THE optimistic ending of my article last week was immediately blunted by a meme I received on Jan 4 that pronounced on Jan 1, the new decade was going fairly well; on Jan 2, Australia is on fire; and on Jan 3, World War III has begun. The latter is a reference to the assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani by drone strike in Baghdad on the orders of US President Donald Trump.

Although his name was not well known before his death, the killed general was an important figure, as the head of the Quds Force within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the architect of Iran’s regional policy also widely believed to be the second most powerful man in the country (ie after the Supreme Leader, above the President).