Qasem Soleimani, Martyr of the Multipolar World, and the New Geography of the Great War of Continents

The Assassination of General Soleimani in the Context of the Apocalypse 

The assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Al-Quds special forces of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, on January 3rd, 2020 by American missiles was a distinct moment marking a completely new state of affairs in the alignment of forces in the Middle East. 

Insofar as the Middle East is a mirror of global shifts in world geopolitics, this event is of an even larger-scale dimension which concerns the world order as a whole. It is no coincidence that many observers interpreted the death of General Soleimani, a hero of the fight against ISIL in Syria and Iraq, as the beginning of a Third World War or in the very least of a US war against Iran. The Iranian missile attack on two American military bases in Iraq on January 8th, 2020, it would seem, confirms this analysis: Soleimani’s death is the starting point of the “final battle.” This is precisely how this event has been perceived in the Shiite world, where expectations of the end of the world and the coming of the Mahdi, the Savior promised at the end of time, are so strong that they affect not only their religious worldview, but also the analysis of everyday political and international events. Shiites see the end of the world as “final battle” between the supporters of the Mahdi and his opponents, the forces of Dajjal. The Mahdi’s supporters are believed to be Muslims (both Shiites and Sunnis, but with the exception of such currents as the Wahhabis and Salafis, who are recognized as extremists, “heretics”, and “takfiri”), while Dajjal, the Islamic Antichrist, is steadily associated with the West, first and foremost the United States of America. The majority of prophecies say that the final battle will take place in the Middle East, and that the Mahdi himself will appear in Damascus. The figure of the Mahdi can also be found among the Sunnis, but if Shiites believe such to be the appearance of the “hidden Imam” who remains alive but “hidden” to this day, then Sunnis interpret the Mahdi to be the leader of the Islamic world to appear in the end times to wage decisive battle against Dajjal, in which the majority of Sunnis see the materialist and atheistic civilization of the modern West and, accordingly, American hegemony as the most aggressive vanguard of the West. 

This region is also directly implicated in other apocalyptic accounts specific to other religions. Religious Israelis (Haredim), for instance, are expecting the coming of the Messiah in Israel, with which the Temple of Jerusalem, the Third Temple, will be rebuilt. The appearance of the latter is obstructed by the al-Aqsa Mosque located in Jerusalem on the site where the Second Temple was located. Extreme Jewish sects, such as the “Temple Mount Faithful”, have repeatedly tried to build a tunnel under the Holy Mount to blow up al-Aqsa. This naturally lends the Arab-Israeli conflict a special dimension. It is telling that the murdered General Soleimani headed the division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps called “Al-Quds”, which means “Jerusalem” and whose main goal is to prevent the Israelis from beginning to build the Third Temple, and to liberate the Holy Land from the Zionists. This, in turn, according to the beliefs of Muslims, should take place just on the eve of the end times. 

In the US, enormous influence is wielded by extreme evangelical sects which, in the spirit of “Christian Zionism”, interpret events in Middle Eastern politics as a prelude to the “Second Coming of Christ”, where the “enemies of Christ” are held to be the “armies of King Gog” from the “country of the North”, which evangelists traditionally associate with Russia. Indeed, Russia is actively operating in Syria and is strengthening its influence throughout the whole region. 

If we put all of this together, then the picture at hand is extremely ominous: the murder of Soleimani falls in this context of apocalyptic expectations and is being interpreted by many as the starting point of Armageddon, or in the very least as an analogue to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo which sparked the beginning of the First World War.

Thus, the assassination of General Soleimani and Iran’s retaliatory attacks on American bases are highly radical events charged with fundamental meanings and fraught with hard-to-predict consequences. 

Multipolarity vs. Unipolarity 

Given the magnitude of the significance of the events which have already taken place at the very outset of 2020, it is important to begin their analysis with the larger general context in mind. This context is defined by the world system’s transition from the unipolar world which took shape in the late 20th century under the unambiguous domination of the West (specifically, the US) to a multipolar one, the contours of which have become increasingly clear in relation to Putin’s Russia’s return to history as a sovereign and independent force and with American-Chinese relations’ aggravation to the point of of trade war. 

In his pre-election campaign, President Trump himself promised voters that he would refuse interventions and would curtail the policies of neo-imperialism and globalism, a point which made him a potential supporter of the peaceful transition to multipolarity. But with his decision to assassinate Soleimani, Trump completely negated this possibility and once again confirmed the US’ place in the camp of those forces which will fight desperately to preserve the unipolar world. In these actions, behind Trump’s back have peeked out those American Neocons and Christian Zionists leading events towards the final battle. But this battle - whether it will begin now or somewhat later - will already be unfolding in new conditions: Russia’s successes in international politics, the impressive rise of the Chinese economy, as well as the gradual rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing have made the multipolar world a reality, thus presenting all other countries and civilizations - including large ones like India as well as regional leaders such as Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, the countries of the Arab world as well as Latin America and Africa - with the possibility of choosing their place in this antagonistic construction: either standing (remaining) as satellites of the West (which is to say swearing fealty to agonizing unipolarity), or standing on the side of the multipolar world and seeking their future in this context. 

Donald Trump’s Suicide 

A fundamentally new situation has developed around the tragic events in Iraq of January 3rd, 2020: General Soleimani, murdered by the Americans, was an organic part of the multipolar world and represented in this balance of forces not only the Islamic Revolutionary Guard or even Iran as a whole, but all supporters of multipolarity. In his place could just as well have been a Russian soldier unfoundedly accused by the US of participating in the reunification with Crimea or the conflict in Donbass, a Turkish general proving himself in the fight against Kurdish terrorists, or a Chinese banker dealing substantial damage to the American financial system. Soleimani was a symbolic figure of multipolarity, killed by the advocates of unipolarity beyond all norms of international law. 

By deciding to liquidate Soleimani, Trump acted from the position of purely unipolar power - “thus I have decided, so shall it be” - without heeding the consequences, the risk of war, or the protests of all other sides. Like previous US presidents, Trump acted in accordance with the following logic: only the US can single-handedly label the “bad guys” or “good guys” and act towards the “bad” as it sees fit. Theoretically, Putin, Xi Jinping, or Erdogan could just as well be called “bad guys”, and then the only question would be whether they are capable of defending themselves with the available means of defense, including against coup d’etats (as Erdogan has already faced) or “color revolutions” (which Iran is constantly facing and which, with the aid of the “fifth column” of liberals, the West is constantly trying to incite in Russia). Trump himself convincingly and harshly criticized such policies on the part of previous administrations, both Republican and Democratic, but in deciding to murder Soleimani, he has shown that he is no different from them. 

This is a very important moment in the transition from unipolarity to multipolarity. Trump represented the hope that this transition might be realized peacefully, in which case the US would not be its enemy, but a full participant, a position which would theoretically allow it to significantly strengthen its standing as a leading force in the context of multipolarity and secure its privileged place in the multipolar club as a whole. These hopes collapsed on January 3rd, 2020, after which Trump became an ordinary American president like all the rest - not worse, but not better. He confirmed the US’ status as an agonizing imperialist dragon that is mad, malicious, and still dangerous, but having no chance to avoid the “final battle.” After this, Trump has crossed out both his own future and the future of the US as a pole in the multipolar world. In so doing, he has signed America’s death sentence for the future. 

For the multipolar world growing in strength, the US is no longer a subject of the process, but an object, just as Trump, by assassinating Soleimani, treated not only Tehran but also Baghdad, Ankara, Moscow, and Beijing as “objects” representing mere obstacles to the reinforcement of American hegemony. This means war, since the clash of unipolarity and multipolarity is a battle for the status of being a subject. Today there cannot be two such subjects; there can either be only one, as Trump has tried to insist upon again, or more than two, which is the basis of the strategies of Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, and all others who accept multipolarity. 

The Success of the Multipolar Powers and the New Balance of Forces: The End of America

This analysis of the global balance of forces dramatically sharpens the whole structure of world politics, because it takes the situation back to the politics in the spirit of George W. Bush, Obama, or Hillary Clinton. Trump, who so sarcastically mocks Hillary, has today appeared in her attire in the role of bloody globalist witch. But the events of recent years - the strengthening of Russia’s positions in the Middle East and its especially striking successes in Syria, Russia and China’s rapprochement and the convergence between the One Belt One Road integration project with Putin’s Eurasian strategy, and even Trump’s previous steps towards avoiding direct confrontation which allowed for the strengthening of multipolar forces in the Mediterranean (where the most important role has been played by the rapprochement of positions between Putin and Erdogan) - have already irreversibly changed the balance of forces. First and foremost, this is the case on the territory closely adjacent to the realm of Armageddon as unanimously, albeit with different signs, recognized by all types of political apocalypticisms. 

The development of events inevitably following the murder of General Soleimani will see the confrontation between, on the one hand, the US and the West alongside their regional proxies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and some of the Gulf states, and on the other the multipolar powers of Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, and others, taken to a new level. The US is using the policy of sanctions and trade war against its opponents such that an ever larger percentage of humanity is ending up under American sanctions, and not only in Asia, but in Europe as well, where European companies (primarily German ones) have been sanctioned for participating in the Nord Stream project. This is a manifestation of the arrogance of American hegemony, which treats its “supporters” as lackeys and manages them with physical punishments. The US does not have friends, it has only slaves and enemies. In this state, the “lone superpower” is heading towards confrontation, this time virtually with the whole rest of the world. At any given opportunity, today’s “slaves” will, without a doubt, seek to evade the inevitable reckoning for their unipolar collaborationism. 

Washington has not learned any lessons from the will of the American people who elected Trump. The people did not vote for continuing the policies of Bush/Obama, but against them, for their radical rejection. The American (and, more broadly, the globalist) elites have not taken this into account, instead writing everything off as the machinations of “Russian hackers” and “bloggers.” And now, with Trump once again partially extending his hand towards the aggressive globalist elite that has lost all sense of rationality, the American “silent majority” is left with only one option: to totally turn away from the American government. If even Trump ended up becoming a toy in the hands of the globalists, then this means that the legal methods of political struggle have been exhausted. In the mid-term perspective, the murder of General Soleimani will be felt in the beginning of fully-fledged civil war in the US itself. If no one expresses the will of society, then society itself will enter into a special mode of passive sabotage. This is what should be expected in the US. If not Trump, then the American people, fully in the spirit of their cultural and political traditions, chooses multipolarity, then this will be not with the state, but against the state “hijacked” by the globalist elite which even the first person in the White House is not up to opposing. The murder of Soleimani means the end of America. 

The Unipolar Camp is in Deep Crisis 

The US’ European partners are hardly ready for any sharp confrontation with the multipolar club. Neither Merkel, who has received another slap for Nord Stream, nor Macron besieged by the Yellow Vests and now understanding in one way or another that populism will have to be faced (hence his “special position” on Russia and projects for creating a European Army), nor Boris Johnson, who has just now managed to wrest Britain from the suffocating swamp of the liberal EU (and is hardly likely to so quickly exchange his hard-won, albeit relative sovereignty for new slavery to the American madmen who have lost any and all sense of realism), are burning with desire to jump into the fire of a Third World War fanned by Washington and to be incinerated there without a trace. NATO is crumbling before our very eyes around Turkey, which no longer supports the US in virtually anything in the Middle East or the Eastern Mediterranean (which the Turks call the “Blue Homeland”, Mavi Vatan), which is to say its own area of sovereign control. Also unconditional and completely irrational - or, one might say, desperate and even provocative - is Washington’s support for Israel in undermining relations with the Arab, and more broadly, the Islamic world. At the same time, Trump is reducing the US’ alliance with Saudi Arabia to a financial deal, which is not a hopeful basis for any fully-fledged alliance, for which the US is altogether genetically incapable. 

Thus, the US is entering into a Third World War between agonizing unipolarity and steadily strengthening multipolarity in conditions which are much worse even in comparison to those of the previous administration. In these circumstances, Trump still has to be re-elected, all the while as those who pushed him to kill Soleimani will still try to take him down for doing so. After the assassination of Soleimani, both war and peace only undermine Trump’s position. The assassination of Soleimani was a fatal decision which will destroy him. The positions of those European right-wing populists who supported this suicidal gesture of Trump’s have also been substantially weakened. The point is not even that they have chosen America’s side, but that they have taken a stand for dying unipolarity - and this can ruin anyone. 

The New Prospects of the Multipolar World 

Against this backdrop, the countries which have fallen under sanctions, first and foremost Russia, China, and Iran itself, have already learned to live under these conditions and responded with the development of their own strategic arms (Russia), economic structure (China, including beyond its own territory in the context of the enormous space of the One Belt One road project), independent energy (Iran), and independent regional geopolitics (Turkey). Now all that remains is redistributing among the members of the multipolar club the strongest trump cards, and multipolarity will become a genuinely serious and relatively invulnerable opponent. The stronger this adversary is, the more chances there will be to avoid a Third World War in its hot phase and wait out for the collapse of unipolarity, which will inevitably come on its own. 

A number of the consequences of the assassination of General Soleimani are already clear. Iran has declared the Pentagon to be a terrorist organization alongside ISIL, and this means that the same thing that happened to General Soleimani could happen to any American soldier. Since there was no response to the missile attack on American bases in Iraq, Iran will be fully confident in its combat effectiveness and will begin to develop weapons with renewed vigor, and primarily relying on Russia. It is important that in these circumstances Iran has already declared its withdrawal from the treaty on its development of nuclear weapons - after all, it has nothing to lose. Another Islamic state, Pakistan, already has nuclear weapons. So does another regional opponent of Iran: Israel. Tehran no longer has any grounds for further dealings with those whom it officially considers “terrorists.” 

Also of importance is the position of Iraq, where Shiites constitute the majority. For the whole Shiite world, General Qasem Soleimani was an undisputed hero. Hence the Iraqi parliament’s demand for the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from Iraqi territory. Of course, a democratic parliamentary decision is absolutely not enough for the cynical American killers - they will be wherever they consider it necessary and wherever they have something to profit from. But this means the beginning of a general anti-American mobilization of the Iraqi population - not only of Shiites, but Sunnis as well, who are radically anti-American (hence why many Sunni supporters of Saddam Hussein joined ISIS, believing that they were fighting against the Americans with whom the Shiites had come to make a deal). Now everyone, both Iraqi Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis, are demanding the withdrawal of American troops, since now virtually the whole population of Iraq, excluding some of the Kurds whom the US has in turn recently cynically betrayed anyway, is ready to begin an armed struggle against the occupiers. This is already a lot, but Iraq might also rely in its anti-American war on Russia and partially on China, which together represent the columns of multipolarity, as well as Iran and Turkey. 

In this situation, Russia’s position is key: on the one hand, Russia is not involved in regional contradictions between states, ethnoi, and religious currents, which makes its position objective and its aspiration for peace and the restoration of the sovereignty of Iraq sincere and consistent; on the other hand, Russia wields a significant level of armaments for supporting the Iraqis’ war for freedom and independence (as has been done in Syria, where Russia has demonstrated all of its effectiveness, or as is now happening in Libya). Iraq is now becoming the main platform of world politics, and once again we are dealing with a most ancient civilization, with the heart of the Middle East, with that land which, according to Biblical geography, was once “paradise on earth” and has today been turned into the opposite. 

Now the most important thing in these circumstances is to take advantage of what, from a global point of view, should be considered Trump’s “fatal mistake.” The assassination of General Soleimani does not improve the US’ positions, but rather rules out a peaceful scenario of transition towards multipolarity and deprives Trump of any chances whatsoever for the successful, long-term reform of American politics. The situation of Israel, which has been held hostage by a total hatred of all surrounding peoples, is becoming extremely problematic. When Israel’s existence depends not on a complex balance of forces, but on only one camp which is rapidly losing its dominance, then its situation becomes extremely risky. Israel, as a too hasty and pseudo-messianic project created by pro-Western nationalists who resolved to not wait for the Messiah but instead to replace his arrival with their own voluntarism, is likely to fall victim to the death of the unipolar world order - and for this it has to “thank” Trump as well as the extreme Israeli right which has pushed it towards such suicidal steps. 

Russia is Persevering and Winning 

What about Russia? Russia was in no hurry to unambiguously take Iran’s side, while in Iran itself part of the elite preferred to negotiate with the US and avoid rapprochement with Moscow. In both powers, Russia and Iran, the “sixth column” has acted in tandem in trying by any means to break the Moscow-Tehran axis and prevent a tight Russian-Shiite alliance which, despite everything, has taken shape in Syria, where the Iranians (under General Soleimani) and Russians have fought side by side against extremists objectively playing into the hands of the unipolar world. Such attempts will surely continue, and the globalists will try to use the “fifth column” in Iran in a “color revolution” strategy to overthrow the conservatives and plunge Iran into the chaos of civil war. The West is also certainly ready to launch the same scenario in Russia, and this is becoming evermore relevant as we approach the end of the final term of Putin, who represents the main pledge to Russia’s sovereign and multipolar politics. 

The unipolar world is doomed, but it would be foolish to hope that it will give in without a fight. Moreover, the murder of General Soleimani rules out a peaceful scenario for the future, as Trump and Washington can no longer be expected to voluntarily agree to this change in world order and, as follows, to agree to recognizing the subjectivity of any power besides the US.

The only thing that remains for the powers of the multipolar world - Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and all others - is to force all those who are desperately opposing multipolarity to accept multipolarity. After all, this is not forcing anyone to accept Russian or Chinese domination. This is how multipolarity differs from unipolarity. The multipolar world leaves everyone with the right to build the society which they want with the values which they choose. There are no universal criteria here; no one owes anyone anything except respect for their right to strengthen their own identity, build their own civilization (whether someone likes it or not), and to live in their own (not someone else’s) future. Compulsion towards multipolarity sacrifices only the unipolar world, American hegemony, and totalitarian liberal ideology along with its capitalist system as universals. The West can remain liberal and capitalist as long as it likes, but the borders of this ideology and economic system, so toxic for other cultures, should be strictly defined. This is what the struggle underway is for - the struggle in the name of which the martyr of the multipolar world, the hero of the Resistance, the great Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, gave his life.