To be fair 2020 never really had a chance to be a good year. Only two days after the start of the year, President Donald Trump ordered an airstrike on Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani was the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force which is a taskforce that handles Iran’s overseas operations. The Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force is considered a terrorist threat to the United States in an ongoing conflict between Iran and America that began in 1951. Soleimani became leader of the Quds Force in 1997 where he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. Once Trump came into office, he withdrew the U.S. from the Iran Nuclear Deal developed by the Obama ministration. This allowed Iran to restart its nuclear program. Soleimani led the Quds Force to mass produce nuclear missiles. This continues to escalate throughout 2019 until Trump both figuratively and literally pulled the trigger.
In response, Iran fired missiles at every American target within reach, even shooting down an Ukrainian passenger plane in their fear, killing all 176 people aboard. Thankfully, Trump was actually smart enough to not retaliate militarily after these attacks. Instead he applied more sanctions on Iran. This was probably the most intelligent thing Trump has ever done. By doing this, he stopped the U.S. from entering World War III. Many people thought it was only one twitter post away from a full on war with Iran. Literally two days after we rang in the New Year, the world was already going to end. Trump had gone where no other U.S. president had gone before by proclaiming a part of another government’s military a terrorist organization.
F2. The funeral Procession for Soloimani
Iranians reacted a very differently to the death of Soloimani. Some were irate at the death of their beloved leader. They sought vengeance against the United States for killing Soloimani. Millions of people flooded to Tehran to attend the procession. Other Iranians are glad the terrorist leader was killed in such a quick and easy way. They attributed the death of fellow Iranians to his regime and, therefore, blamed him for it.
All in all, 2020 had one of the roughest starts to a year that you can get. World War III almost became a real thing. And it all happened right as we were making our resolutions to have a better year. Little did we know things would get a lot worse. Stay tuned to hear about all the reasons why 2020 was truly an awful year.
Yep this year was doomed from the start. I’m really interested to hear your take on all the sucky things that have happened (and will probably happen) as this year continues. Maybe there will be a light at the end of the tunnel 🙂
This really hits. I remember sitting in one of my classes senior year talking about this, and my teacher kept going on and on about how WWIII really could happen. She really freaked all of the students out, we were all convinced Iran was going to nuke us within the next week. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately), that didn’t occur, but I think it marked a really crazy start to an even crazier year.