GRASPING DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY

From the standpoint of the U.S., Gen Soleimani was a bad guy.  So a drone from the U.S. was sent to kill him and succeeded.  Little noticed was that another leader was also killed in the attack: Iranian-backed Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.  Even less noticed was the failure to kill yet another militia leader:
The strike targeting Abdul Reza Shahlai, a financier and key commander in Iran’s elite Quds Force who has been active in Yemen, did not result in his death, according to four U.S. officials familiar with the matter.*

The unsuccessful operation may indicate that the Trump administration’s killing of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani last week was part of a broader operation than previously explained, raising questions about whether the mission was designed to cripple the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or solely to prevent an imminent attack on Americans as originally stated.*

I have underlined a part of the passage above that I think is the real reason for the attack (i.e. crippling the leadership) rather than the phony explanation the Trump administration chose to pursue.  Had the administration chosen that approach, I think they might have been given a lot of credit.  After all, the repeated killing of al Qaida leaders has seriously weakened that organization.
Eighteen years after the 9/11 attacks, the al-Qaida organization that carried them out is a shell of its previous self. The global campaign against Osama bin Laden’s creation has achieved notable success. The ideas that inspired bin Laden and his followers have lost some, but not all, of their attractiveness. There is no place for complacency, but the threat is different.**
Why the administration chose the path they did is a mystery.

Instead of claiming that what they are doing is similar to what was done to al Qaida led to grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.  What they actually did was a good plan that they botched.  The killing of Gen. Soleimani was equivalent to the killing of Osama bin Laden.  The plan also included taking out of some of his lieutenants.

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/on-the-day-us-forces-killed-soleimani-they-launched-another-secret-operation-targeting-a-senior-iranian-official-in-yemen/2020/01/10/60f86dbc-3245-11ea-898f-eb846b7e9feb_story.html
** https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/09/10/al-qaida-today-18-years-after-9-11/