The effort to kill Soleimani was pretty broad.
How to take out a key Iranian terror master:
The United States recently revealed details of Israeli and Iraqi Kurd support during the operation to track and kill Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. Both Israel and the Iraqi Kurds wanted Soleimani gone as they knew from experience that he was a key element for organizing attacks on Israel and Kurds in general. The Israelis had agents with access to the supplier of cellphones to Soleimani, who frequently (often every call) changed phones. The Israelis slipped phones with trackers in them and let the Americans know which phones were so equipped. This enabled the Americans to know when Soleimani would fly out of Syria and arrive in Iraq (Baghdad airport). The Kurds had agents throughout Iraq and their Baghdad Airport network was able to confirm what vehicles he and his entourage of local Iran-backed Iraqi militia leaders were as they left the airport. The U.S. already had three armed UAVs circling the airport and three SOCOM (Special Operations Command) sniper teams in position outside the airport. American electronic monitoring teams in Baghdad were also involved. Normally details like this are not released unless the enemy has already figured it out. That provides an opportunity to embarrass the Iranians with details of how many enemies they have in the region and the ability of those enemies to cooperate.
The Iranian rulers had no idea Soleimani was so critical for their foreign military operations.
And there were no leaks to undermine the operation. I assume that means the Iraqi government, which is infested by pro-Iran people, was not notified. But despite some loud noises by pro-Iran elements, ultimately the government in practice accepted it. We're still there, after all.
