Qassem Soleimani, the man who never hid from view

Full version of my story in today's Times: Major-General Qassem Soleimani was America's easiest target. Iran's most powerful military leader never hid from view, he always flaunted his presence across the Middle East. It took the CIA ten years to track down Osama bin Laden and five years to pinpoint the whereabouts of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader and founder of Isis. However, the CIA which has a significant "station" in Baghdad, had little difficulty monitoring the movements and plottings of the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force. General Soleimani was Iran's very public face abroad, especially in Iraq. His trimly white-flecked bearded face was often photographed, sometimes peering upwards as if daring his enemies to target him. The CIA knew so much about him that the intelligence agency would have had the details of his flight plan from Tehran to Baghdad, who was waiting to meet him at the international airport and what vehicles would be used to drive him downtown. Bin Laden and al-Baghdadi eluded the CIA and the signals intelligence satellites of the National Security Agency even though their faces were as well known as General Soleimani's. But the difference was that they knew they were marked men, to be killed if they ever revealed their whereabouts. General Soleimani would have known he too was a marked man and that the US and Israel had him in their sights. But he was the Iranian supreme leader's most trusted aide. Targeting him always had much greater potential consequences. Killing the Iranian general and mastermind of Tehran's proxy wars in Iraq and Yemen and elsewhere in thee Middle Eastmust have been authorised by President Trump at the same time as his decision to bomb five targets in Iraq and Syria linked to the Iranian-backed militia Kata'ib Hezbollah. It was why the Pentagon rushed 100 Marines to reinforce the US embassy compound in Baghdad, deployed 750 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to Kuwait and put on standby another 4000 troops for the region. The US Air Force Reaper squadron at al-Udeid airbase in Qatar was put on alert for the assassination decision. Two Reapers flew to the target from Qatar, one as back-up. However, the release of the precision-guided missile that destroyed the two vehicles as they left Baghdad international airport was carried out by an operator sitting at his console in the US Air Force base at Creech in Nevada.