Qassem Soleimani’s demise came as his life project — spreading the Islamic Republic’s zeal in the Mideast and beyond — was crumbling. That doesn’t mean the Iranian general couldn’t, or wouldn’t, have wreaked the kind of harm that the Trump administration felt it needed to preempt. It may even explain why Soleimani has been on such a manic campaign.

In any event, shortly after the drone kill at Baghdad airport was confirmed, Secretary of State Pompeo re-tweeted a video of gleeful Iraqis who had awakened at at 4:30 a.m. in Baghdad and proceeded to march at the city’s Tahrir Square. There they celebrated the death of the arch-terrorist who sought to dominate their country.

Others in the region, and in Iran itself, similarly feted the demise of the man the Washington Post awkwardly called Iran’s “most revered military leader.” Oh, there have been cries of pain and outrage and vows for revenge. That, though, is coming mostly from dependents of Soleimani’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and their zealous followers. It may be a minority, but it’s not nothing.

Some Americans held their applause as well. According to the Pentagon, Soleimani was planning a major, imminent attack on American targets at the time of his demise. Yet, the leading Democratic presidential contender, Joe Biden, saw a different provocateur, writing that by ordering Soleimani killed, President Trump had just “tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox.” That’s Biden-speak for if it all goes south, it’s Mr. Trump’s fault.

At least the ex-vice president is consistent. He was the only member of President Obama’s inner circle to oppose — and for similar reasons as he is opposing the attack on Soleimani the killing of Osama bin Laden. What, though, about all those who cheered Mr. Obama then, only to wring their hands today over the prospect that Mr. Trump is about to unleash a Mideast Armageddon?

The Democrats’ doomsaying aside, President Trump demonstrated Friday that America possesses superior intelligence. The attack could only disabuse Tehran of the illusion that Mr. Trump is a paper tiger. Yet, it was Soleimani’s life project to build Iran’s strength by mobilizing regional proxies, rather than Iran’s own army, to strike when he so commanded.

Yet his go-to terror proxy, Hezbollah, is now widely despised in Lebanon. Blood-soaked Syrians are similarly appalled by Soleimani’s foreign militias that kept their butcher in chief, Bashar Assad, in power. Yemenis similarly suffer, and even in Gaza, where Soleimani recently made some inroads, many secretly rue his tactic of propping up militias while bonding them in blind loyalty to Tehran.

Hundreds of thousands were killed in these countries in recent years as a direct result of Soleimani’s activity. He was responsible for the death of hundreds of Yanks as well. Yet things started deteriorating even in neighboring Iraq. In November 2018 Shiite civilians burned pictures of Basra’s Soleimani-installed governor, Asaad al-Eidani. A year later protest spread from the oil-rich but water-parched south to the rest of the country.

Last month, Iraqis set fire to Iranian consulates in the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf. It was a direct challenge to Mr. Khamenei, who days earlier called on Iraq’s Shiites to ally with Tehran. “The blood of Imam Hussein unites us,” he tweeted, referring to the Shia-revered grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, whose tomb is located in Karbala.

Most of Iraq’s Shiites initially supported Iran, says Iraqi-born Entifadh Qanbar, president of the Washington-based Future Foundation. Now they’ve soured on Tehran, and “you will no longer see one picture of Khamenei or Soleimani in southern Iraq,” he says, adding such transformation couldn’t have happened “without Trump’s maximum pressure policy.”

In Lebanon, hordes of demonstrators rally almost daily against the sectarian-based political structure that propel corrupt and incompetent men to leadership positions — and places the country at the mercy of Hezbollah and Tehran.

Most dramatically, in Iran itself demonstrators now march against the regime, often calling out Soleimani by name as they chant “money for Iran, not for Syria, Gaza, Yemen, and Lebanon.” The cash-starved Revolutionary Guards, reeling under American sanctions, reacted violently, recently killing at least 1,500 civilians in Iran and several hundreds each in Iraq and Lebanon.

It was in this unfamiliar position of weakness that Soleimani decided to escalate, challenging America ever so brazenly, while Mr. Trump declined to react to provocations, including the downing of an American drone.

Soleimani finally initiated the New Year’s Eve sequence that ended his life, as well as that of his most trusted Iraqi ally, Abu Mahdi al Mohandes. A week earlier, as the two men orchestrated the New Year’s siege on the American embassy, Soleimani managed to install a loyalist, Tahseen al-Aboudi, as chief security officer of the Green Zone, where all foreign embassies are located. Al-Aboudi was instrumental in letting the rent-a-mob enter the previously off-limits zone.

The newly-installed Quds Force chief, Ismail Qaani, may now go after some soft targets to obscure Iran’s humiliation. After Soleimani, though, a broke and weakened Ayatollah Khamenei must now recalculate: he can either renegotiate with Mr. Trump, who demands significant downsizing of Iran’s Mideast involvement, or risk his regime’s demise. And, ps: either of these outcomes will be fine.

Twitter @bennyavni

Correction: Iran’s “most revered military leader” is how the Post newspaper in Washington described General Soleimani; the phrase was inaccurately quoted in an earlier edition of this column.