← A Long Pattern
Book Review | The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran's Global Ambitions
In its March 2021 issue, Fathom Journal published Kyle Orton's review of Arash Azizi's book, The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran's Global Ambitions. The page gives the month, not the day. Soleimani was Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, the foreign arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, killed by the United States in January 2020. Orton writes that President Donald Trump ordered that strike. An American family should care because the review's claim about soldiers is that Washington would not put large numbers of its own troops on the ground against ISIS, and that Iranian militias then grew under coalition air power. The same review ties Soleimani to Hezbollah's 2006 war with Israel.
Evidence rating: MODERATE. The rating covers Kyle Orton's signed review in Fathom Journal and his judgment that the United States was "unwilling to put its own forces on the ground in any appreciable numbers" against ISIS. "Any appreciable numbers" is his assessment of scale.
What the article says
Orton retells Soleimani's rise, from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s to the Quds Force, Iraq after 2003, and the Syrian war. He writes that in 2006 Soleimani taunted the American commander in Iraq by saying Baghdad was quiet because he had been busy in Beirut. Orton writes that this meant the war Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group backed by Iran, fought against Israel that summer. He writes that the same network ran terrorist plots from Washington to Bulgaria against the United States and Israel.
On the war against ISIS, he says the United States would not put its own forces on the ground in any appreciable numbers. He says Soleimani's foreign militias, which he says had killed nearly as many coalition troops as ISIS had, and which drew Shia recruits from Afghanistan to the Ivory Coast, were then used as the ground force. He says they expanded what he calls Iran's empire under coalition air power, and that this help was to be paid for at the nuclear talks.
"With the US unwilling to put its own forces on the ground in any appreciable numbers..."
Kyle Orton, Fathom Journal, March 2021. The sentence continues that Soleimani's militias were deputised and expanded Iran's reach under coalition air power. Deputised here is Orton's word for being put to work as the ground force.
The review is Orton arguing with Azizi's book, not a US policy paper. He thinks Azizi is too soft on Iran's ties to Al-Qaeda and too kind to the idea of a US-Iran thaw. Those are literary judgments.
What other reporting and posts add
The same choice in 2026, in the president's words. In July 2026, according to a World Socialist Web Site summary of Fox and Wall Street Journal reporting, Trump said: "Sometimes you need a ground campaign, but we have other people that will do the ground campaign for us." WSWS, 16 July 2026. (capture: twitter/t56__v668.md) See Trump says others will do the ground campaign.
Soleimani's image in the 2026 war. In September 2026, a pro-Pahlavi poster wrote that Iranian officials "left a photo of Qasem Soleimani" at the UN General Assembly while Netanyahu spoke, calling Soleimani "A famous terrorist who killed U.S. soldiers with roadside bombs," and naming exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi as "the commander of boots on the ground inside Iran." That is one poster's framing. @Martin_Sedi, 24 September 2026. (capture: twitter/t13__v147.md)
What it shows
The review describes the model Washington has used before: American air power overhead and someone else's fighters on the ground. In 2026 the President described the same model for Iran: "we have other people that will do the ground campaign for us." But the other candidates have stepped aside. Israel's Channel 12 reported that Israeli infantry would not join a US ground operation, and the Kurdish ground plan did not become an offensive. When no one else will hold the ground, the plans for it name American units: the Marine Expeditionary Units and the 82nd Airborne. See A Long Pattern and The Buildup.
Check it yourself
Why a 2021 book review matters in 2026: Qassem Soleimani built the network of Iran-backed militias (in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen) that the United States and Israel were fighting, directly or indirectly, when their joint air war on Iran began on 28 February 2026. His killing by a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020 was the last time America and Iran came this close to open war before 2025. Fathom Journal is a British online magazine published by BICOM (the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre), a pro-Israel advocacy group in London; its authors generally argue for a hard line on Iran. The review's central claim, that the United States avoided sending its own ground forces and let others fight, is the same choice American leaders faced again in 2026.
Research captures: twitter/t56__v668.md, twitter/t13__v147.md
Last Updated: 2026-09-26