{"id":27247,"date":"2020-01-09T12:51:33","date_gmt":"2020-01-09T18:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=27247"},"modified":"2020-01-09T12:51:33","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T18:51:33","slug":"competing-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/01\/09\/competing-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Competing News"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you were wondering why Iran seems to be happy with a near-miss revenge attack on US forces in the wake of the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps<\/strong><\/em> (IRGC<\/strong><\/em>) General Qasem Soleimani, AL Monitor<\/strong><\/em> has an explanation<\/a> – sort of:<\/p>\n

\n

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed\u00a0that its barrage of surface-to-surface missiles against two US bases in neighboring Iraq early Jan. 8 killed over\u00a080 US military personnel<\/a>, leaving some 200 others injured. IRGC commanders announced that “tens of missiles” were launched, all\u00a0precisely hitting the targets<\/a>, with none being intercepted.<\/p>\n

Yet hours later, in a televised address from the White House, US President Donald Trump denied any casualties, saying the bases had only been slightly damaged. According to\u00a0Iraqi sources<\/a>, 22 missiles came from Iran, striking the Ain al-Asad\u00a0base in Anbar province as well as an air base in the Kurdish city of Erbil.<\/p>\n

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the Iranian leadership prided itself in fulfilling a promised “harsh revenge<\/a>” for the death of its most powerful commander, Gen.\u00a0Qasem Soleimani, assassinated in a\u00a0US drone attack<\/a>\u00a0outside Baghdad International Airport last Friday.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The conventional explanation would be that the regime in Tehran is attempting to thread the needle between a home public which must see the regime as strong in retaliation, and facing a foreign enemy which could inflict incredible harm on Iran – and its own reputation – if it so chose to do so.<\/p>\n

But all the posturing makes me wonder – did Supreme Leader Khamenei and the rest of the leadership of Iran actually think Soleimani was an asset? Or is there a silent relief that he’s gone?<\/p>\n

I have no idea how to confirm this hypothesis, unless a defector pops up with relevant information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you were wondering why Iran seems to be happy with a near-miss revenge attack on US forces in the wake of the killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) General Qasem Soleimani, AL Monitor has an explanation – sort of: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed\u00a0that its \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27247"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27249,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27247\/revisions\/27249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}