"It is impossible to overstate the importance... It is more significant than the killing of Osama bin Laden or even the death of al-Baghdadi."

"Suleimani was the architect and operational commander of the Iranian effort to solidify control of the so-called Shia crescent, stretching from Iran to Iraq through Syria into southern Lebanon. He is responsible for providing explosives, projectiles, and arms and other munitions that killed well over 600 American soldiers and many more of our coalition and Iraqi partners just in Iraq, as well as in many other countries such as Syria.... [Trump's] reasoning seems to be to show in the most significant way possible that the U.S. is just not going to allow the continued violence—the rocketing of our bases, the killing of an American contractor, the attacks on shipping, on unarmed drones—without a very significant response.... Iran is in a very precarious economic situation, it is very fragile domestically.... It will be interesting now to see if there is a U.S. diplomatic initiative to reach out to Iran and to say, 'Okay, the next move could be strikes against your oil infrastructure and your forces in your country—where does that end?'... Obviously all sides will suffer if this becomes a wider war, but Iran has to be very worried that—in the state of its economy, the significant popular unrest and demonstrations against the regime—that this is a real threat to the regime in a way that we have not seen prior to this.... Yes, they can respond and they can retaliate, and that can lead to further retaliation—and that it is clear now that the administration is willing to take very substantial action. This is a pretty clarifying moment in that regard.... Given the state of their economy, I think they have to be very leery, very concerned that that could actually result in the first real challenge to the regime certainly since the Iran-Iraq War...."

Said David Petraeus in an interview with Foreign Policy.