Top Iran General Qassem Soleimani killed by US Air-strike
On Tuesday thousands of Iran-backed militia had stormed into the US embassy in Baghdad and laid siege on the embassy. They were said to be supporters of Kataib Hezbollah militia.
The siege ended on Wednesday after the embassy had received extensive damage.
The retreat signaled an end to a crisis in which thousands of angry militia supporters attempted to storm the embassy Tuesday, protesting the deaths of 25 militia members in U.S. airstrikes Sunday. Those strikes were conducted in retaliation for the death of a U.S. contractor in a rocket attack the U.S. military blamed on Kataib Hezbollah.WashingtonPost
It was clear at that time that US was priming for another action on Iran for this attack on the embassy.
Now, the people responsible for the attack have been killed in a very bold air strike in Baghdad. And earlier, a US commander had warned that “attempts to storm the American embassy in Baghdad would be akin to running into a “buzzsaw”.
And Buzzsaw it was.
President Donald Trump has ordered an airstrike that killed Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani, the powerful head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, at Baghdad International Airport, the Pentagon confirmed. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, which were responsible for the recent attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, officials said.
Source: Rocket attack on Baghdad airport kills at least seven | Daily Mail Online
After the news of the strike came out, the US President Trump simply tweeted the US Stars and Stripes.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2020
This will surely escalate the tension and war scenario between Iran and US (and Israel). But that is now the direction where the Middle East is going towards. In the year ahead, things will only get tougher as Soleimani’s death will hit Iran’s work in Middle East badly.
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