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OPINION 26 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 JANUARY 2020 Qasem Soleimani air strike: a dangerous escalation of US assassination policy Luca Trenta Luca Trenta is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Swansea University. TheConversation.com THE US government has killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, the elite wing of the Iranian Islamic Revolu- tionary Guards, in an air strike that took place in the early hours of January 3. This is the latest and most dramatic development in the ongoing proxy conflict be- tween the US and Iran. Much of that conflict has taken place on the territory of Iraq, including a recent attack on the US embassy compound. The Trump administration explicitly blamed this recent attack on Iran. In turn, Iranian authorities, including Iranian foreign minister Javad Sharif, have accused the US of com- mitting an act of "international terrorism" in killing Soleimani in what they was described as an "extremely dangerous and foolish escalation". While it is too soon to say what the consequences of this latest US operation will be, the killing of the Iranian general certainly signals an escalation in the US policy of assassina- tion and targeted killing. It also establishes a dangerous precedent for international politics. In a statement, the Depart- ment of Defence justified the drone strike by saying Soleim- ani was "actively developing plans to attack American dip- lomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region". It emphasised that the Quds Force is designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the US government. It also stressed that the attack was justified to protect US person- nel abroad and to deter future attacks. But Soleimani was also, clearly, a foreign official. It is also not evident that he posed an imminent threat to US na- tionals. No details are given on this concern. These two points – the type of target killed and the nature of the threat – have traditionally been crucial ele- ments in any decision by the US government to undertake a targeted killing or pre-emptive strikes. Justifying attack: from Reagan to Obama Since the mid-1970s, an executive order has prohibited US government agencies from engaging in assassination. However, while upholding the ban on assassination, the Ronald Reagan administra- tion worked to create the legal and political space it needed to kill terrorists when it saw fit. Legal opinions from the CIA and the Pentagon at the time suggested using force in counter-terrorism was a dif- ferent matter altogether and so fell outside the remit of the ban on assassination. A key element of the Reagan administration's justification, as made clear in National Se- curity Decision Directive 138, was that these measures were pre-emptive and were taken in self-defence, against targets that posed an imminent threat to US interests and personnel. In an important precedent for the Soleimani killing, some members of the Reagan administration also argued that not only terrorists, but also leaders of states sup- porting terrorism, could be targeted. On this basis, while some disagreement remains, several primary and secondary sources seem to agree that the Reagan administration tried to kill Libyan leader Muham- mar Gaddafi in an air strike on his headquarters and home in 1986. Gaddafi survived the bombing. While members of the Rea- gan administration clumsily denied that Gaddafi was an ex- plicit target, they also hoped, like the Trump administration The Trump administration explicitly blamed this recent attack on Iran In a statement, the Department of Defence justified the drone strike by saying Soleimani was "actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region"