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qasem soleimani
On Conspiracy Theorist Laura Loomer's Orders, Rubio Announces Arrest of 2 Women for Supporting Iran
The State Department said the women were related to the assassinated Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, but Iranian media said they had no connection to him.
Apr 04, 2026
With a majority of Americans including President Donald Trump's own base demanding a swift end to the war in Iran—and Iran's military capabilities proving difficult to overpower—observers suggested on Saturday that the White House was looking elsewhere to score "victories," as Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that federal agents had arrested relatives of the late Major General Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian military commander who the US assassinated in 2020 during President Donald Trump's first term.
Rubio accused Soleimani's niece, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, of promoting "regime propaganda" and voicing support for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and said she had been living a "lavish lifestyle" in the US. Afshar's husband has been barred from entering the US and the lawful permanent resident status she and her daughter had has been terminated, said the State Department.
"Are we losing so badly we need to arrest the distant relatives of long-since-dead Iranian commanders?" asked Ryan Grim of Drop Site News.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council noted that the administration had used the same legal authority to arrest Soleimani's reported family members as it did to detain former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University scholar Rümeysa Öztürk for speaking out against US support for Israel—a tactic which is being challenged in court as unconstitutional.
Far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who has wielded influence in the White House during the second Trump administration, claimed credit for the arrest of the two women, saying that in communications with the State Department, she had "exposed the fact that Qasem Soleimani’s Niece Hamideh Soleimani Afshar has been living in the United States (Los Angeles, California) where she posts pro-Iranian regime and pro-IRGC content on her social media while she lives a life of luxury."
"She has been arrested and will be deported back to Iran!" she added. "Over the last few months, I have quietly been documenting all of Hamideh Soleimani Afshar’s social media activity. I uploaded it all to a secure file and shared it with [the Department of Homeland Security] and Department of State, and now she has been arrested and she will be deported from our country."
In Iran on Saturday, media outlets were reporting that the two women arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement were not related to Soleimani—who had no nieces, according to journalist Kourosh Ziabari.
Soleimani's daughter told the news outlet Jamaran that "none" of her extended family has ever lived in the US.
Regardless of the women's relation to Soleimani or lack thereof, journalist Ryan Grim said the arbitrary arrest "actively puts innocent Americans around the world at risk."
Rubio's explanation for the detention and his move to revoke the women's green cards is the latest evidence that "the US is now deporting people for thought crimes," said historian Zachary Foster.
Journalist Sana Saeed said the case shows that constitutional protections for due process and free speech, which are supposed to apply to green card holders, "no longer mean anything."
"People cannot lose their green card status simply because of familial relationships, so the justification shifts here to their alleged support for the Iranian government," said Saeed. "But supporting a foreign government is not a criminal offense. And if you begin to treat it as one—as the US government effectively is in this case—then expect a lot more of this."
"It will not stop here, and it will not remain limited to Iranians," she said. "The logic does not contain itself, it expands."
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Trump Condemned for 'Genocidal' Threat to Destroy Iran
"Trump's threat to blow Iran's largest cities and the country itself 'to smithereens' is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned," said the National Iranian American Council.
Sep 25, 2024
Former U.S. President Donald Trump's threat on Wednesday to blow Iran "to smithereens" if he returns to power was condemned by a leading Iranian American advocacy group as "genocidal."
Trump—the 2024 Republican nominee—addressed a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday after he was reportedly briefed about alleged Iranian assassination threats against him.
"If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country—in this case, Iran—that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens," he said to raucous applause. "We're gonna blow it to smithereens, you can't do that. And there would be no more threats."
Responding to the former president's remarks, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said in a statement that "Trump's threat to blow Iran's largest cities and the country itself 'to smithereens' is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned as psychotic and genocidal."
"Just like his threat to target 52 of Iran's most cherished cultural sites, Trump appears disturbingly willing to kill millions of Iranians who have no say over the actions of their authoritarian government," NIAC continued. "These remarks should be disqualifying for a man vying to once again be commander in chief and have sole authority over launching nuclear weapons with the power to make good on his horrifying threat."
"Likewise, we unequivocally condemn any Iranian threats that may be targeted at Trump or former officials," the group added. "Political violence must be rejected and prevented in all forms. Assassinations are a path to war and human suffering, as was demonstrated by the strike on [Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Maj. Gen.] Qasem Soleimani that engendered these threats, and risk further embroiling the region in violence."
Trump ordered the January 2020 airstrike that killed Soleimani in Iraq. He also unilaterally withdrew from the so-called Iran nuclear deal and ramped up sanctions on Tehran, exacerbating Iran's economic woes.
While Trump is known for his boastful and sometimes empty claims, as president he also followed through on his 2016 campaign promise to "bomb the shit out of" Islamic State fighters and "take out their families," resulting in thousands of civilian casualties in countries including Iraq and Syria.
Although Trump often presents himself as the peace candidate, critics have warned voters not to be fooled.
"He's a liar. C'mon, you know he doesn't tell the truth at all," Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—the only member of either legislative chamber who voted against authorizing the so-called War on Terror in 2001—said in a recent interview with The Nation.
"Just look at his record, who he cozies up to in terms of dictators," Lee added. "He wants more investment in the military budget. What his strategy is, is to create a more dangerous world."
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Middle East on 'Precipice of a Full-Blown Regional War' After Iran Blasts
"This is a very dangerous moment," wrote one analyst. "A regionwide war appears more likely by the day."
Jan 03, 2024
While it remains uncertain who was responsible for the two explosions that killed over 100 people and injured hundreds more in the Iranian city of Kerman on Wednesday, analysts warned that the blasts increased the already high risk of an all-out regional war involving Iran, Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas, and
the United States.
The explosions, which Iran's vice president blamed on Israel, came a day after an alleged Israeli drone strike killed a senior Hamas official in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, ratcheting up tensions with Hezbollah, whose leader vowed "a response and punishment." Last month, Israel assassinated a senior adviser in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with an airstrike in Syria.
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said in a statement Wednesday that "we deplore this latest terrorist attack to strike inside of Iran" and called the explosions "the latest stark reminder that the U.S., Iran, and Israel remain on the precipice of a full-blown regional war that would be disastrous to all actors, including civilian populations across the region."
"We urge the U.S. to condemn this attack and express solidarity with the people of Iran," said Abdi. "We also reiterate our call on the U.S. to move with urgency to de-escalate and pursue a lasting cease-fire between Israel and Palestine, and to support broader regional diplomacy, before the crisis spirals fully out of control."
During a press briefing on Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller expressed condolences for the victims of the blasts in Iran and denied any U.S. involvement. Miller also said he has "no reason to believe that Israel was involved."
The Kerman explosions took place during an event commemorating Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, whom the U.S. assassinated with a drone strike in 2020.
Citing Iranian officials' comments to state media, The New York Times reported that "a pair of bombs placed in bags along the road toward the cemetery in Kerman, Iran had exploded as a procession of people was on its way there to commemorate the four-year anniversary of Gen. Soleimani's assassination by the United States."
"The officials said the bags appeared to have been detonated via remote control, leaving bodies in pieces on the ground," the Times added.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, warned that "this is a very dangerous moment," pointing to the Iran blasts, the reported Israeli drone strike in Beirut, and Israel's assassination of a top IRGC official—all of which came amid Israel's devastating U.S.-backed assault on the Gaza Strip.
"A regionwide war appears more likely by the day," Parsi wrote.
No group has claimed responsibility for the Kerman attack as of this writing. Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, pledged a "harsh response" and "just punishment" for those behind the deadly blasts.
The Associated Press noted Wednesday that "Sunni extremist groups including the Islamic State... have conducted large-scale attacks in the past that killed civilians in Shiite-majority Iran."
Arash Azizi, a historian and fellow at the Center for Middle East and Global Order, argued in a column for The National that "based on the available evidence so far, given the target and the methods used, ISIS, especially its much-feared regional branch in Afghanistan, known as ISKP, are likely culprits behind the attack."
"Several experts, on both ISIS and Iran, that I've spoken to agree on this point, although, at the moment, this is mostly educated speculation," he wrote.
Azizi noted that "while Israel has a long track record of operating on Iranian soil, it has usually targeted IRGC figures or nuclear scientists."
"There is no precedent for it conducting this kind of mass attack on Iranian civilians," Azizi added, pointing out that Iranian media "has reported there were no IRGC generals amongst the casualties or injured."
This story has been updated to include new details of the Kerman explosions and expert reactions.
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DOJ Charges Iranian Over Alleged Plot to Assassinate John Bolton
Officials have accused Shahram Poursafi of trying to hire a hitman to avenge the death of Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general who the U.S. assassinated with a drone strike in 2020.
Aug 10, 2022
The United States Department of Justice has charged an Iranian citizen who it says is a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with attempting to hire an assassin to murder John Bolton, an ex-national security adviser in the Trump administration, multiple outlets reported Wednesday.
According to the Justice Department, Shahram Poursafi, also known as Mehdi Rezayi, offered to pay unnamed individuals $300,000 in November 2021 to "eliminate" Bolton in Washington, D.C. or Maryland.
Federal officials said the assassination of Bolton would have been in retaliation for the U.S. military's January 2020 drone strike killing of Qasem Soleimani--a top commander in the IRGC, which is a branch of Iran's military--in Iraq.
"Poursafi is alleged to have said that after Bolton was killed, there would be another job, for which the hitman would be paid $1 million," The Guardian reported. "The person offered the money became an FBI confidential informant, and continued to exchange texts on an encrypted communications app with Poursafi."
The 45-year-old suspect, who the DOJ believes tried to orchestrate the plot from Tehran, remains at large abroad.
"If found and convicted, he would face up to 10 years' imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000 for the use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, and up to 15 years' imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000 for providing and attempting to provide material support to a transnational murder plot," the Washington Post reported.
As The Guardian noted:
Bolton was no longer national security adviser when the drone strike against Soleimani was carried out as the Iranian general was visiting Baghdad on January 3, 2020, but he is a longtime advocate of military action against Iran and a staunch opponent of the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal with Tehran. Secret Service cars have been reported to have been parked across the road from Bolton's house in the Washington area at least since early 2022.
In the immediate wake of Soleimani's assassination, Bolton tweeted, "Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran."
Bolton, who admitted on CNN last month that he has "helped plan coups d'etat" in foreign countries, served as a national security adviser to former President Donald Trump for 17 months, resigning in 2019 over reported disagreements about whether to lift some sanctions against Iran as a negotiating tactic.
"Bolton, who did not want the sanctions lifted, was a main architect of the Trump administration's 'maximum pressure' campaign of escalating economic sanctions and threats of retaliation for Iran's alleged support of terrorism," the Post noted. "The idea was to cripple Iran's economy to the point that its leaders felt they must bargain away any nuclear ambitions and missile technology."
News of the FBI's search for Poursafi comes just two days after negotiators in Vienna said they're close to reviving the Iran nuclear accord that the Trump administration, with no small part played by Bolton, unilaterally tanked.
Before his stint in the Trump White House, Bolton, whom critics have called a "bloodthirsty warmonger," was a major cheerleader for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He served in senior arms control roles and eventually became ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush.
Between the Bush and Trump presidencies, Bolton spent time working at right-wing think tanks, a private equity firm, and as a Fox News contributor.
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Carrying Death Sentence If Convicted, Iraq Issues Arrest Warrant for Trump on Murder Charges
The U.S. president is now wanted by law enforcement in the Middle East nation for ordering the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani and Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
Jan 06, 2021
Under penalty of death if ultimately tried and convicted, an Iraqi court Thursday issued an arrest warrant for U.S. President Donald Trump for ordering the assassination by drone strike at the Baghdad International Airport of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi military commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in January of last year.
According to the Associated Press:
Al-Muhandis was the deputy leader of the state-sanctioned Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group composed of an array of militias, including Iran-backed groups, formed to fight the Islamic State group.
Soleimani headed the expeditionary Quds force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The arrest warrant was for a charge of premeditated murder, which carries the death penalty on conviction. It is unlikely to be carried out but symbolic in the waning days of Trump's presidency.
On Tuesday, as Common Dreams reported, the Iranian government issued a "red notice" demand for the Europe-based Interpol service to arrest Trump as well as 47 other U.S. officials for their role in the killing of Soleimani.
"The Islamic Republic of Iran is very seriously following up on pursuing and punishing those who ordered and executed this crime," Gholamhossein Esmaili, a spokesperson for the Iranian judiciary, told reporters Tuesday.
Human rights advocates worldwide and legal experts at the United Nations have maintained that the murder of Soleimani, Al-Muhandis, and others in the U.S. bombing was a clear and outrageous violation of international law.
A Thursday statement released by Iraq's Rusafa Investigative Court stated that the "judge responsible for investigating the assassination of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and his colleagues issued an arrest warrant for outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump as per article 406 of Iraqi penal code."
According to Rudaw News, Article 406 dictates that "the 'willful' killing of another person is punishable by death in many cases, including premeditated murder and the death of a public official or agent."
As the fresh arrest warrant was issued in Iraq--largely symbolic unless the soon to be ex-president decides to travel to the country in the future--Trump is also facing domestic calls for his arrest, impeachment, or ouster from office after Wednesday's assault on the U.S. Capitol by a violent right-wing mob.
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Israel-Linked Assassinations: How Much Is the US Really Involved?
Any remaining objection to the idea that the United States would participate in the assassination of Iranians was rendered ridiculous by the January 2020 American assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
Jan 04, 2021
Less than a month ago, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was murdered in a storm of bullets and explosions outside Tehran.
Common speculation has Israel as the assassin. A senior Israeli official, involved in the tracking of Fakhrizadeh, told The New York Times that the world should thank Israel for assassinating him and that Israel "would continue to act against the Iranian nuclear program as necessary." According to paper, "One American official -- along with two other intelligence officials -- said that Israel was behind the attack." Israeli security and intelligence expert Yossi Melman has explicitly attributed the assassination to the Israeli Mossad.
But given the American maximum pressure campaign on Iran and the close cooperation between Pompeo and Netanyahu, including their secret meeting in Saudi Arabia just five days before the Nov. 27 assassination, the question of American cooperation in, or at least prior knowledge and approval of the assassination forces itself into the conversation.
Fakhrizadeh would not be the first Iranian nuclear scientist to be murdered by Mossad. Mossad had a list of 15 targets, and between 2007 and 2012, at least seven were targeted. Six were successful, and several of those were traced back to Mossad.
Mossad's program for assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists had its birth in May of 2003. It was then that Mossad director Meir Dagan and his deputy, Tamir Pardo, began a top secret plan to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. The plan included diplomatic pressure, sanctions, supporting Iranian opposition groups who sought regime change, disrupting nuclear equipment supplies, sabotaging nuclear facilities, and assassinating nuclear scientists.
To make the plan happen, a complete cooperation deal -- including sharing intelligence, sources and methods -- was signed between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President George W. Bush.
The intelligence-sharing partnership actually goes back many decades earlier, according to Ronen Bergman, author of 2018's "Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations." In 1951, according to Bergman, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, along with Mossad founder Reuven Shiloah, traveled to the United States. Ben-Gurion met with Allen Dulles to establish relations; Shiloah met with the CIA's James Angleton to work out details. According to CIA expert Jefferson Morley in his book, "The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton," their agreement established "the foundation for the exchange of secret information between the two services and committed them to report to each other on subjects of mutual interest."
According to Morley, Angleton then met Amos Manor, his counterpart in Israel's Shin Bet. Manor would become head of Operation Balsam, Israel's intelligence conduit to the U.S. Operation Balsam was the beginning of intelligence sharing between the two countries on "subjects of mutual interest." Bergman, an expert on Israel's assassination program, says that Operation Balsam provided the CIA with much intelligence, and that it is "a practice that continues to this day."
However, according to Bergman, the 2003 cooperation pact did not extend to assassinations because Israel knew that assassinations were prohibited by U.S. law and that Washington would not cooperate in such targeted killings. CIA director Michael Hayden told Bergman that Israel never told the United States about their assassination plans and categorically denied any U.S. association with such operations.
There is evidence of American knowledge of and, perhaps, cooperation with, Israeli assassinations of Iranian scientists.
But in 2012, two senior officials in the Obama Administration revealed to NBC news that the assassinations of the Iranian nuclear scientists were carried out by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an expatriate Iranian opposition group that was aligned with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. They also confirmed that the MEK was being financed, armed and trained by Mossad. And, contrary to Hayden's insistence that America did not know, they said that "the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign."
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh supported this account. Hersh reported back in 2012 that Washington also contributed to MEK's training. He says that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) began training the MEK in 2005 -- a charge that JSOC strongly denies.
Although Hersh was not able to specifically link the MEK members reportedly trained by JSOC to those who carried out Israel's assassinations, a former senior intelligence official told him that the assassinations "benefitted from American intelligence." He told Hersh that the assassinations are "primarily being done by MEK through liaison with the Israelis, but the United States is now providing the intelligence." The MEK has always denied any connection to the assassinations, including Fakrizadeh's.
Nearly three months before Hersh's New Yorker report, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a nuclear scientist who supervised a department at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was killed in an explosion on Jan. 11, 2012. "I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran," then-State Department Secretary Hillary Clinton said in a strong condemnation of what was being called another Israel-linked assassination in Iran.
But there is evidence of American knowledge of and, perhaps, cooperation with, Israeli assassinations of Iranian scientists. There is also a historical precedent for U.S. knowledge of and, at the very least, turning a blind eye to, Israeli assassinations. Iranian nuclear scientists were not the only ones being assassinated by Israel. Palestinians were also being targeted. A secret deal was struck between Ariel Sharon and U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that, according to Bergman, committed Israel to "significantly reduce the construction of new settlements in exchange for American backing of the war with the Palestinians and of Israel's targeted killing policy."
But America's relationship with Israeli assassinations stretches well beyond knowledge and turning a blind eye. Around the beginning of 2008, President Bush greenlighted Mossad chief Dagan's request for Washington's assistance in the assassination In Damascus of Imad Mugniyah, chief of Hezbollah's international operations. On February 12, 2008, he was assassinated with U.S. assistance and close cooperation, according to later reports by The Washington Post and Newsweek.
Though the Post said Mossad was running the operation, Newsweek quoted an unnamed former U.S. official who participated in the project as asserting:, "That was us ... The Israelis told us where he was and gave us logistical help. But we designed the bomb that killed him and supervised the operation." It is clear from both reports that the U.S. involvement exceeds knowledge and crosses into participation.
And it may get worse. The Post reported that the bomb was "triggered . . . by agents with Mossad," but according to Newsweek it was the U.S. who did the killing. Newsweek's source insisted that "the Mossad agent would ID Mugniyah, and the CIA man would press the remote control."
Any remaining objection to the idea that the United States would participate in the assassination of Iranians was rendered ridiculous by the January 2020 American assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike outside the Baghdad airport.
His killing proved not only that Washington would assassinate Iranians, but that they would cooperate with Israel in doing so. According to an "Israeli army officer with knowledge of Israeli military assessments," the assassination of Suleimani "did not come as a surprise" to the Israelis because "Israel had advance notice of the U.S. plan." Netanyahu had been informed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
But Israel did more than know about it. According to multiple news reports, Israel participated in it. "Israeli intelligence was instrumental" and "confirmed and verified" informants' information, tipping the U.S. off to which plane Suleimani was on, according to NBC News and Reuters at the time. Former Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman denied such reports, calling into question the media's Israeli sources.
A long history forces the important question of how much the U.S. knew about the Fakhrizadeh assassination and other Israeli assassinations of Iranian scientists over the years.
Reporting on the Fakhrizadeh assassination on December 7, veteran Haaretz reporter Yossi Melman wrote that "it was most likely that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ... had consulted with ... Donald Trump. Trump and his security and military aides must have been privy to the secret decision, because the U.S. had to prepare itself for all eventualities, including the worst-case scenario: Iran deciding to retaliate by hitting US targets, such as its bases in Bahrain or Qatar."
The Trump Administration has denied Iran's accusations that it was complicit in the murder.
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Iran Issues 'Red Notice' Demand for Interpol to Arrest Trump, 47 US Officials for Soleimani Assassination
"The Islamic Republic of Iran is very seriously following up on pursuing and punishing those who ordered and executed this crime."
Jan 04, 2021
The Iranian government on Tuesday issued a "red notice" request urging the International Criminal Police Organization to arrest U.S. President Donald Trump and 47 other American officials for their role in the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani just over a year ago, a killing that nearly sparked an all-out war between the two nations.
"Fortunately, Trump's presidency has ended. But even if his term hadn't ended, it would be unacceptable to say someone shouldn't be accountable to law due to his administrative position."
--Ebrahim Raisi, chief justice of Iranian judiciary
"The Islamic Republic of Iran is very seriously following up on pursuing and punishing those who ordered and executed this crime," Gholamhossein Esmaili, a spokesperson for the Iranian judiciary, told reporters Tuesday.
Agnes Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, was among the experts who argued the Trump-ordered assassination of Soleimani last January was a violation of international law.
"Major General Soleimani was in charge of Iran military strategy, and actions, in Syria and Iraq," Callamard wrote in a July report. "But absent an actual imminent threat to life, the course of action taken by the U.S. was unlawful."
Tuesday's demand marked the second time the Iranian government has called on Interpol to arrest Trump and other U.S. officials over the Soleimani assassination. In June, as Common Dreams reported, Iran requested an international arrest warrant for Trump and dozens of U.S. officials who Tehran said were guilty of "murder and terrorism." Interpol, which is based in France, rejected the request.
Tehran's latest demand came as tensions between the U.S. and Iran are rising once again thanks to Trump's recent militaristic rhetoric and actions during his final days in power.
"Fortunately, Trump's presidency has ended," Ebrahim Raisi, chief justice of the Iranian judicial system, said at a ceremony marking the one-year anniversary of the Soleimani killing. "But even if his term hadn't ended, it would be unacceptable to say someone shouldn't be accountable to law due to his administrative position."
As Common Dreams reported Monday, experts are growing increasingly concerned that Trump could launch a military attack on Iran as he continues to lash out in the wake of his loss to President-elect Joe Biden.
"War with Iran could be Trump's final punishment on the American people for rejecting him and a massive act of sabotage against Biden for defeating him," Sina Toossi, senior research analyst at the National Iranian American Council, warned last week.
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Trump and Netanyahu Keep Trying to Goad Iran Conflict. They Have 18 Days.
The U.S. mainstream media’s biggest failure is not that it distorts coverage, but that most of it doesn’t cover the danger of a Mideast conflict at all.
Jan 03, 2021
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu continue trying to goad Iran into a conflict--and the U.S. mainstream media continues its awful record of distorting or ignoring this truth. Look at this dishonest headline in the New York Times the other day:
Pentagon Sends More B-52s to Middle East to Deter Iranian Attacks on U.S. Troops
It is not a huge stretch to imagine an equivalent headline in Europe in late August 1939:
Germany Sends More Troops to Its Eastern Border to Deter Polish Attacks
It is exactly one year since the U.S. assassinated the prominent Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani, and the Times cites anonymous "American intelligence analysts" warning that Tehran may retaliate today for the killing. But you don't have to be a Mideast expert to recognize that Iran's leaders know how to count -- up to 18, the number of days until Joe Biden becomes president, after which the dangerous warmongering will stop. So Iran has every incentive to remain patient, just as it did in November after Israel (almost certainly) sponsored the murder of the Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsin Fakhrizadeh, near Tehran.
Netanyahu has long tried to instigate the U.S. into a conflict with Tehran, probably in the hope that it might even topple the regime, which is Israel's biggest rival in the region.
By contrast, both Trump and Netanyahu do have plenty of motivation to provoke conflict with Iran. Even if Trump recognizes that an international emergency will not permit him to stay in power, he wants to sabotage the incoming Biden administration any way he can--and also repay his major donor, billionaire pro-Israel gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson, who once called for the U.S. to fire "an atomic bomb" at Iran.
Netanyahu has long tried to instigate the U.S. into a conflict with Tehran, probably in the hope that it might even topple the regime, which is Israel's biggest rival in the region. But the Israeli prime minister is now also personally desperate. He faces his 4th election in 2 years; right-wingers are abandoning his Likud party -- and if he loses the premiereship, he faces multiple corruption cases in court and could end up in prison.
Both desperate men need a big distraction. None of this analysis is original. You can find genuine experts online in minutes, people like Trita Parsi, Sina Toossi, and Negar Mortazavi, who, although no friends of Iran's regime, will explain that the last thing Tehran wants today is even the slightest pretext for conflict. And they speak on the record, instead of hiding behind anonymity. Or you could glance at Haaretz, the valuable Israeli daily, which after the assassination of Iran's nuclear scientist in November warned in an editorial: "Killing of Iranian Scientist Is a Dangerous Provocation."
Arguably the U.S. mainstream media's biggest failure is not that it distorts coverage, but that most of it doesn't cover the danger of a Mideast conflict at all. You can watch the cable news networks for hours without stumbling across a single report about Iran. Which means that if the U.S. and Israel do attack before noon on January 20, or if a tragic accident amid the tightened tensions triggers an outbreak of violence, the American public will have no idea of what just happened. To Americans, it will seem like a surprise Iranian attack, and they will support what they think is "retaliation."
Meanwhile, Mortazavi, a distinguished Iranian-American reporter, tweets:
My own family/friends in Iran are worried. They keep asking me if @realDonaldTrump will attack Iran. I say hopefully not but also explain that the threat is real because some people around him, like {Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo, wanted the US to bomb Iran for years and this is their final opportunity.
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A Year Ago the U.S. Assassinated a National Leader
The Soleimani assassination and its anniversary ought to provide occasion for Americans to think carefully about the nature of what each side in this badly plagued relationship has done to the other.
Jan 02, 2021
Sunday marks the first anniversary of the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani by the United States, using an armed drone at the Baghdad International Airport. Soleimani was a major political and military figure whose role went well beyond his formal position as commander of the Quds force within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. His influence over much of Iran's security policy was probably second only to that of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Soleimani was highly respected and genuinely popular among ordinary Iranians. The respect and popularity continued after his death, as reflected in the throngs that turned out to mourn him in multiple Iranian cities.
Most descriptions of Soleimani heard in the United States do not fully capture his significance for Iranians. There is no single U.S. counterpart, but one could begin to get some sense of that significance by imagining, say, John McCain, David Petraeus, James Mattis -- or other American figures of comparable prominence and national security importance -- all rolled into one.
Five days after the assassination, Iran launched ballistic missiles at two bases in Iraq where some American personnel worked, in what the IRGC described as partial retaliation for the killing. The missile strike caused no U.S. fatalities, and perhaps was not designed to cause any. The strike was probably the least that the regime could do in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, amid popular outrage in Iran over the killing. Iranian leaders have stated that the "books are not closed" on the Soleimani assassination, suggesting that more retaliation is yet to come.
Anniversaries sometimes are the occasion in the Middle East not only to remember and to recriminate, but also to take action in retribution. So possibly this anniversary represents a danger point. Iranian leaders, however, have reasons not to stir the pot of U.S.-Iranian conflict right now. They can see that Donald Trump is itching to worsen the relationship as much as possible before the new U.S. administration takes over and may be looking for any excuse to use military action for that purpose. The Iranian regime does not have an incentive to give him that excuse.
Maybe the books will stay open indefinitely and no more Iranian retaliation will ensue if U.S.-Iranian relations get on a more stable track under the Biden administration. But the unbalanced nature of the books will always be in the background of the relationship. Iranians' long memories of how they believe they have been wronged are reflected in, for example, how they never stop referencing the U.S.- and British-instigated coup that overthrew a popular Iranian prime minister in 1953.
Meanwhile, the Soleimani assassination and its anniversary ought to provide occasion for Americans to think carefully about the nature of what each side in this badly plagued relationship has done to the other. The most often recited U.S. accusation against Soleimani is that he had American blood on his hands by virtue of his relationship with Iraqi elements that fought against U.S. forces during the occupation of Iraq after the U.S. invasion of that country in 2003. Of course Americans should mourn and honor their fallen countrymen, and recognize as wartime enemies those who have inflicted casualties among them, even in a military expedition as misguided as the 2003 Iraq War. That does not preclude an effort to understand what such enemies did and why they did it.
The United States started that war in Iraq with an act of aggression in March 2003. It did so shortly after declaring Iran -- despite its post-9/11 cooperation with the United States in Afghanistan -- to be part of an "axis of evil." It did so in a country that shares a 900-mile border with Iran and from which Iraq started its own war of aggression against Iran that inflicted enormous costs and casualties in the 1980s. For Soleimani and his colleagues to assist Iraqi elements resisting the U.S. military occupation of Iraq was, probably in the eyes of most Iranians, an honorable and even necessary duty for an officer to perform in the interest of Iranian national security amid an ongoing, U.S.-initiated war.
Careful thinking about what each side has done is at least as needed regarding other U.S. actions, and the assassination of Soleimani is a leading case. In violation of international law and of any accepted standard of conduct in international relations, the United States murdered a senior figure of a foreign country when he had arrived in a neighboring third country to confer with the prime minister of that neighboring state. For the reversed-roles counterpart, think of how Americans would react if a senior U.S. political/military figure traveled to Canada to confer with the Canadian prime minister on matters of mutual interest and got killed by Iran (or by any other foreign state, for that matter) on the tarmac at the Ottawa airport.
The assassination of Soleimani escaped meeting the U.S. State Department's definition of international terrorism only because it was carried out overtly using U.S. military resources, rather than clandestinely or through a non-state intermediary. Such an escape has not applied to other assassinations of Iranians, notably that of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November as well as earlier killings of other Iranian nuclear scientists. Although Israel is the widely assumed culprit behind those killings, Iranians would have good reason to suspect a U.S. role as well.
Calling attention to these realities risks getting shouted down by cries about false moral equivalence, and indeed there always are morally relevant differences to be found. But the habit of viewing everything done on one side of this conflict as nefarious and everything on the other side as noble does not reflect the manner in which the conflict has been waged, including what was done at the Baghdad airport a year ago.
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Trump and Iran in Last 17 Days: Will They or Won't They?
"Trump's economic and financial blockade on Iran is such that things could always spiral out of control."
Jan 02, 2021
There is a lot of buzz inside the Beltway, most of it generated inside the Beltway, about possible hostilities between Iran and the Trump administration in the Mad President's last 17 days in office.
Some of this buzz is around today's January 3rd, 2020, anniversary of Trump's assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Gen. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, by rocket at Baghdad International Airport. Soleimani was the head of the Jerusalem Brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, maybe analogous to the US Joint Special Operations Command. Al-Muhandis in Iraq was perhaps the equivalent of a state national guard commander, since the Iraqi parliament recognized the militias as part of the armed forces.
Some Iranian hardliners have been rattling sabers about revenge, threatening Trump personally. There is the possibility of poorly disciplined Shiite militias firing rockets at the US Embassy, and Trump as usual has issued his hyperbolic Twitter Threats.
News was made when the Pentagon announced that some B-52 bombers were being sent to the Gulf.
Although Trump the Mad and SecState Mike Pompeo, he of the Rapture, announced that Soleimani had been coming to Iraq to kill Americans, this was a bald faced lie that the Pentagon report refused to back up. The then Iraqi prime minister said, in contrast, that Soleimani was on a mission to reduce tensions with Saudi Arabia, and came to Baghdad on a diplomatic passport on a civilian airliner.
There is an old saying in the military that everyone wants to do strategy, but the best minds in uniform want to do logistics. War strategy is glamorous. But logistics, the science of moving around men and materiel and making sure troops have ammunition, weapons, boots and, in desert environments, water to drink and do laundry with, is a sine qua non for winning the battle, as well.
Because logistics is so key, watching such movements is one way to tell if a military attack is being planned. In modern warfare it isn't easy to hide. All through spring, 2003, the Bush administration was moving war materiel and mend into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province.
Aside from a few B-52s being flown to the area, the US is not in a strike posture. It has military bases in Kuwait and Qatar, and an outpost in the United Arab Emirates, but none of these host countries would want to be seen as a launching pad for a Trump attack on Iran. Trump will be out of office in a little over 400 hours, but those countries have to live with Iran for the coming centuries.
The big "tell" was that the USS Nimitz Air Craft Carrier battle group is being ordered home by acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller.. Its last mission was in any case far from Iran, in Somalia. Air strikes were launched from it against the Al Shabab terrorist group in that country, as a parting gift to the government of President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, a US alley. The Nimitz helped the last of the US troops in Somalia leave.
Miller specifically said that sending the Nimitz back to the US was meant as a "deescalatory" measure with Iran.
Since the US is highly unlikely to attack Iran from one of that country's Gulf neighbors, and since it no longer has an aircraft carrier in the Gulf, it just isn't very likely that it will initiate a first strike at all.
As for the Iranians, they would be crazy to do something overt to Americans at this point.
Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiyee said the world will be much safer with Trump out of office.
Iran has had a year to retaliate, and mostly what they did was one set of missile strikes on an Iraqi base that had US soldiers last spring. The strike gave about 100 of them bad concussions, which is a serious injury that Trump made light of. But that was the last time we heard about any kinetic Iranian action against the US military. Why wait until Trump is almost gone, and spoil things with the incoming, and much more reasonable, Biden administration?
Trump's economic and financial blockade on Iran is such that things could always spiral out of control. I hope they don't and that tensions can soon begin being ratcheted down. Obama solved Iran, and maybe Biden can do it again.
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