After the terrorist attack of the
United States back in January last year, which resulted in the brutal
assassinating one of Iran’s General Qassim Soleimani at the Bagdad Airport, it
is now a good time to assess the benefits of such terrorist act was for the
U.S. government and the costs of it.

First of all, what the U.S. did in
killing a top general of one country in the territory of another country is not
only an illegal conduct in total violation of the spirit and the letter of the
UN Charter, but it also damaged the U.S. international image. The terrorist
attack showed to the world even more than before that the Americans do not
respect international law when it is not in line with their national interests,
that they are ready to restore to acts of crime and terror whenever they see
their evil plots in the Middle East region in danger, and of course, that the
policy makers in Washington, especially Donald Trump, are very naïve and were
not thinking in advance that their terrorist attack would not be without
response from the part of Iran. After the assassination of General Soleimani a
wave of emotions and fury overwhelmed the whole Iran and Iranian officials
vowed a hard revenge for the U.S. government.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei paid tribute to him as a
“martyr” and promised to exact “harsh revenge”. He then announced three days of
national mourning in honor of late General Soleimani. Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani also echoed the threat of revenge and vowed that there would be
consequences. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif condemned the killing as an “act of
state terrorism” in a statement.

Less than one week after the U.S. terrorist attack, Iran
fired the ballistic missiles, targeting the U.S. al-Assad air base in western
Iraq and the Erbil base, which is in Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region. The
Ain al-Assad base was used by U.S. forces after the 2003 invasion that toppled
dictator Saddam Hussein and currently houses about 1,500 U.S. and coalition
forces. “It was a
massive attack with ballistic missiles,” a U.S. official who was not authorized
to speak publicly told USA TODAY a day after the attack.

This harsh revenge was only one of the series of heavy costs
that the U.S. paid and still is paying after the assassination of General
Qassim Soleimani;

Another costly drawback for the Americans was that they lost
their influence in Iraq and now all the Iraqi people and even the Iraqi
government want them to leave the Iraq for good; Following the assassination,
Iraqi MPs have passed a resolution calling for foreign troops, especially
including more than 5,000 American troops, to leave the Iraqi lands. “The
government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international
coalition fighting Islamic State due to the end of military operations in Iraq
and the achievement of victory,” the resolution reads. The fact about this
resolution is that unlike laws, it has a non-binding nature, but has the
backing of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who had earlier called on
parliament to end foreign troop presence. And now, Washington seems to has
learned its lesson that for every illegal intervention that Americans seek in
the Middle East region, there are always countries that are ready to stand
against foreign dominance and punish the intruder. Last but not least, though
the U.S. succeeded in assassinating General Soleimani, the costs of this
so-called victory for Americans proved to be way higher than the benefits of
it.