Why? Because the war between the United States of America and Iran has been underway for more than 40 years.

None of this is a secret. It's just that most Americans don't know they've been at war with Iran.

It's been out of their sight and, so, out of their minds.

Friday's drone strike that took out Soleimani is but merely one more bump on a well-worn, long, and winding road of a conflict that's been killing people for generations.

It is a war with an origin story that dates all the way back to 1953. That's when the Iranians believe America truly picked this fight.

That is when this war began. Not with this week's drone strike.

Western intelligence agencies also accuse him of involvement in the hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner in 1984 and the attempted assassination of a Kuwaiti prince.

Do you want to know who was in the same convoy as General Soleimani on Friday when that drone missile struck? It was that same car-bomber, al-Muhandis.

He was Soleimani's number one man in Iraq. In Parliament. Right under the noses of the US military.

But when the US government checked, and confirmed the bomber of their embassy was, in fact, in parliament, al-Muhandis fled Baghdad for the border crossing to Iran.

Al-Muhandis was there to greet Soleimani on Friday at Baghdad airport in Iraq -- a country the Iranian general virtually ran and controlled.

Soleimani's plane had just landed and he was with al-Muhandis in the convoy leaving the airport when the drone struck, killing them both.

A killer, but not a terrorist

Make no mistake, Soleimani was a killer. A calculating, patient, sophisticated killer. He was, most surely, plotting the deaths of many Americans.

He fought in the horror of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. The modern world's version of World War I; chemical gas attacks, suicidal human wave assaults, and a bloodletting we should hope the world never sees again.

Soleimani rose up the ranks of the military until he came to head, arguably, the most elite special forces outfit in the region, if not the world, called the Quds Force, which translates as the Jerusalem Force.

Iran has two armies, navies and air forces. One, to protect the country. The other, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Force (IRGC), to protect the country's religious revolution.

And among the IRGC the Quds are the elite of the elite. Its members speak multiple languages.

They are spies, soldiers and technical experts. In Western terms, they are a hybrid of Green Berets, SAS commandos and Delta Force operators all fused into one.

And Soleimani was their commander. For more than 20 years.

And he ran rings around all of us: Americans, Arabs, Israelis, Brits.

Let us be very, very clear: this man was opposed to America and absolutely everything it stands for.

He ached to destroy Israel itself, to take it out of existence, and he was opposed to the current balance of power in the Middle East.

His entire life was devoted to bringing all of it, and us, down.

If you doubt Soleimani's significance, his very assassination should tell you differently.

Washington understood his value, that is why President Trump ordered the drone strike.

Soleimani did more to shape then re-shape the region than any king or prince or sultan or president or prime minister.

The man, quite simply, was a force of history.

He just wasn't on our side.

Will his assassination alter Iran's strategic ambitions? No.

Will it slow them down? Maybe.