I HAD BEEN ASSURED THAT KILLING SULEIMANI WOULD ONLY LEAD TO MORE TERROR: Iran’s Revolutionary guards wrestle with new reality after killing of their chief military strategist.

Analysts and officials in the region say the Revolutionary Guards in fact now find themselves on the back foot, a notable change after successfully projecting their power in the Middle East over recent years.

“The assassination of Qasem Soleimani and the downing of the airliner were both shocks to the Revolutionary Guard,” said Saeid Golkar, an expert on Iran’s security forces and professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “Soleimani was a big loss for the Islamic Republic, and the downing of the airliner, it blew the Guard’s entire credibility.”

The IRGC, which was established to protect the Islamic Republic, “has to rebrand and rebuild its reputation, which takes time, especially with a population that has grown critical of the Islamic Republic,” Golkar said. “And now the strategy is not to go to war with the United States but to test its limits step-by-step – and not to overreach.”

That challenge, in part, will fall to Brig. Gen. Ismail Qaani, who has replaced Soleimani as commander of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force. He will have to preserve Iran’s regional influence and nurture the proxy groups and militias developed by his predecessor – but without provoking a forceful U.S. reaction.

Qaani should probably never sleep in the same bed twice.