ASSOCIATED PRESS
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INTERNATIONAL – A pro-Iranian leader in Iraq and Tehran’s envoy to Iraqi affairs, powerful General Qassem Soleimani, were killed early Friday, January 3, in a raid in Baghdad, three days after an unprecedented attack on the American embassy.
The death of Iranian general Soleimani, in charge of Iraqi affairs in the ideological army of the Islamic Republic and described by many experts as the 2nd most powerful man in Iran after the Guide to the Revolution, was quickly confirmed by the Pentagon as emanating from the United States.
“By order of the president, the US military has taken decisive defensive measures to protect US personnel abroad by killing Qassem Soleimani,” the US Department of Defense said in a statement.
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Donald trump for its part, was content to tweet an American flag as a communication around this execution which raised fears of an explosion of violence.
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The death of the powerful Iranian general is an “extremely dangerous and reckless escalation,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif warned on Twitter on Friday.
“Soleimani has joined our martyred brothers but our revenge on America will be terrible,” said Mohsen Rezai, a former chief of the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic, also on Twitter.
A bigger threat than IS
The US raid targeted a pro-Iranian convoy near Baghdad airport. At least eight people have been killed, Iraqi security officials said.
Among them, said the Hashd, was therefore General Soleimani but also Abou Mehdi al-Mouhandis, real operational chief of the Hachd, whose official boss is the Prime Minister’s national security adviser.
The two men are under US sanctions and the Hashd is today at the center of all attention in Iraq.
If he fought from 2014 alongside Iraqi troops and the international anti-Jihadist coalition led by the United States, his most pro-Iranian factions ―for some born in the fight against the American occupation from 2003 to 2011 – are now considered by the Americans as a greater threat than the Islamic State group.
Thousands of its fighters and supporters carried out an unprecedented show of force in Iraq on Tuesday. They swept into the ultra-secure Baghdad Green Zone, where the US Embassy is located, attacked the Chancellery with makeshift battering rams and unequivocally painted graffiti on the walls. “No to America,” said one, “Soleimani is my leader,” said another.
This unprecedented episode of violence seemed to end on Wednesday with the withdrawal of pro-Iranians from the Green Zone, on the orders of Hashd. But Friday’s deaths are giving more and more substance to the threat that has been hanging over Iraq for months: that its soil is turning into a proxy battlefield for Iran and the United States.
President Donald Trump has threatened to make Iran pay the “high price”, accused of having “orchestrated” the attack on his chancellery. His Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he would postpone a foreign tour to “monitor the situation” in Iraq.
See also on The HuffPost:
Trump embassies U.S. embassy in Iraq
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