

No Rothman associate editor. Hi Noah. Hi John.

A green walled senior sorry a green walled senior editor next door to me but it could be a thousand miles away.

Right here. Hi John.

And in Washington as ever Christine Rosen senior writer. Hi Christine.

Hi John. So we have gathered we're we settle a little different because we're doing the sun Skype some of us are on Mike some of us are on phones.

But we wanted to do a special podcast to deal with the targeted killing of cussem soul of money the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps last night in Baghdad.

The most significant foreign policy act of the Trump administration thus far.

And one that I have to say has demonstrated that in no way shape or form can can our political discussion get out of the Trump cycle of anything Trump does is is terrible.

And and everything is going to be awful and all things are are disastrous so much so I would say that people aren't even able to take a step back and examine the simple fact that gone from the earth is one of the most destructive and evil people who had lived in our time who is.

I think the most significant thing one can say about him aside from the American the question of American national interest.

And American foreign policy is that were it not for many of his actions hundreds of thousands of people might still be alive in Syria who are dead.

And certainly the two or three Gaza wars against Israel would not have taken place so that's one that's that's that's the largest possible scale we take it down now to the American Iranian scale no arothman.

You were a great blog post last night following up and stuff that we talked about on the podcast yesterday so we just lay out quickly and I mean quickly because we want to do the short.

The provocations that led to our to Trump and the United States taking this action yesterday.

So briefly you know without going back into ancient history.

The United States estimates that about one in six American casualties on the battlefield in Iraq was attributable to Iranian actions because some salamani was the executor of those actions he established training camps and factories to produce shape charges across the border.

The Obama administration couldn't get him the Obama administration lifted travel sanctions on him which he used to travel back and forth to Moscow to coordinate his efforts to undermine American strategy there and get American allies killed there.

In the course of the last year there's been a region wide campaign executed by Iran to provoke an American response and it had met with a relatively muted response from the Trump administration can speculously so beginning in spring of last year.

Terran executed terrorist attacks on foreign flag vessels in the straight of form moves pirated of you seized a couple struck an American drone executed a sophisticated drone strike on a petroleum processing facility in Saudi Arabia all of which had faced no proportion that response from the west from.

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