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Wall Street Journal - U.S. Strike Ordered by Trump Kills Key Iranian Military Leader in BaghdadIraqi paramilitary commander also dead in attack on Baghdad airport road
President Trump authorized the Friday strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, leader of the foreign wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to thwart attacks planned against Americans, the Pentagon said.
In addition to Qassem Soleimani, top Iraqi paramilitary commander Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes was killed when their convoy was struck on the road leading to Baghdad International Airport.
“At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” the U.S. Department of Defense said in a statement.
“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the statement said. “This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans. The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”
Iran’s state television confirmed Gen. Soleimani’s death at the Baghdad airport, saying the strike came from U.S. helicopters. Mohsen Rezai, a former Guards commander, said in a tweet: “General Soleimani joined his martyr brothers but we will take a harsh revenge against the U.S.”
Iran’s National Security Council is holding an emergency meeting over the killing of Gen. Suleimani, the IRGC’s telegram channel said.
Iranian Foreign Minister said in a tweet that the assassination by the U.S. was “an act of international terrorism” and an “extremely dangerous & a foolish escalation.”
The Pentagon said that Gen. Soleimani had orchestrated attacks on U.S.-led coalition bases in Iraq in recent months and was behind an attack a week ago Friday in northern Iraq.
That attack, carried out by the Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia, involved a barrage of rockets fired at a base in Kirkuk, killing a U.S. contractor and sparking a spiral of violence. The U.S. conducted airstrikes against militia bases in Iraq and Syria on Sunday, killing 27 people.
Supporters of the militia then tried to storm the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad this week, causing the U.S. to send in reinforcements. President Trump then warned that Iran would pay a price.
The killing of Messrs. Soleimani and Mohandes is likely to mark the beginning of a dangerous new chapter in the rivalry between the U.S. and Iran. Earlier this week, supporters of an Iran-backed militia attempted to storm the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
The Pentagon said in its statement that Gen. Soleimani and “his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”
A former adviser to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Gen. Soleimani’s death, if confirmed, would be met by stark Iran retaliation. “It’s going to be ugly,” he said.
Unverified pictures from the scene near Baghdad International Airport showed the fiery wreckage of two vehicles and human remains. There was no visible crater or sign of impact on the road where the vehicles were hit.
The deaths were confirmed by Ahmed al-Assadi, spokesman for a political coalition with close ties to the militias that Mr. Soleimani and Mr. Mohandes led as well as other officials within the Popular Mobilization Forces.
Mr. Mohandes, whose real name is Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi, was the deputy head of the PMF, an umbrella for dozens of militias that are part of the Iraqi security apparatus that accused the U.S. of the strike.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo singled out Mr. Mohandes earlier this week as having orchestrated the attack on the U.S. Embassy along with other figures close to Iran. The attempt to storm the embassy came after the U.S. conducted airstrikes against Kataib Hezbollah over the weekend, accusing the group of a spate of rocket attacks targeting bases where American forces are stationed.
Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani’s death would eliminate Washington’s principal nemesis in the Middle East.
A gray-haired commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Gen. Soleimani had the backing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and oversaw Iran’s shadow wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen.
It was Gen. Soleimani’s Quds Force that armed and trained Iraqi Shiite militias that killed hundreds of U.S. troops during the American war in Iraq.
And it was Gen. Soleimani who oversaw Tehran’s efforts to help President Bashar al-Assad prevail in Syria’s civil war.
Oil surged following news of the attack, with Brent crude, the global gauge of prices, rising 3.5% to $68.58 a barrel after futures trading opened late Thursday. If that move held during Friday’s session, it would put prices around their highest level since mid-September, when they soared following attacks in Saudi Arabia that took out a large chunk of the kingdom’s production capacity.
Gen. Soleimani first made a reputation for himself in Tehran’s bloody eight-year war with Iraq.
In the late 1990s, he was selected to command the Quds Force, a unit of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps whose mission was to support revolutionary movements in the Middle East.
After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Gen. Soleimani oversaw the mission of harassing the U.S. military and driving its forces out of Iraq. More than 600 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq by Shiite-militias armed and trained by Iran, the Pentagon has said.
Gen. David H. Petraeus described Gen. Soleimani as “a truly evil figure” in a 2008 letter to Robert Gates, then the defense secretary, and acknowledged the Iranian commander’s extensive influence in Iraqi politics.
Gen. Soleimani’s involvement in Iraqi politics only expanded in recent years.
“He moved in and out of Baghdad as if he was untouchable,” said Ramzy Mardini, a scholar at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “That may have been the basis of his miscalculation. Previous U.S. administrations would not have done something so brazen.”
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