Background: A History of US-Iran Relations, Tensions

After claiming credit for killing Qassem Soleimani outside Baghdad International Airport, Donald Trump said that the world was now a “safer place.” This viewpoint was perhaps understandable, given Soleimani’s position as the commander of Iran’s Quds Force and his role in developing the Badr Organization in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Houthi movement in Yemen, among numerous other fighting outfits around the world. At the heart of this sprawling violent network stood Soleimani. Not for nothing, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called him “a living martyr of the revolution.”

(CNN)US President Donald Trump says he ordered the assassination on Friday of Iran's top general, Qasem Soleimani, "to stop a war." But that's simply not true.

Rather than stop a war, Trump just called Tehran's bluff and wagered all in with the single most daring American act in a conflict that's been raging for years.
No American president has ever taken the fight to Tehran like this. It's bold. It's provocative.

And it could set the Middle East aflame -- but it is most definitely not stopping a war.

Why?...