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newstfionline · 3 years

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Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Canada’s Ontario to go on province-wide shutdown Dec. 26 (AP) Ontario on Monday announced a province-wide shutdown because of a second wave of COVID-19 in Canada’s most populous province. The lockdown will be put in place for southern Ontario from Dec. 26 until Jan. 23, but will lift for northern Ontario on Jan. 9. Ontario has had seven straight days of more than 2,000 cases a day. Modeling shows that could more than double in January. Health officials earlier said a four- to six-week hard lockdown could significantly stop the spread of COVID-19. Toronto, Canada’s largest city, had already closed restaurants for indoor dining but schools remained open. All high schools in Ontario will now be closed for in-person learning until Jan. 25. Elementary schools will be closed until Jan. 11.

Congress Strikes Long-Sought Stimulus Deal to Provide $900 Billion in Aid (NYT) Congressional leaders on Sunday reached a hard-fought agreement on a $900 billion stimulus package that would send immediate aid to Americans and businesses to help them cope with the economic devastation of the pandemic and fund the distribution of vaccines. The deal would deliver the first significant infusion of federal dollars into the economy since April, as negotiators broke through months of partisan gridlock that had scuttled earlier talks, leaving millions of Americans and businesses without federal help as the pandemic raged. While the plan is roughly half the size of the $2.2 trillion stimulus law enacted in March, it is one of the largest relief packages in modern history. The agreement was expected to provide $600 stimulus payments to millions of American adults earning up to $75,000.

Trump’s legacy: He changed the presidency, but will it last? (AP) The most improbable of presidents, Donald Trump reshaped the office and shattered its centuries-old norms and traditions while dominating the national discourse like no one before. He smashed conceptions about how presidents behave and communicate, offering unvarnished thoughts and policy declarations alike, pulling back the curtain for the American people while enthralling supporters and unnerving foes—and sometimes allies—both at home and abroad. While the nation would be hard-pressed to elect another figure as disruptive as Trump, it remains to be seen how much of his imprint on the office itself, occupied by only 44 other men, will be indelible. Already it shadows the work of his successor, President-elect Joe Biden, who framed his candidacy as a repudiation of Trump, offering himself as an antidote to the chaos and dissent of the past four years while vowing to restore dignity to the Oval Office. “For all four years, this is someone who at every opportunity tried to stretch presidential power beyond the limits of the law,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “He altered the presidency in many ways, but many of them can be changed back almost overnight by a president who wants to make the point that there is a change.”

Mexican president expects no conflicts with Biden administration (Reuters) Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday his weekend call with U.S. President-elect Joe Biden was “very friendly” and that he expect relations to be positive with the new Democratic administration taking office in January.

World closes borders to Britain as new coronavirus strain breeds panic (Reuters) A slew of countries closed their borders to Britain on Monday over fears of a highly infectious new coronavirus strain, heightening global panic, causing travel chaos and raising the prospect of UK food shortages days before the Brexit cliff edge. India, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Russia, Jordan and Hong Kong suspended travel for Britons after Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that a mutated variant of the virus, up to 70% more transmissible, had been identified in the country. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman closed their borders completely. Several other nations have suspended travel from Britain including France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland, Belgium, Israel and Canada. France shut its border to arrivals of people and trucks from Britain, closing off one of the most important trade arteries with mainland Europe. As families and truck drivers tried to navigate the travel bans to get back home in time for Christmas, British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s said shortages would start to appear within days if transport ties were not quickly restored.

Britons scramble for residency in Spain and Portugal ahead of Brexit (Reuters) In October, Michelle Jones and her husband Gary boarded a ferry in England for a new life in Spain. Had they left it beyond Britain’s period of transition out of the European Union, things would have been much more complicated. “We haven’t got a choice—it’s now or never,” the former housing association worker said at the hairdressing salon she has taken over in the resort town of Fuengirola in southern Spain. Britain formally left the European Union on Jan. 31 after its 2016 referendum, but since then it has been in a transition period under which rules on free travel and trade remain unchanged. That period ends on Dec. 31. Fourteen European countries, including Portugal and Spain, will grant Britons arriving before Dec. 31 the right to five years of residency. Other countries have tougher post-Brexit requirements, asking all Britons to re-apply after the transition period. Ahead of the deadline, some people have brought forward retirement plans and others have taken advantage of being able to work from home to move.

Skiing (Financial Times) The European Alps are home to a third of the world’s 2,084 ski resorts, and typically generate €28 billion in revenues. That is roughly 7 percent of the overall European Union tourism market. Though geographically compact, the Alps are the global seat of skiing, and in a typical year are host to about 43 percent of worldwide skier visits, considerably higher than North America (21 percent), the Asia Pacific region (16 percent), and other parts of Western Europe (10 percent). Naturally, this season will not be generating 28 billion euros. France has shut down all ski lifts through January 7, resorts in Italy and Austria are closed, and the Swiss are going to do their own thing but will cut ties with neighbors for the duration of the crisis.

Nepal Falls Into Political Turmoil. China and India Are Watching. (NYT) Nepal’s top leader dissolved Parliament on Sunday amid infighting among members of the governing party, throwing into doubt the political future of a strategically important Himalayan country where China and India have long jockeyed for influence. The prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli, called for the dissolution of the lower house of Parliament despite protests from his own Nepal Communist Party and opposition groups, including the largest, Nepali Congress. Nepal is now set to hold elections starting in late April, more than a year earlier than the expected vote in November 2022. Mr. Oli made his move in the face of rising dissatisfaction with his job performance even within the ranks of his own party. He was elected to a second stint as prime minister in 2017 on promises of tamping down corruption and forging stronger ties with China and its economic growth machine. But Mr. Oli’s administration has been plagued with its own corruption allegations as well as criticism of his government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has devastated an economy that has long depended on tourism and on remittances from its citizens abroad.

Rockets fired at U.S. embassy land inside Baghdad’s Green Zone, damaging compound (Reuters) At least eight Katyusha rockets landed in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone in an attack targeting the U.S. Embassy, causing some minor damage on the compound on Sunday, the Iraqi military and the embassy said on Sunday. The Iraqi military said an “outlaw group” fired eight rockets. Most of the missiles hit a residential complex and a security checkpoint inside the zone, damaging buildings and cars and wounding one Iraqi soldier, a military statement said. U.S. officials blame Iran-backed militia for regular rocket attacks on U.S. facilities in Iraq, including near the embassy in Baghdad. No known Iran-backed groups have claimed responsibility.

Spyware targets phones of Al-Jazeera reporters (AP) Dozens of journalists at Al-Jazeera, the Qatari state-owned media company, have been targeted by advanced spyware in an attack likely linked to the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a cybersecurity watchdog said Sunday. Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said it traced malware that infected the personal phones of 36 journalists, producers, anchors and executives at Al-Jazeera back to the Israel-based NSO Group, which has been widely condemned for selling spyware to repressive governments. Most unnerving to the investigators was that iMessages were infecting targeted cellphones without the users taking any action—what’s known as a zero-click vulnerability. Through push notifications alone, the malware instructed the phones to upload their content to servers linked to the NSO Group, Citizen Lab said, turning journalists’ iPhones into powerful surveillance tools without even luring users to click on suspicious links or threatening texts. Citizen Lab, which has been tracking NSO spyware for four years, tied the attacks “with medium confidence” to the Emirati and Saudi governments, based on their past targeting of dissidents at home and abroad with the same spyware. The two countries are embroiled in a bitter geopolitical dispute with Qatar in which hacking and cyber surveillance have increasingly become favored tools.

In Tigray Conflict, Displaced Children Suffer (NYT) UM RAKUBA, Sudan—The Um Rakuba refugee camp is filling again, stifling in the afternoon sun in eastern Sudan, and there are children everywhere. More than 51,000 Ethiopians have fled their country because of the military’s offensive in the restive region of Tigray, and more than 19,000 of them are here at Um Rakuba. Almost a third of the Ethiopian refugees are children, with at least 361 of them arriving unaccompanied, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Many of the unaccompanied children said they were separated from their families as they bolted from their homes in the middle of the night, trekking hours and days with nothing but the clothes on their backs to reach safety. “It is quite heartbreaking,” Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, said in an interview in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. “For an emergency that is relatively small in numbers, I have hardly seen such a high level of people separated from their families, many children separated.”

The food industry and academic studies (Food Dive) A new study published in the journal Plos One reported that in 2018, 13 percent of research articles published in the 10-most-cited nutrition academic journals were funded at least in part by the food industry. Of those funded by the industry, 56 percent reported favorable findings for the industry backing them financially, vastly higher than the 10 percent of articles that were not paid for by the food industry that reported industry favorable outcomes.

#headlines #news

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phroyd · 4 years

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He was limp and dusty from an explosion, conscious but barely. A far cry from the fierce, masked Islamic State fighters who once seized vast swaths of Iraq and Syria, the captive was a scraggly teenager in a tank top with limbs so thin that his watch slid easily off his wrist.

Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and other Navy SEALs gave the young captive medical aid that day in Iraq in 2017, sedating him and cutting an airway in his throat to help him breathe. Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Chief Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck.

The same Chief Gallagher who later posed for a photograph holding the dead captive up by the hair has now been celebrated on the campaign trail by President Trump, who upended the military code of justice to protect him from the punishment resulting from the episode. Prodded by Fox News, Mr. Trump has made Chief Gallagher a cause célèbre, trumpeting him as an argument for his re-election.

The violent encounter in a faraway land opened a two-year affair that would pit a Pentagon hierarchy wedded to longstanding rules of combat and discipline against a commander in chief with no experience in uniform but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority. The highest ranks in the Navy insisted Chief Gallagher be held accountable. Mr. Trump overruled the chain of command and the secretary of the Navy was fired.

The case of the president and a commando accused of war crimes offers a lesson in how Mr. Trump presides over the armed forces three years after taking office. While he boasts of supporting the military, he has come to distrust the generals and admirals who run it. Rather than accept information from his own government, he responds to television reports that grab his interest. Warned against crossing lines, he bulldozes past precedent and norms.

As a result, the president finds himself more removed than ever from a disenchanted military command, adding the armed forces to the institutions under his authority that he has feuded with, along with the intelligence community, law enforcement agencies and diplomatic corps.

“We’re going to take care of our warriors and I will always stick up for our great fighters,” Mr. Trump told a rally in Florida as he depicted the military hierarchy as part of “the deep state” he vowed to dismantle. “People can sit there in air-conditioned offices and complain, but you know what? It doesn’t matter to me whatsoever.”

The president’s handling of the case has distressed active-duty and retired officers and the civilians who work closely with them. Mr. Trump’s intervention, they said, emboldens war criminals and erodes the order of a professional military.

“He’s interfering with the chain of command, which is trying to police its own ranks,” said Peter D. Feaver, a specialist on civilian-military relations at Duke University and former aide to President George W. Bush. “They’re trying to clean up their act and in the middle of it the president parachutes in — and not from information from his own commanders but from news talking heads who are clearly gaming the system.”

Chris Shumake, a former sniper who served in Chief Gallagher’s platoon, said in an interview that he was troubled by the impact the president’s intervention could have on the SEALs.

“It’s blown up bigger than any of us could have ever expected, and turned into a national clown show that put a bad light on the teams,” said Mr. Shumake, speaking publicly for the first time. “He’s trying to show he has the troops’ backs, but he’s saying he doesn’t trust any of the troops or their leaders to make the right decisions.”

Chief Gallagher, who has denied any wrongdoing, declined through his lawyer to be interviewed. Mr. Trump’s allies said the president was standing up to political correctness that hamstrings the warriors the nation asks to defend it, as if war should be fought according to lawyerly rules.

“From the beginning, this was overzealous prosecutors who were not giving the benefit of the doubt to the trigger-pullers,” Pete Hegseth, a weekend host of “Fox & Friends” who has promoted Chief Gallagher to the president both on the telephone and on air, said this past week. “That’s what the president saw.”

‘No One Touch Him. He’s Mine.’

Chief Gallagher, 40, a seasoned operator with a deeply weathered face from eight combat deployments, sometimes went by the nickname Blade. He sought out the toughest assignments, where gunfire and blood were almost guaranteed. Months before deploying, he sent a text to the SEAL master chief making assignments, saying he was “down to go” to any spot, no matter how awful, so long as “there is for sure action and work to be done.”

“We don’t care about living conditions,” he added. “We just want to kill as many people as possible.”

Before deployment, he commissioned a friend and former SEAL to make him a custom hunting knife and a hatchet, vowing in a text, “I’ll try and dig that knife or hatchet on someone’s skull!”

He was in charge of 22 men in SEAL Team 7’s Alpha Platoon, which deployed to Mosul, Iraq, in early 2017. But his platoon was nowhere near the action, assigned an “advise and assist” mission supporting Iraqi commandos doing the block-by-block fighting. The SEALs were required to stay 1,000 meters behind the front lines.

That changed on May 6, 2017, when an Apache helicopter banked over a dusty patchwork of fields outside Mosul, fixed its sights on a farmhouse serving as an Islamic State command post and fired two Hellfire missiles reducing it to rubble.

Chief Gallagher saw the distant explosion from an armored gun truck. When he heard on the radio that Iraqi soldiers had captured an Islamic State fighter and took him to a nearby staging area, he raced to the scene. “No one touch him,” he radioed other SEALs. “He’s mine.”

‘Got Him With My Hunting Knife’

When the captive was killed, other SEALs were shocked. A medic inches from Chief Gallagher testified that he froze, unsure what to do. Some SEALs said in interviews that the stabbing immediately struck them as wrong, but because it was Chief Gallagher, the most experienced commando in the group, no one knew how to react. When senior platoon members confronted Chief Gallagher, they said, he told them, “Stop worrying about it; they do a lot worse to us.”

The officer in charge, Lt. Jacob Portier, who was in his first command, gathered everyone for trophy photos, then held a re-enlistment ceremony for Chief Gallagher over the corpse, several SEALs testified.

A week later, Chief Gallagher sent a friend in California a text with a photo of himself with a knife in one hand, holding the captive up by the hair with the other. “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife,” he wrote.

As the deployment wore on, SEALs said the chief’s behavior grew more erratic. He led a small team beyond the front lines, telling members to turn off locator beacons so they would not be caught by superiors, according to four SEALS, who confirmed video of the mission obtained by The New York Times. He then tried to cover up the mission when one platoon member was shot.

At various points, he appeared to be either amped up or zoned out; several SEALs told investigators they saw him taking pills, including the narcotic Tramadol. He spent much of his time scanning the streets of Mosul from hidden sniper nests, firing three or four times as often as the platoon’s snipers, sometimes targeting civilians.

One SEAL sniper told investigators he heard a shot from Chief Gallagher’s position, then saw a schoolgirl in a flower-print hijab crumple to the ground. Another sniper reported hearing a shot from Chief Gallagher’s position, then seeing a man carrying a water jug fall, a red blotch spreading on his back. Neither episode was investigated and the fate of the civilians remains unknown.

Chief Gallagher had been accused of misconduct before, including shooting through an Afghan girl to hit the man carrying her in 2010 and trying to run over a Navy police officer in 2014. But in both cases no wrongdoing was found.

SEALs said they reported concerns to Lieutenant Portier with no result. The lieutenant outranked Chief Gallagher but was younger and less experienced. SEALs said in interviews that the chief often yelled at his commanding officer or disregarded him altogether. After the deployment, Lieutenant Portier was charged with not reporting the chief for war crimes but charges were dropped. So SEALs said they started firing warning shots to keep pedestrians out of range. One SEAL told investigators he tried to damage the chief’s rifle to make it less accurate.

By the end of the deployment, SEALs said, Chief Gallagher was largely isolated from the rest of the platoon, with some privately calling him “el diablo,” or the devil.

A Fox Contributor’s Cause

Chief Gallagher was reported by six fellow SEALs and arrested in September 2017, charged with nearly a dozen counts including murder and locked in the brig in San Diego to await his trial. He denied the charges and called those reporting him liars who could not meet his high standards, referring to them repeatedly in public as “the mean girls” and saying they sought to get rid of him.

David Shaw, a former SEAL who deployed with the platoon, said he saw no evidence of that. “All six were some of the best performers in the platoon,” he said, speaking publicly for the first time. “These were guys were hand-selected by the chief based on their skills and abilities, and they are guys of the highest character.”

Chief Gallagher’s case was already simmering on the conservative talk show circuit when another service member, Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, an Army Green Beret, was charged last winter with killing an unarmed man linked to the Taliban in Afghanistan. On Dec. 16, barely minutes after a segment on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump took to Twitter to say he would review the case, repeating language from the segment.

At the request of many, I will be reviewing the case of a “U.S. Military hero,” Major Matt Golsteyn, who is charged with murder. He could face the death penalty from our own government after he admitted to killing a Terrorist bomb maker while overseas. @PeteHegseth @FoxNews

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In the tweet, Mr. Trump included the handle of Mr. Hegseth, who speaks regularly with the president and has been considered for top jobs in the administration. An Army veteran, Mr. Hegseth served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading two conservative veterans organizations “committed to victory on the battlefield,” as the biography for his speaker’s bureau puts it.

Upset at what he sees as “Monday morning quarterbacking” of soldiers fighting a shadowy enemy where “second-guessing was deadly,” Mr. Hegseth has for years defended troops charged with war crimes, including Chief Gallagher, Major Golsteyn and Lt. Clint Lorance, often appealing directly to the president on Fox News.

“These are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us and made tough calls on a moment’s notice,” Mr. Hegseth said on Fox in May. “They’re not war criminals, they’re warriors, who have now been accused of certain things that are under review.”

Mr. Hegseth found a ready ally in Mr. Trump, a graduate of a military high school who avoided serving in Vietnam by citing bone spurs in his foot. Mr. Trump has long sought to identify himself with the toughest of soldiers and loves boasting of battlefield exploits to the point that he made up details of an account of a “whimpering” Islamic State leader killed in October.

In March, the president twice called Richard V. Spencer, the Navy secretary, asking him to release Chief Gallagher from pretrial confinement in a Navy brig, Mr. Spencer later wrote in The Washington Post. After Mr. Spencer pushed back, Mr. Trump made it an order.

In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court. Process should move quickly! @foxandfriends @RepRalphNorman

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By May, Mr. Trump prepared to pardon both Chief Gallagher and Major Golsteyn for Memorial Day, even though neither had yet faced trial. At the Pentagon, a conservative bastion where Fox News is the network of choice on office televisions, senior officials were aghast. They persuaded Mr. Trump to hold off. But that was not the end of the matter.

In June, Chief Gallagher appeared before a military jury of five Marines and two sailors in a two-week trial marred by accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. The medic who had been inches away from Chief Gallagher changed his story on the stand, claiming that he was the one who killed the captive.

In early July, the jury acquitted Chief Gallagher on all charges but one: posing for a trophy photo with a corpse. He was sentenced to the maximum four months in prison and demoted. Having already been confined awaiting trial, he walked out of the courtroom a free man

“Congratulations to Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher, his wonderful wife Andrea, and his entire family,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “You have been through much together. Glad I could help!”

The President Intervenes

In the months afterward, Chief Gallagher was feted on conservative talk shows. Mr. Hegseth spoke privately with Mr. Trump about the case.

As it happened, the president shares a lawyer with Chief Gallagher — Marc Mukasey, a former prosecutor representing Mr. Trump in proceedings against his company. Mr. Mukasey said he never discussed Chief Gallagher with anyone in the administration. “I have been religious about keeping matters separate,” he said.

Another person with ties to Mr. Trump who worked on Chief Gallagher’s case was Bernard B. Kerik, a New York City police commissioner under former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is now the president’s personal lawyer. Like Mr. Hegseth, Mr. Kerik repeatedly appeared on Fox News pleading Chief Gallagher’s case.

The much-investigated president saw shades of himself in the case — Chief Gallagher’s lawyers accused prosecutors of improprieties, a claim that advisers said resonated with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Spencer tried to head off further intervention. On Nov. 14, the Navy secretary sent a note to the president asking him not to get involved again. But Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, called to say Mr. Trump would order Chief Gallagher’s punishment reversed and his rank restored. In addition, he pardoned Major Golsteyn and Lieutenant Lorance.

“This was a shocking and unprecedented intervention in a low-level review,” Mr. Spencer wrote. “It was also a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.”

Mr. Spencer threatened to resign. The Army secretary, Ryan McCarthy, also weighed in, arguing that the country’s standards of military justice protected American troops by setting those troops up as a standard around the world.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper took the complaints to the president. The Pentagon also sent an information packet to the White House describing the cases, including a primer on why there is a Uniform Code of Military Justice. Mr. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the president it was important to allow the process to go forward.

The Navy Secretary Fights and Loses

Caught in the middle was Rear Adm. Collin Green, who took command of the SEALs four days before Chief Gallagher was arrested. He made it a priority to restore what he called “good order and discipline” after a series of scandals, tightening grooming standards and banning unofficial patches with pirate flags, skulls, heads on pikes and other grim symbols used to denote rogue cliques, similar to motorcycle gangs.

For Admiral Green, the Gallagher case posed a challenge because after his acquittal, the chief regularly undermined the SEAL command, appearing without authorization on Fox News and insulting the admiral and other superiors on social media as “a bunch of morons.”

The admiral wanted to take Chief Gallagher’s Trident pin, casting him out of the force. He called both Mr. Spencer and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Michael Gilday, and said he understood the potential backlash from the White House, but in nearly all cases SEALs with criminal convictions had their Tridents taken.

Both Mr. Spencer and Admiral Gilday agreed the decision was his to make and said they would defend his call. Mr. Esper briefed Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on Nov. 19 and the next day the Navy established a review board of fellow enlisted SEALs to decide the question.

But a day later, an hour after the chief’s lawyer blasted the decision on Fox News, the president stepped in again. “The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!”

The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin. This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!

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Three days later, Mr. Spencer was fired, faulted by Mr. Esper for not telling him about an effort to work out a deal with the White House to allow the Navy process to go forward.

In an interview with Mr. Hegseth this past week, Chief Gallagher thanked Mr. Trump for having his back. “He keeps stepping in and doing the right thing,” the chief said. “I want to let him know the rest of the SEAL community is not about this right now. They all respect the president.”

Phroyd

#trump #navy #gallagher #fox news

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diarrheaworldstarhiphop · 5 years

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon on Thursday will present plans to the White House to send up to 10,000 more troops to the Middle East, in a move to beef up defenses against potential Iranian threats, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The officials said no final decision has been made yet, and it’s not clear if the White House would approve sending all or just some of the requested forces. Officials said the move is not in response to any new threat from Iran, but is aimed at reinforcing security in the region. They said the troops would be defensive forces, and the discussions include additional Patriot missile batteries, more ships and increased efforts to monitor Iran.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans have not been formally announced.

Thursday morning’s meeting comes as tensions with Iran continue to simmer, and it wasn’t clear if a decision would be made during the session. Any move to deploy more forces to the Middle East would signal a shift for President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly emphasized the need to reduce America’s troop presence in the region.

U.S. officials have provided few details about possible Iranian threats, but indicated they initially involved missiles loaded onto small Iranian boats. This week officials said the missiles have been taken off the boats near Iran’s shore, but other maritime threats continue.

Sending more troops could also raise questions on Capitol Hill. During back-to-back closed briefings for the House and Senate on Tuesday, defense leaders told congressional officials the U.S. doesn’t want to go to war with Iran and wants to de-escalate the situation.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told lawmakers the U.S. is seeking to deter, not provoke, Iran, even while accusing Tehran of threatening U.S. interests in the Mideast. Shanahan told reporters, “Our biggest focus at this point is to prevent Iranian miscalculation.”

Many in Congress are skeptical of the administration’s approach to Iran, questioning whether it is responding to significant new Iranian threats or escalating a situation that could lead to war.

CNN first reported that the Pentagon will brief the White House on a plan that could send thousands of additional U.S. troops to the Middle East.

Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder, spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to comment, saying, “As a matter of long-standing policy, we are not going to discuss or speculate on potential or alleged future operations or plans.”

In early May, the U.S. accelerated the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group to the Mideast and sent four B-52 bomber aircraft to the region. The Pentagon also decided to move a Patriot air-defense missile battery to an undisclosed country in the area.

The Trump administration has evacuated nonessential personnel from Iraq, amid unspecified threats the administration said are linked to Iranian-backed militias in the country.

On Sunday, a rocket was fired into Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, landing less than a mile from the sprawling U.S. Embassy. There were no injuries and no group claimed responsibility, but the rocket was believed to have been fired from east Baghdad — which is home to Iran-backed Shiite militias.

Some Democrats say Trump is responsible for drawing Iran’s ire. Last year he abruptly pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal, negotiated during the Obama administration to prevent Iran from nuclear weapons production, without crafting a coherent strategy for how to combat other Iranian behavior like supporting extremist organizations. He also has reimposed punishing sanctions that have crippled Tehran’s economy, and designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization in April.

“I have yet to see any exhibited strategy,” said Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, a former CIA officer. She said she finds many of the administration’s recent statements on Iran to be “deeply troubling.”

#iran #united states #make israel great again

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newsinsider · 4 years

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Iranian missiles target U.S. troops in Iraq

Iran fired 16 missiles at military bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq, an act of retaliation for the U.S. strike that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani. On 8 January 2020, in a military operation code named Operation Martyr Soleimani, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched 22 ballistic missiles at the Ayn al-Asad airbase in Al Anbar Governorate, Western Iraq, as well as another airbase in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, in response to the assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani by United States forces. Iran had informed the Iraqi government before the attack, and the information was passed to the US military. No Iraqi or American casualties were reported. A previous retaliatory attack also took place on 4 January, when rockets and mortars struck the Balad Air Base and the Green Zone. On the evening of 8 January 2020, Reuters reported that three Katyusha rockets were launched, hitting Baghdad's Green Zone.

In the lead up to the attacks, Iranian officials had stated that Iran would retaliate against U.S. forces for the killing of general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad on 3 January 2020. Reportedly, following the Baghdad strike, U.S. spy agencies detected that Iran's ballistic missile regiments were at a heightened readiness but it was unclear at the time if they were defensive measures or an indication of a future attack on U.S. forces. U.S. president Donald Trump warned Tehran that any retaliation would result in the U.S. targeting 52 significant Iranian sites, including cultural sites. On 3 December 2019, five rockets had landed on the Ayn al-Asad airbase and there were no injuries. A "security source" inside Ayn al-Asad airbase and a "local official at a nearby town" said that the reports that the Ayn al-Asad airbase were under attack at that time were false. These reports on Twitter temporarily caused a rally of U.S. and Brent crude oil futures. On 4 January 2020, two rockets hit the Balad Air Base located near Baghdad. Two mortars also hit Baghdad's Green Zone. The attacks resulted in no casualties or damage.

According to Iraqi Prime Minister (PM) Adel Abdul Mahdi's spokesperson, on 8 January, shortly after midnight, the PM had received a message from Iran, indicating that the response to the killing of General Soleimani had "started or was about to start". Iran also informed the PM that only those locations where the U.S. troops are stationed would be targeted. Although the exact locations of the bases were not disclosed, U.S. officials confirm their troops had adequate warning to shelter from the attack. According to the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), the country's state-run news outlet, Iran fired "tens of ground-to-ground missiles" at the base and claimed responsibility for the attacks. ISNA stated that the code used to launch the missiles was "Oh Zahra". The attacks unfolded in two waves, each about an hour apart. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed responsibility for the attack and announced that it was carried out in response to the killing of Soleimani. The IRGC added that if the United States responded with a retaliatory strike, the IRGC would respond in kind. The IRGC further declared that their statement was intended as a warning and applied to all of the United States' partners who provided their bases to its military.

#Donald Trump #Iran #Middle East #Qasem Soleimani #United States #Wars #Weapons #World

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88newszone-blog · 4 years

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Trump vs. Iran: It's not over

The weeklong scare also left a chilling memory of how the impulsive choices of a seat-of-the-pants President brought his nation to the cusp of another war in the Middle East. It's possible Trump might learn the wrong lessons from his brinkmanship. And the drama exposed the failings of a gutted national security team staffed largely by inexperienced or deeply ideological officials apparently prone to confusion and mixed messages.

On the upside, tensions that culminated in Trump's evaluation that Iran was "standing down" after not killing any Americans in strikes at bases in Iraq did not spin out of control. Both sides were apparently able to telegraph their intentions, through public rhetoric and a Swiss diplomatic channel, to avoid miscalculations that could have spilled over into a war. While there are hopes that stepping back from the brink will give each side an incentive to kick off a fresh diplomatic process, it's more likely they will return to the same state of mutual loathing that has prevailed for 40 years. Iraq is still on edge -- a brace of rockets landed in the highly fortified Green Zone of Baghdad on Wednesday -- the area that hosts the US Embassy, which was previously attacked by a pro-Iran mob. The drones and missiles may have been pulled back for now, but it would be naive to assume this episode is over. Events in the Middle East take months and years to play out. And Iran's history suggests that it will not view a limited missile strike as sufficient vengeance for the killing of a top leader like Soleimani -- who headed the elite Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, meaning more proxy militia violence is likely. "I think that anybody who tells you that this is over and that the retaliation has now ceased and we can all make assessments based on where we are right now ... that's very unlikely. The story is far from over," said Susan Hennessey, a former National Security Agency attorney who is now a CNN legal analyst, on "The Situation Room." What Trump achieved

Still, after looking like he was talking the United States into the kind of Middle East quagmire he decried as a candidate, Trump was glad to step back on Wednesday. "Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world," he said at the White House. The President's team, eyeing his reelection race, has material to work with. They will boast about how Trump, daring to take a step discounted by his predecessors as too inflammatory, wiped Soleimani, whom he blasted as a terrorist "monster," off the planet. More strategically, Trump may have established a principle that could be significant in future US-Iran tensions. The killing of Soleimani, who masterminded Iran's regional network of militia allies like Hezbollah and Hamas, signals that Washington now sees Iran's proxy activity as grounds for military action, a new threshold in the confrontation. "There was a direct attack, direct assault on the US Embassy, US sovereign soil, by Iranian proxies," said David Urban, a senior Trump political adviser and veteran of the first Gulf War. "This President, unlike presidents in the past, decided to say, 'No longer will the US allow Iran to attack the US via proxies,' " Urban told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. That new standard could be significant given Iran's record of using affiliated groups to attack US targets -- such as the assault on the US Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983. But it could also be a trigger to a future conflict. Iran pockets its gains

Iran also sent messages -- to Trump after taking the significant step of firing missiles from its own territory at US troops -- crossing its own new line in the clash with the President. It put its US-allied neighbors on notice that its missiles can hit targets like bases, airports and civilian cities -- and next time they may not be programmed to miss. And Tehran skillfully orchestrated Soleimani's funeral rites to foster an impression of unity, weeks after unleashing a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests amid economic blight brought on by Trump's devastating package of economic sanctions. Trump's threat to hit Iranian cultural targets, meanwhile, helped solidify the notion that Iran faces an existential threat from the US that the clerical government has for years used to cement its legitimacy. But the deeper trends revealed by these tense few days suggest that Iran and the US are not likely to just return to their respective corners and count their winnings. To begin with, the President's White House speech signaling that military action was over for now included a promise to tighten sanctions. While Trump said he was willing to "embrace peace with all who seek it," he showed no sign of relaxing conditions for dialogue with Iran that would effectively require the Islamic Republic to capitulate on its top issues. That means there is no way for Iran to loosen the straitjacket imposed by Trump's "maximum pressure campaign" other than proxy attacks on shipping, oil fields and in a possible more serious scenario, US targets in the region. How the showdown could erupt again

The US -- despite Trump's boasts that Americans are safer with Soleimani gone -- seems to have come out of the conflict in a worse geopolitical position. Iran has wriggled out of the last constraints of the Obama-era nuclear deal, raising fears of a possible race to an atomic weapon within months. The US now seems far closer to being forced out of Iraq after striking Soleimani on Iraqi soil, in an insult to Iraqi sovereignty. Trump compounded the damage by threatening to sanction the star-crossed nation invaded by US-led troops in 2003 if American forces are kicked out. Any US departure from Iraq would hamper the fight against extremism and hand a prize to Baghdad's bigger, more powerful neighbor. For reasons of military logistics, it would likely force the US to abandon the remnants of its fight against ISIS in Syria. In Washington, the step back from confrontation with Iran has taken some of the heat out of Trump's clash with Democrats in Congress over what at one point looked like another war. But Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans on Wednesday left classified briefings on the crisis by top officials disgusted by the presentation. Trump has claimed that he thwarted imminent terrorist attacks against Americans by killing Soleimani. GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah slammed "the worst briefing I've had on a military issue," as he and colleagues castigated the administration for dismissing their concerns about Trump's legal rationale for targeting Soleimani. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he wasn't given overwhelming evidence that specific acts were about to happen. "There was no specific information given to us of a specific attack. I didn't learn anything in the hearing that I hadn't seen in a newspaper already," Paul said. The question of the timing of an Iranian attack is important because it bears on the legal justification for Trump's targeting of Soleimani. There was also fresh evidence of the disarray in Trump's national security team during a crisis that at one point saw conflicting signals sent over whether US troops were withdrawing from Iraq. Administration sources spoke on Wednesday of Iranian signals sent through Iraq and Swiss diplomats to the effect that the missile attacks were not meant to kill Americans. But Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, broke ranks. "I believe, based on what I saw and what I know, that they were intended to cause structural damage -- destroy vehicles and equipment and aircraft -- and to kill personnel. That's my own personal assessment," Milley said. Source link Read the full article

#politics #Trumpvs.Iran:It'snotover-CNNPolitics

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engnews24h · 4 years

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The United States and Iran choose to reduce tension and avoid escalation

Eng News 24h The United States and Iran choose to reduce tension and avoid escalation

The image of a Iranian missile rain Falling last night on an Iraqi military base with US troops inside it does not seem to predict very good omens. But its extremely calculated nature and the absence of casualties have given the White House an opportunity to relax the tension that Donald Trump, despite the multiple previous threats, has not let pass. Are coming new penalties but, in the short term, the risk of a military escalation in the volatile region seems avoided.

“Iran It seems to be retreating and this is a good thing for all the affected parties and for the world, ”said the US president in a message to the nation, in a more solemn tone than usual. Surrounded by his closest advisors, Trump intervened just twelve hours after Tehran claimed the launch of two dozen missiles on two US air bases in Iraqi territory in revenge for the assassination of the general, on January 3, of the general Qasem Soleimani , leader of the Quds Force, outside arm of the Revolutionary Guardians.

The missile launch was loaded with symbolism: it affected the only base Trump visited

Is revenge It was marked by symbolism. The target was the US troops deployed in Iraq, which Solaimani wanted to see outside the country. The most important attack was against Al Asad base, in Anbar province, that the president Trump visited in 2018. The second objective was an air base located in Irbil, capital of the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

(embed) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL-1KFSucM4 (/ embed) data-youtube-vid>

The impression of the US authorities is that the attack was designed not to cause casualties. The missiles, according to military sources, landed in sparsely populated areas of the bases.

Aerial image of how Al Asad's base was after the missile attack (HO / AFP)

The Iraqi government acknowledged that Iran verbally prevented it from the attack. US military sources say they had “several hours” to protect themselves from missile salvage, 22 according to Iraq (of which two did not explode) or 15, including four that were failed, according to the Pentagon.

Just as the murder of Soleimani marked a change in the United States' response to Iranian aggressions – until now, by way of interposition, through affiliated militias in third countries – the attack with missiles last night was the first time in four Decades of revolution Iran attacked its arch-enemy in such a direct and public way and the offensive was immediately attributed. The world and the Iranians should know that, this time, the Islamic Republic was responsible. But the missiles also carried the message that Tehran prefers to avoid war.

Despite widespread relief, the conditions that led to the current tension are still there

“We are not seeking the escalation of a war, but we will defend ourselves against aggression,” Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif wrote in a tweet, moments after the attack ended. “Iran has taken proportional measures in self-defense under article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations,” he said. While it is a simple message on social networks, Zarif's words reflected the strategy behind the response to the United States. They threw themselves the right to respond, but also wanted to reduce tension.

Trump also sang victory and, at the same time, exhibited containment. “Americans should feel extremely grateful and happy. No Americans were injured (…) We do not suffer any casualties, ”nor Iraqi, he announced. Although a few days ago he had assured that the United States would respond “quickly and powerfully, even disproportionately”, to any attack, yesterday at no time evoked the possibility of a military response to the latest Iranian aggression. Trump reaffirmed instead his maximum pressure strategy and announced the imposition of new and “powerful” sanctions “immediately” against the country to force a change of behavior in its leaders.

Trump wants NATO to expand its presence in the Middle East

The US president announced that he will ask the Atlantic Alliance to become more involved in the region and called on the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and China to “completely abandon” what little remains of the international nuclear agreement signed with Tehran in 2015 and join their strategy. “As long as I am United States's president, Iran can never have nuclear weapons. Good morning, ”he said by way of greeting at the beginning of his speech, at eleven o'clock Washington local time.

The attack on the Iraqi bases was also carried out with the missile system that creates so much distrust in the US president. One of the president's excuses to withdraw the United States from the nuclear agreement was to be able to negotiate a more extensive pact that included this program, which is viewed with extreme distrust by both Washington and the other major western nations.

Trump visited the base attacked by Iran in 2018 (US ARMY HANDOUT / EFE)

In this case Iran would have used the Fateh 313 and the Qiam, two short-range missiles without the capacity of other missiles that it has in its arsenal. Trump said Iranian weapons had been financed with the money that the previous Administration gave to Iran, a misleading allusion to the counterparts included in the 2015 agreement to defrost financial assets that the regime had seen frozen abroad as a result of its actions .

After the attack was attributed at dawn, the Iranian authorities continued with the Soleimani's funeral in his hometown, interrupted the day before as a result of the stampede that cost the life to fifty people. Although acclaimed in Iran, Trump made it clear that Soleimani was only “a terrorist, responsible for the worst atrocities.” “General Qasem Soleimani had American and Iranian blood on his hands,” he said. “It should have been liquidated a long time ago,” he added, stressing that his death sends a clear message to terrorists around the world: “If you value your life, you will not threaten that of our people,” he said, looking at the camera.

The president insists that Iran will not have the nuclear weapon; Jamenei, in which US You must leave

“The United States wants to be at peace with those who seek it,” Trump concluded, encouraging Iranian leaders to work together for the prosperity of their country and defeat the Islamic State. Iran's warnings that it reserves the right to attack US allies in the region that host Washington's troops if they allow an attack from their territory caused alarm in Israel, the other country officially defined as an enemy. “Anyone who attacks us will receive a thunderous blow,” warned Prime Minister Beniamin Netanyahu.

In a televised speech, ayatollah Ali Jamenei, supreme leader of Iran, insisted that the ultimate goal of his country is the departure of all troops from U.S from the Middle East region and beyond. “They were slapped last night,” Jamenei said. But “those actions are not enough from the point of view of reprisals. The important thing here is that its corrupt presence (in the region) must come to an end, ”he insisted, pointing to the use of military tactics not only to achieve this goal.

Supreme leader Ali Jamenei wants the US outside of Iran (.)

American troops are now closer than ever to withdraw from Iraq, but the supreme leader wants them to leave West Asia, as the regime calls the region of the Middle East and which includes Afghanistan. That is called to be Iran's ultimate goal, although it remains to be seen what the strategy will be. For now, Tehran had warned that if Trump did not attack, he would not respond.

But the reality is that, although we are not facing a military escalation, the same conditions that have increased the tension between the two countries continue. And perhaps on an even larger scale than has been seen so far. The will of the leaders of both countries of show strength Despite the dangerous context, it can destabilize the situation at any time.

Map of the bases in Iraq with American presence (La Vanguardia and BBC)

The announced increase in sanctions imposed by the United States on Iran will only increase the feeling that the country is under economic warfare. Trump has also announced that he seeks to end the nuclear agreement definitively and prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, while dynamiting the peaceful path through dialogue. The difference today is that the regime feels strengthened to levels that were unimaginable months ago.

“The Islamic Revolution is alive,” said the supreme leader, who spoke of a “national unity created under a coffin.”

New attack: Two rockets fall in the green zone

The sirens sounded again last night in Baghdad. Two Katiusha rockets (range less than 100 km) fell near the US embassy without causing injuries. This action would be linked to death, in the same attack that ended the life of General Soleimani, of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, leader of a pro-Iranian Iraqi faction.

Source: lavanguardia.com

Eng News 24h The United States and Iran choose to reduce tension and avoid escalation

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bangkokjacknews · 4 years

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BREAKING NEWS: Rocket attack on U.S Embassy in Baghdad

Multiple rockets strike #Baghdad's Green Zone including one 'within 100 yards of US embassy'

Explosions have been heard in Baghdad's Green Zone amid reports of rocket attack. Air raid sirens wailed in the zone that houses the U.S. embassy shortly after midnight on Thursday local time. Iraqi police said that one rocket had landed about 100 yards from the embassy. The Iraqi military said there were no reports of casualties in the attack. Initial reports indicated that the rockets were Katyushas, a Soviet-era ground-based multiple rocket launcher used by multiple factions within Iraq. Iran's proxy forces in Iraq, the Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, have been known to launch similar rocket attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq the past.

The US embassy compound in Baghdad is seen last week under guard by Iraqi counter-terror forces. There were no reports of casualties in a rocket attack on Thursday It comes one day after an Iranian ballistic missile strike on Iraqi bases that house U.S. troops. No American casualties were suffered in that attack. Intelligence source claim that Iran deliberately missed the most devastating targets in that attack, with most of its ballistic missiles failing to hit their targets. Satellite images released today show only minor damage to the bases in Ain al-Asad in western Iraq and Erbil International airport in the north as Iran wanted to avoid escalating the conflict to all-out war, according to US and European government sources. Images showed several missiles had either failed to explode on impact or else missed their targets. The remains of one rocket was found near the town of Duhok, some 70 miles from Erbil air base, which was the intended target. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired 22 ballistic missiles at the al-Asad airbase and Erbil in the early hours of Wednesday, but failed to kill a single US or Iraqi solider. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking on Iranian TV shortly after the missiles were launched, described the strikes as 'a slap' and said they 'are not sufficient ' while vowing further action to kick US troops out of the region. But foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the attack was now 'concluded', praising Iran's 'proportionate' response and adding: 'We do not seek escalation or war.' It came as Iraqi Prime Minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, revealed today that Iran gave him a tip-off about last night's missile strikes, giving time for troops to scramble to bunkers. He received a call from Tehran warning him an attack was imminent in retaliation for the US killing of its highest ranking general, his spokesman said. Iraqi officials then passed the information on to US troops before the attack began, according to CNN. US troops also got a heads up with a warning from America's advanced detection system based in Maryland. – You can follow BangkokJack on Instagram, Twitter & Reddit. Or join the free mailing list (top right) Please help us continue to bring the REAL NEWS - PayPal Read the full article

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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Iran announces it is suspending its commitments to the 2015 nuclear deal

By Erin Cunningham | Published Jan 05 at 5:36 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 5, 2020 |

● Following the killing of a senior Iranian commander, Iran announced it is suspending all its commitments under the nuclear agreement it struck with world powers in 2015, although it will continue to cooperate with the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.

● Iraqi lawmakers passed a nonbinding resolution to expel all foreign troops, including members of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, in response to urging by Iraq’s caretaker prime minister.

● Hossein Dehghan, the military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said Iran’s response to the U.S. drone attack “will be military and against military sites,” a position echoed in Lebanon by Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah.

ISTANBUL — Iran said Sunday that it is suspending its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal it had struck with world powers and will abandon the accord's "final restrictions" on uranium enrichment and other activities unless U.S. sanctions are lifted.

The government announced the move in a statement carried by state news agencies.

"Iran's nuclear program will now be based solely on its technical needs," the statement said. The move includes breaching the deal's caps on uranium production and enrichment capacity, as well as nuclear research and development.

"If the sanctions are lifted … the Islamic Republic is ready to return to its obligations," the statement said. It added that Iran will continue to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog.

The announcement came as the region continued to grapple with the fallout of a U.S. drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, as he traveled in a convoy near the Baghdad airport Friday. The strike also killed a key Iraq militia leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

Iraq's caretaker prime minister urged parliament on Sunday to take "urgent measures" to force the withdrawal of foreign forces following the strike. In an address to the legislature, Adel Abdul Mahdi recommended that the government establish a timetable for the departure of foreign troops, including the members of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State militant group, "for the sake of our national sovereignty."

"What happened was a political assassination," Abdul Mahdi said.

Lawmakers responded by passing a nonbinding resolution calling on the government to end the foreign troop presence in Iraq. But Abdul Mahdi, who resigned in November and has been serving in a caretaker role, is not legally authorized to sign the bill into law.

As a result, the vote Sunday did not immediately imperil the U.S. presence in Iraq, but it highlights the head winds the Trump administration faces after the strike, which was seen in Iraq as a violation of sovereignty and as a dangerous escalation by governments across the Middle East.

In a sign of the spiraling consequences, the U.S.-led coalition said it had paused its training mission in Iraq because of "repeated rocket attacks over the last two months" by the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia. It would now focus on protecting its bases from attack, the coalition said in a statement.

"This has limited our capacity to conduct training with partners and to support their operations" against the Islamic State, it said. "We have therefore paused these activities."

But in appearances on morning talk shows Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismissed calls for U.S. troops to leave Iraq, saying on "Fox News Sunday" that Abdul Mahdi is "under enormous threats from the very Iranian leadership that it is that we are pushing back against."

"We are confident that the Iraqi people want the United States to continue to be there to fight the counterterror campaign," Pompeo said. "And we'll continue to do all the things we need to do to keep America safe."

Later, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said Washington was "disappointed" by the Iraqi lawmakers' move, and urged them to reconsider as the United States seeks "further clarification on the legal nature and impact of today's resolution."

“We believe it is in the shared interests of the United States and Iraq to continue fighting ISIS together,” she said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

Iran, meanwhile, said Sunday that it would limit its response to the drone attack to U.S. military targets.

"The response for sure will be military and against military sites," Hossein Dehghan, the military adviser to Iran's supreme leader, said in an interview with CNN. "The only thing that can end this period of war is for the Americans to receive a blow that is equal to the blow they have inflicted."

Dehghan’s remarks came as President Trump threatened Saturday on Twitter to strike “52 Iranian sites … some at a very high level & important to Iran and the Iranian culture” should Tehran retaliate against Americans or U.S. interests in the region. Iran has 24 locations on the U.N. list of cultural world heritage sites.

If Trump were to carry out his threats, Dehghan said, “no American military staff, no American political center, no American military base, no American vessel will be safe.”

Trump later tweeted: “These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner.”

“Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!” he wrote.

The Iraqi military said late Sunday that six rockets had landed in Baghdad, including three inside the Green Zone, a fortified neighborhood housing many foreigners and the U.S. Embassy.

A U.S. diplomat said rockets apparently hit a vehicle lot in the embassy compound.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, echoed Deghan’s statement, declaring Sunday that as retribution for Soleimani’s death, U.S. troops in the Middle East, and not U.S. civilians, should be targeted.

“It is the U.S. military that killed Haj Qasem, and they must pay the price,” Nasrallah said, referring to Soleimani. “Touching any civilian anywhere in the world will only serve Trump’s policy.”

U.S. allies widely share concerns about the consequences of Soleimani’s death. NATO will convene an emergency meeting of its ambassadors on Monday to discuss the situation in Iraq. NATO suspended its training programs in the country, and several member nations have scrambled to protect their troops and citizens here.

In Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Embassy released a security alert Sunday advising Americans of “the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks” against both civilian and military targets.

The United States blamed Iran for a drone and cruise missile attack on Saudi state oil facilities in September, a strike that knocked half of the nation’s oil production offline.

While Saudi officials have long urged the United States to take stronger action against what they say is Iran’s unchecked expansionism in the region, they have also expressed discomfort at the rising tensions between Washington and Tehran.

Abdul Mahdi suggested Sunday that Iran and the Saudis had been engaged in dialogue to tamp down their feud, with Iraq playing the role of mediator. Abdul Mahdi said he had been expecting to meet with Soleimani on the day he was killed. “He came to deliver me a message from Iran, responding to the message we delivered from Saudi Arabia to Iran,” the prime minister said, without providing details.

In Iran, Soleimani’s body was flown in a flag-draped coffin to the southwestern city of Ahvaz, following a funeral procession in Baghdad and Iraq’s twin Shiite shrine cities, Karbala and Najaf. It was later carried to the northeastern city of Mashhad, home to the shrine of Imam Reza, a revered figure in Shiite Islam. Iran is ruled by a Shiite theocracy.

Footage broadcast on Iranian state television showed tens of thousands of black-clad mourners waving flags and chanting religious slogans. Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency described the scene as “glorious.”

“All schools and businesses are closed today — he was popular here and even more popular now,” said Farnaz, 33, a computer engineer and resident of Ahvaz, referring to Soleimani. Like other Iranians contacted Sunday, she spoke on the condition that her full name not be used so she could speak freely.

“People here … saw Soleimani as an important and charismatic commander who was protecting their security,” she said.

Still, Ahvaz and other cities in oil-rich Khuzestan province, home to a large ethnic Arab minority, have a history of anti-government unrest. On Sunday, an unverified video posted online showed masked youths setting fire to a billboard commemorating Soleimani.

The slain commander’s procession will continue Monday to the holy city of Qom and the capital, Tehran, where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, will lead prayers at the ceremony. Soleimani will be buried in his hometown, Kerman, on Tuesday.

______

Mustafa Salim in Baghdad, Kareem Fahim in Istanbul, Michael Birnbaum in Antwerp and Siobhán O’Grady and John Hudson in Washington contributed to this report.

*********

Killing of Soleimani follows long push from Pompeo for aggressive action against Iran, but airstrike brings serious risks

By John Hudson, Josh Dawsey, Shane Harris and Dan Lamothe | Published

Jan 05 at 7:00 PM EST | Washington Post |Posted January 5, 2020|

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo woke on Tuesday to a 4 a.m. call alerting him to a large protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

As demonstrators began hurling molotov cocktails at the heavily fortified compound, Pompeo grappled with the new security threat to his diplomats in phone calls starting at 4:30 a.m. with Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Matthew Tueller, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, according to U.S. officials.

The secretary also spoke to President Trump multiple times every day last week, culminating in Trump’s decision to approve the killing of Iran’s top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, at the urging of Pompeo and Vice President Pence, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Pompeo had lost a similar high-stakes deliberation last summer when Trump declined to retaliate militarily against Iran after it downed a U.S. surveillance drone, an outcome that left Pompeo “morose,” according to one U.S. official. But recent changes to Trump’s national security team and the whims of a president anxious about being viewed as hesitant in the face of Iranian aggression created an opening for Pompeo to press for the kind of action he had long been advocating.

The greenlighting of the airstrike near Baghdad airport represents a bureaucratic victory for Pompeo, but it also carries multiple serious risks: another protracted regional war in the Middle East; retaliatory assassinations of U.S. personnel stationed around the world; an interruption in the battle against the Islamic State; the closure of diplomatic pathways to containing Iran’s nuclear program; and a major backlash in Iraq, whose parliament voted on Sunday to expel all U.S. troops from the country.

For Pompeo, whose political ambitions are a source of constant speculation, the death of U.S. diplomats would be particularly damaging given his unyielding criticisms of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton following the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and other American personnel in Benghazi in 2012.

But none of those considerations stopped Pompeo from pushing for the targeted strike, U.S. officials said, underscoring a fixation on Iran that spans 10 years of government service from Congress to the CIA to the State Department.

“We took a bad guy off the battlefield. We made the right decision,” Pompeo told CNN. “I’m proud of the effort that President Trump undertook.”

Pompeo first spoke with Trump about killing Soleimani months ago, said a senior U.S. official, but neither the president nor Pentagon officials were willing to countenance such an operation.

For more than a year, defense officials warned that the administration’s campaign of economic sanctions against Iran had increased tensions with Tehran requiring a bigger and bigger share of military resources in the Middle East when many at the Pentagon wanted to redeploy their firepower to East Asia.

Trump, too, sought to draw down from the Middle East as he promised from the opening days of his presidential campaign. But that mind-set shifted on Dec. 27 when 30 rockets hit a joint U.S.-Iraqi base outside Kirkuk, killing an American civilian contractor and injuring service members.

On Dec. 29, Pompeo, Esper and Milley traveled to the president’s private club in Florida, where the two defense officials presented possible responses to Iranian aggression, including the option of killing Soleimani, senior U.S. officials said.

Trump’s decision to target Soleimani came as a surprise and a shock to some officials briefed on his decision, given the Pentagon’s long-standing concerns about escalation and the president’s aversion to using military force against Iran.

One significant factor was the “lockstep” coordination for the operation between Pompeo and Esper, both graduates in the same class at the U.S. Military Academy, who deliberated ahead of the briefing with Trump, senior U.S. officials said. Pence also endorsed the decision, but he did not attend the meeting in Florida.

“Taking out Soleimani would not have happened under [former secretary of defense Jim] Mattis,” said a senior administration official who argued that the Mattis Pentagon was risk-averse. “Mattis was opposed to all of this. It’s not a hit on Mattis, it’s just his predisposition. Milley and Esper are different. Now you’ve got a cohesive national security team and you’ve got a secretary of state and defense secretary who’ve known each other their whole adult lives.”

Mattis declined to comment.

In the days since the strike, Pompeo has become the voice of the administration on the matter, speaking to allies and making the public case for the operation. Trump chose Pompeo to appear on all of the Sunday news shows because he “sticks to the line” and “never gives an inch,” an administration official said.

But critics inside and outside the administration have questioned Pompeo’s justification for the strike based on his claims that “dozens if not hundreds” of American lives were at risk.

Lawmakers left classified briefings with U.S. intelligence officials on Friday saying they heard nothing to suggest that the threat posed by the proxy forces guided by Soleimani had changed substantially in recent months.

When repeatedly pressed on Sunday about the imminent nature of the threats, whether it was days or weeks away, or whether they had been foiled by the U.S. airstrike, Pompeo dismissed the questions.

“If you’re an American in the region, days and weeks — this is not something that’s relevant,” Pompeo told CNN.

Some defense officials said Pompeo’s claims of an imminent and direct threat were overstated, and they would prefer that he make the case based on the killing of the American contractor and previous Iranian provocations.

Critics have also questioned how an imminent attack would be foiled by killing Soleimani, who would not have carried out the strike himself.

“If the attack was going to take place when Soleimani was alive, it is difficult to comprehend why it wouldn’t take place now that he is dead,” said Robert Malley, the president of the International Crisis Group and a former Obama administration official.

Following the strike, Pompeo has held back-to-back phone calls with his counterparts around the globe but has received a chilly reception from European allies, many of whom fear that the attack puts their embassies in Iran and Iraq in jeopardy and has now eliminated the chance to keep a lid on Iran’s nuclear program.

“We have woken up to a more dangerous world,” said France’s Europe minister, Amelie de Montchalin.

Two European diplomats familiar with the calls said Pompeo expected European leaders to champion the U.S. strike publicly even though they were never consulted on the decision.

“The U.S. has not helped the Iran situation, and now they want everyone to cheerlead this,” one diplomat said.

“Our position over the past few years has been about defending the JCPOA,” said the diplomat, referring to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

On Sunday, Iran announced that it was suspending all limits of the nuclear deal, including on uranium enrichment, research and development, and enlarging its stockpile of nuclear fuel. Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China, were original signatories of that deal with the United States and Iran, and all opposed Trump’s decision to withdraw from the pact.

“No one trusts what Trump will do next, so it’s hard to get behind this,” said the European diplomat.

Pompeo has slapped back at U.S. allies, saying “the Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did — what the Americans did — saved lives in Europe as well,” he told Fox News.

Israel has stood out in emphatically cheering the Soleimani operation, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praising Trump for “acting swiftly, forcefully and decisively.”

“Israel stands with the United States in its just struggle for peace, security and self-defense,” he said.

Since his time as CIA director, Pompeo has forged a friendship with Yossi Cohen, the director of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, said a person familiar with their meetings. The men have spoken about the threat posed by Iran to both Israel and the United States. In a prescient interview in October, Cohen said Soleimani “knows perfectly well that his elimination is not impossible.”

Though Democrats have greeted the strike with skepticism, Republican leaders, who have long viewed Pompeo as a reassuring voice in the administration, uniformly praised the decision as the eradication of a terrorist who directed the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

“Soleimani made it his life’s work to take the Iranian revolutionary call for death to America and death to Israel and turn them into action,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said.

A critical moment for Pompeo is nearing as he faces growing questions about a potential Senate run, though some GOP insiders say that decision seems to have stalled. Pompeo has kept in touch with Ward Baker, a political consultant who would probably lead the operation, and others in McConnell’s orbit, about a bid. But Pompeo hasn’t committed one way or the other, people familiar with the conversations said.

Some people close to the secretary say he has mixed feelings about becoming a relatively junior senator from Kansas after leading the State Department and CIA, but there is little doubt in Pompeo’s home state that he could win.

At every step of his government career, Pompeo has tried to stake out a maximalist position on Iran that has made him popular among two critical pro-Israel constituencies in Republican politics: conservative Jewish donors and Christian evangelicals.

After Trump tapped Pompeo to lead the CIA, Pompeo quickly set up an Iran Mission Center at the agency to focus intelligence-gathering efforts and operations, elevating Iran’s importance as an intelligence target.

At the State Department, he is a voracious consumer of diplomatic notes and reporting on Iran, and he places the country far above other geopolitical and economic hot spots in the world.

“If it’s about Iran, he will read it,” said one diplomat, referring to the massive flow of paper that crosses Pompeo’s desk. “If it’s not, good luck.”

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In confrontation with Iran, Trump wrestles with the shadow of Obama, ‘the metric he has to beat’

By David Nakamura | Published Jan 05 at 8:00 AM EST |Washington Post |

Posted January 5, 2020 |

As President Trump’s allies rushed to defend his decision to authorize a drone strike that killed Iran’s top military commander, many have focused less on Qasem Soleimani than another once-prominent actor in Middle East affairs: former president Barack Obama.

“Obama drew red lines & ignored them,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) wrote in a tweet, adding that Trump “never will.”

“There is a NEW Sheriff in town,” proclaimed former Milwaukee sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., a vocal Trump surrogate. “Maybe they thought Obama was still the Commander in Chief.”

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) recycled a misleading claim that Obama had been “sending Iran pallets of cash as they killed Americans.” But with Trump in charge, he added, “America fights back.”

For Trump, the true measure of the dramatic and risky military operation will become clear over time, as the United States braces for a potential retaliatory strike from Iran that could embroil his administration in the kind of complex and intractable Middle East conflict he had pledged to avoid. But amid the immediate fallout from Soleimani’s death, the president and his defenders rushed to declare that Trump had bested his predecessor in standing up to a malign foreign power.

To Trump’s allies, the killing of Soleimani didn’t just eliminate Iran’s chief military strategist, it was a “bigger deal than Osama bin Laden,” according to Ryan Fournier, co-chairman of Students for Trump. The al-Qaeda mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was killed in a Navy SEAL raid in 2011 — one of Obama’s top national security accomplishments.

The boastful tone aimed to grant Trump a measure of validation and credit at a time of enormous political vulnerability amid an ongoing impeachment proceeding. But it also served to rebut criticism over Trump’s move in 2018 to abandon the Iran nuclear deal that the Obama administration negotiated three years earlier. The decision fulfilled a chief Trump campaign promise but exacerbated tensions between Washington and Tehran and, experts said, helped lead to the escalating crisis punctuated by the drone strike on Soleimani.

Trump, former aides said, has burned with a desire to erase Obama’s foreign policy legacy and prove himself a superior commander in chief.

“For whatever reason, President Trump has fixated on President Obama, and I think that he views President Obama as the metric he has to beat,” said Fernando Cutz, who served on the National Security Council under both presidents, including a stint as senior adviser to H.R. McMaster, Trump’s second national security adviser.

McMaster and other top aides, including former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, had strenuously lobbied Trump to stay in the deal that imposed limits on Iran’s program to build a nuclear weapon in exchange for economic sanctions relief. But that effort ultimately failed and, Cutz said, and helped cost McMaster his White House job.

Trump moved to nullify the deal because it “was a campaign promise and an Obama deal — every time he extended an Obama deal, he was inherently admitting it was a good deal. His whole thing was that it was a horrible deal,” Cutz said. He added that in meetings with his national security advisers, Trump groused that he should be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and complained that Obama received one for campaigning against nuclear weapons before taking office.

After news of Soleimani’s death emerged late Thursday, Trump allies took to social media to debate with Obama administration veterans, who pronounced the drone strike a reckless and ill-advised act of war that would almost certainly backfire.

Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, questioned Trump’s ability to handle a “complex, enduring, international crisis,” prompting conservative pundit Ben Shapiro to mock Rhodes as “a failed novelist who openly lied to the American people while pushing bribery of a terrorist regime to handle this.” It was a reference to a 2016 profile of Rhodes in the New York Times Magazine in which he boasted of using inexperienced reporters to shape a “narrative” and create a favorable public impression around the Iran deal.

The Trump campaign retweeted a post from Michael Joyce, a Republican National Committee spokesman, juxtaposing an image of Iranian officials mourning Soleimani’s death with one of U.S. sailors aboard a Navy command boat captured by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after entering Iranian waters in 2016.

“US-Iran relations under Obama vs. US-Iran relations under @realDonaldTrump,” Joyce wrote.

“I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say the root of much of this is Obama envy,” said Ned Price, a former CIA officer who served as an NSC spokesman under Obama. “It was Trump’s determination, honed over a year on the campaign trail and the first 1½ years of his administration, to rail against the Iran deal, Obama’s deal, the ‘worst deal ever.’ He got raucous applause and cheers from his base when he associated it with Obama, and that was a decisive factor in Trump’s decision to abandon it in 2018.”

It wasn’t just the Iran deal that Trump jettisoned. His administration has begun withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord; scrapped Obama’s agreement to enter a trans-Pacific trade pact; reversed efforts to warm relations with Cuba and dropped Obama’s “strategic patience” strategy to isolate North Korea, instead engaging directly with leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump did not mention Obama in brief remarks about the Soleimani operation Friday. But days earlier — as an Iraqi militia aligned with the Iranian general breached security at the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in protest of an American strike on the group’s facilities in Syria and Iraq — Trump made a clear reference to his predecessor by threatening Iran over the incident and declaring the situation the “Anti-Benghazi” on Twitter.

He was alluding to a siege on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya in 2012 in which two Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stephens, were killed — a tragedy for which Republicans faulted Obama’s administration for not securing the facility and for a muddied public accounting of what happened.

Robert Spalding, a retired Air Force general who served on Trump’s NSC, discounted the notion that the president’s actions this week were motivated by a sense of grievance over Obama’s legacy. Spalding called Soleimani a longtime threat to U.S. national security who should have been targeted by Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush.

“Those who want to tie it to a broader agenda over differences with Obama’s policies I think is a stretch,” he said.

But Trump’s intensive focus on Obama was apparent long before he launched his White House campaign in 2015. Trump was a leading proponent of the racist “birther” conspiracy theory, which falsely accused Obama of being an illegitimate president who was born outside the United States.

In April 2011, on the night Obama authorized the raid that killed bin Laden, Trump was the target of numerous jokes by Obama at the White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington.

Trump has also falsely accused Obama of ordering his administration to wiretap the phones at Trump Tower during his campaign and transition in an effort to tie him to a Russian interference operation in the 2016 election.

Trump’s fixation with Obama has grown more acute over his three years in office. The president mentioned Obama 537 times in the first 10 months of 2019 — a 36 percent increase from the same period in 2018 and up 169 percent from that time frame in 2017, according to an analysis from Daniel Dale, a CNN analyst and fact-checker.

Some past presidents have been disdainful of their predecessors, said Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley. He cited Franklin D. Roosevelt’s temporary name change for the Herbert Hoover Dam in Nevada back to Boulder Dam and Ronald Reagan’s removal of solar panels installed at the White House by Jimmy Carter.

But there has been nothing comparable to Trump’s relentless trashing of Obama, Brinkley said.

“Trump likes the fact that attacking Obama, as an African American president, helped him with the right wing of the Republican Party that he needed,” he said.

After Trump’s embrace of the birther conspiracy theory, Brinkley added, “he needs to show Obama was a really bad president with socialist tendencies to kind of justify his attacks on him. The wiretapping — he fabricates things Obama did to turn him into an all-purpose nemesis. There’s been belittling of a predecessor before — but not this sense of a mass destruction of a reputation.”

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Flouting War Powers Act, Trump claims his tweets are sufficient notice to Congress that U.S. may strike Iran

By Felicia Sonmez | Published Jan 05 at 5:22 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 5, 2020 |

President Trump claimed Sunday that his tweets are sufficient notice to Congress of any possible U.S. military strike on Iran, in an apparent dismissal of his obligations under the War Powers Act of 1973.

Trump’s declaration, which comes two days after his administration launched a drone strike that killed top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, was met with disbelief and ridicule from congressional Democrats, who called on the president to respect the role of the legislative branch in authorizing new military action abroad.

“These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner,” Trump tweeted from his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., late Sunday afternoon. “Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!”

Trump’s claim that the United States will retaliate against Iran “perhaps in a disproportionate manner” also contrasts with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement hours earlier on “Fox News Sunday” that the administration “will take responses that are appropriate and commensurate with actions that threaten American lives.”

The War Powers Act of 1973 mandates that the president report to lawmakers within 48 hours of introducing military forces into armed conflict abroad. Such notifications generally detail an administration’s justification for U.S. intervention, as well as the constitutional and legislative rationale used by the administration to send troops. It may also include how long the involvement could last.

On Saturday, the White House delivered a formal notification to Congress of the strike that killed Soleimani, according to a senior Democratic aide and another official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of the notification.

But the document, which is entirely classified, drew scathing criticism from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who said in a statement that the notification “raises more questions than it answers.”

Several congressional Democrats sharply criticized the president on Sunday afternoon for appearing to dismiss the War Powers Act.

“OMG, Trump thinks a crazed Tweet satisfies his War Powers Act obligations to Congress,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) tweeted. “Our President has taken us to the brink of war and is now vamping with no plan and no clue. Please, someone in the GOP, take the car keys - read the 25th Amendment.”

The 25th Amendment outlines a procedure by which the Cabinet can remove a president from office.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) also pushed back against Trump’s declaration.

“.@realDonaldTrump, this is Twitter,” Pocan tweeted. “This is not where you wage unauthorized wars.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, called on members of Congress to unite against Trump’s efforts to potentially take further military action against Iran.

“Congress must reassert its constitutional responsibility over war,” Sanders said in a tweet. “The Senate and House must vote to immediately defund unauthorized military action against Iran.”

Trump’s Sunday social media post does not mark the first time he has sought to craft policy by tweet.

In June 2017, he announced on Twitter that he would ban transgender people from serving in the military in any capacity.

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military,” Trump wrote at the time.

Trump has also announced the hiring and firing of a number of administration officials via Twitter.

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Hezbollah says retribution for Soleimani’s death must target U.S. military, not civilians

By Liz Sly and Sarah Dadouch | Published January 05 at 2:09 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted Jan 5, 2020 |

BEIRUT — The leader of Lebanon's Iran-allied Hezbollah movement declared Sunday that retribution for the killing of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani should target the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and not U.S. citizens, saying that harming ordinary Americans would play into the hands of President Trump.

The targets will be “all the U.S. military bases in the region, their warships, every single general and soldier in our lands,” Hassan Nasrallah said at a ceremony held in Beirut’s southern suburbs to commemorate the death of Soleimani.

“It is the U.S. military that killed Haj Qasem, and they must pay the price,” Nasrallah added, using an honorific.

But American citizens should not be harmed, he said.

When talking about retribution, “we do not mean the American people,” he said. “There are many U.S. civilians in our region — engineers, businessmen, journalists. We will not touch them. Touching any civilian anywhere in the world will only serve Trump’s policy.”

“The true, just retribution for those who conducted this assassination is an institution, which is the U.S. military. We will launch a battle against those killers, those criminals.”

Hezbollah supporters crowded into the vast prayer hall where the ceremony was held punctuated his speech, delivered via a video link, with chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

Mohammad Jawad Dukmak, 20, drove up with his four friends from Nabatiyeh, a mainly Shiite town in southern Lebanon, to attend the commemoration. “America will pay, and this is definite,” Dukmak said.

“This journey does not end with anybody. Even if, God forbid, they assassinate Sayyid Ali Khamenei, we will not stop,” he said, referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “We are a school, we are not just a military camp. We are a school that graduates leaders and educated students.”

The funeral prayers came two days after a U.S. drone struck Soleimani’s vehicle on the road leading out of the Baghdad airport shortly after he had landed on a scheduled flight from Damascus, Syria. Also killed was militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an Iraqi who used a nom de guerre and was the deputy leader of the Popular Mobilization Forces umbrella organization in Iraq, and at least seven others.

The entire region has been bracing for Iran’s response to the killing, which targeted the country’s most important military commander and the symbol of its expansive influence across the region. Soleimani commanded a network of militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, of which Hezbollah is regarded as the most powerful.

Nasrallah was one of Soleimani’s closest associates, and his thinking often coincides with that of the Iranian leadership, which funds and arms the militia.

Nasrallah was careful, however, to avoid mentioning Lebanon as a potential site for retaliation in his speech. Rather, he said, “we are not tools to be directed by Iran. They did not ask anything of us and will not ask anything. It is up to us to decide our response.”

The bigger goal, he said, is to secure the removal of all U.S. troops from the region, and he focused on Iraq, where parliament voted Sunday on a nonbinding resolution calling on the government to end the foreign troop presence in the country.

Expelling U.S. troops from Iraq, a longtime goal of Soleimani, would be just and fitting retribution for his death, Nasrallah said, adding: “The blood of the martyrs should lead to Iraq’s second liberation from American occupation.”

Analysts say Hezbollah is in no mood to become embroiled in a wider conflict on Iran’s behalf at a time when Lebanon is wracked by anti-government protests that have pointedly included Hezbollah as one of the targets of popular wrath.

The group is on the verge of securing the formation of a new Lebanese government that will include a Hezbollah nominee as prime minister and will effectively be seen as run by Hezbollah, said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center. That prize will be squandered if Lebanon becomes entangled in conflict.

“In Lebanon, the situation is so fragile that my sense is any reaction will be tempered,” Yahya said. “Hezbollah, as much as anyone else, really didn’t want to go down this route” of confrontation, she said. “The stakes are too high.”

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Trump’s threats against Iranian sites raise questions about the potential for war crimes

By Seung Min Kim | Published January 05 at 5:09 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 5, 2020 |

Amid deepening tensions in the Middle East, President Trump's threat to order attacks against sites in Iran important to its culture has prompted fresh concerns over the legality of doing so and left the administration facing questions about whether U.S. officials are considering such a move.

On Twitter late Saturday, Trump leveled a new warning against Iran, saying the United States is targeting 52 Iranian sites and that some of those are “a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture.”

“Those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD,” Trump tweeted. “The USA wants no more threats!”

But the comment drew fresh rebukes from Democratic lawmakers and former national security officials, who noted that targeting cultural sites with military action violates international law and urged for more clarification from the administration on Trump’s remarks on Twitter.

“ISIS targets cultural sites. The Taliban destroys cultural sites. The United States of America should not join this list,” tweeted Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia under the Obama administration. “Please @DeptofDefense @StateDept, roll back this horrific statement by @realDonaldTrump & make clear that we will not target Iranian cultural sites.”

“Targeting civilians and cultural sites is what terrorists do. It’s a war crime. Trump is stumbling into a war of choice,” tweeted Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. “A war entirely of his making. A war that will get thousands of Americans killed. Congress must stop him.”

Trump’s threats and tough talk are emblematic of a president who has flouted the tenets of international and U.S. law on war crimes. He has insisted that enhanced interrogation tactics such as waterboarding work, suggested killing terrorists’ families to fight the Islamic State and two months ago cleared three members of the U.S. armed services accused or convicted of war crimes over objections from senior military officials.

One top official facing questions was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who appeared on Sunday shows to discuss the death of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, who was killed early Friday in Baghdad by a U.S. drone strike.

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Pompeo did not directly respond when asked whether cultural centers in Iran would be considered fair targets.

“We’re going to do the things that are right and the things that are consistent with American lives,” said Pompeo, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. “If the Iranian leadership makes a bad decision, we hope that they won’t. But when they do, America will respond.”

In a separate interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Pompeo said Trump’s reference to the 52 potential target sites in Iran was “entirely consistent” with the administration’s message of de-escalation.

“Iranian leadership needs to understand that attacking Americans is not cost-free,” Pompeo said during that interview. “Setting out conditions that say these are our expectations, these are the things that America is expecting from you and if you don’t do them, the cost will be clear and direct.”

The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property bans the targeting of cultural sites with military action; there is a provision that allows for a waiver due to “military necessity.” Iran has 24 locations on the U.N. list of cultural world heritage sites.

Former U.S. national security officials said the Pentagon would not target cultural property because it would violate domestic and international laws.

“It would be a war crime. DOD has very professional planners who take their obligations and fidelity to law seriously,” said Kelly Magsamen, a former official at the National Security Council and the Pentagon who is now at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “Any military planner, any U.S. soldier would know that. The fact that the president of the United States doesn’t know that is profoundly frightening to me. If he does know it and he’s still saying it, that’s even worse.”

David Lapan, a longtime U.S. military official who also served as spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security in 2017, agreed that the U.S. military would not be considering such an attack.

“When you’re talking about cultural sites, it can mean any number of things. But they’re not military targets,” said Lapan, now at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.

Trump has endorsed lethal actions defined as war crimes by international and U.S. laws and widely condemned as crimes against humanity.

As a candidate and in his first months in office, Trump said enhanced interrogation methods, such as waterboarding, are an effective tactic to elicit information — practices at odds with the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the U.S. Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

“I happen to feel that it does work,” the president said in January 2017, referring to “torture or waterboarding or however you want to define it — enhanced interrogation I guess would be a word.”

Trump also said during a December 2015 appearance on “Fox and Friends” that one way to win the fight against the Islamic State is to “take out their families.”

“They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself,” he said. “When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.”

More recently, Trump overruled military leaders and cleared three members of the armed forces who had been accused or convicted of war crimes. In November, Trump ordered full pardons to former Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, who was serving a 19-year sentence for the murder of two civilians, and Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn, a former Special Forces officer who was facing murder charges for killing an Afghan detainee suspected of being a Taliban bombmaker.

The president also ordered the Navy to restore Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher to his previous rank. Gallagher had been acquitted of murder and convicted of posing with the corpse of an Islamic State fighter in Iraq.

The killing of Soleimani has also sparked a new debate within the Democratic presidential field about how to characterize the death of the Iranian military leader. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have termed the killing an “assassination” — a word that others in the race have avoided or even criticized more-liberal candidates for using.

“Donald Trump has ordered the killing of a government official of Iran, a high military leader in Iran, and in doing so has escalated an attack on Iran, and increased the likelihood that we will end up in another war in the Middle East,” Warren said Saturday while campaigning in Manchester, Iowa.

Speaking Sunday on CNN, former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg said he was “not interested in the terminology, I’m interested in the consequences” when asked about the use of the word. But in North Carolina on Friday, former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg called the phrase “outrageous” as it related to Soleimani, noting that the Iranian leader was someone “who had an awful lot of blood on his hands.”

Whether Soleimani’s killing could be called an assassination is subject to debate, according to legal experts. A Reagan-era executive order prohibits the executive branch from carrying out an assassination, although that term itself is undefined in U.S. law, said Ashley Deeks, a law professor at the University of Virginia.

But the United States has long held that targeting someone who poses an imminent threat — as the Trump administration has described Soleimani — would be considered self-defense, not an assassination, she added. Much of it would depend on the intelligence undergirding the strike.

One might believe Soleimani’s death was an assassination if he or she believed the United States was not in an armed conflict with Iran and that intelligence did not support the idea of an imminent attack, “then we should apply peacetime rules,” Deeks said.

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