Iran's Soleimani is apparently the highest-ranking foreign military leader the U.S. has slain since World War II

Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran's elite Quds Force and the second most powerful person in Iran before President Trump ordered him killed last week, "was a commanding general of a sovereign government," The New York Times reports. "The last time the United States killed a major military leader in a foreign country was during World War II, when the American military shot down the plane carrying the Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto."

That is not how the Trump administration looks at the drone strike that killed Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader. Republicans are comparing it to killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, a stateless terrorist leader hiding in Pakistan, while Trump administration officials "have sought to describe the strike as more in line with the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader, who died in October in an American commando raid in Syria," the Times notes.

But while ISIS did briefly control a fairly large "caliphate" carved out of Iraq and Syria, nobody but ISIS recognized its sovereignty. Iran is part of the United Nations. And while the militias Soleimani's oversaw certainly killed U.S. troops in Iraq, they were also instrumental in pushing out al-Baghdadi and ISIS.

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