Unsurprisingly, the Iraqi parliament has voted to expel all U.S. forces from the country in the wake of the assassination by drone of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani. Iran’s Press TV reported this morning:

Iraqi lawmakers have unanimously approved a bill, demanding the withdrawal of all foreign military forces led by the United States from the country following the assassination of Iran’s top military commander, Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

…The lawmakers, citing Articles 59 and 109 of the Constitution and in line with their national and regulatory responsibilities as representatives to safeguard the security and sovereignty of Iraq, had earlier singed a five-point bill as follows:

Firstly, the central government in Baghdad is obliged to cancel its request to the US-led military coalition, which was purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist on the grounds, now that military operations have ended in the country, and victory over Daesh has been achieved. The Iraqi government should therefore put an end to the presence of any foreign troops and prevent the use of the Iraqi airspace.

Secondly, the government and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces must announce the number of foreign trainers they need, along with their locations, responsibilities, and duration of their contracts.

Thirdly, the Iraqi foreign minister, on behalf of the government, must turn to the United Nations and the Security Council to file a complaint against the United States for violations of the Iraqi sovereignty and security.

Fourthly, the Iraqi government has been required to conduct a thorough investigation into the recent US airstrike in Baghdad and inform the parliament of its results within seven days from the date of the approval of this bill.

Finally, the plan comes into force once it obtains the parliamentary approval.

Moqtada Al-Sadr complained that the bill did not go far enough, saying that the U.S. exit should be humiliating, that the U.S. embassy should be closed, and communication with the U.S. criminalized. The parliamentary vote is non-binding and it is up to the executive part of the government to approve its terms.

NPR reported that acting P.M. Abdul-Mahdi, who is set to leave the position amidst recent domestic protests, has recommended that U.S. troops leave:

Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi told parliament that Iraq was grateful for the assistance the U.S. has provided in fighting ISIS, but he is now recommending that the 5,200 U.S. troops stationed there permanently leave the country.

NPR further reported that the acting Iraq PM said that Trump had called him for assistance in mediating with Iran prior to Thursday’s deadly strike in Baghdad. Jane Arrar, co-author of the NPR report stated on her Twitter account that, according to Abdul-Mahdi,’s comments to the Iraqi parliament, Trump appears to have set up the hit on Soleimani with a diplomatic push:

This is stunning – #Iraq prime minister tells parliament US troops should leave. Says @realDonaldTrump called him to ask him to mediate with #Iran and then ordered drone strike on Soleimani. Says Soleimani carrying response to Saudi initiative to defuse tension when he was hit.

Iran expert Trita Parsi reported a translation of Abdul-Mahdi’s words:

“I was supposed to meet Soleimani at the morning the day he was killed, he came to deliver me a message from Iran responding to the message we delivered from Saudi to Iran” Iraqi PM said.”

Joshua Landis, a fellow at the non-interventionist Quincy Institute, commented:

“Iraqi Prime Minister AbdulMahdi accuses Trump of deceiving him in order to assassinate Suleimani. Trump, according to P.M. lied about wanting a diplomatic solution in order to get Suleimani on a plane to Baghdad in the open, where he was summarily executed.

The NYT is reporting that U.S. forces will be halting their anti-ISIS mission in Iraq, at least for the time being:

WASHINGTON — The American-led coalition in Iraq and Syria halted its yearslong campaign against the Islamic State on Sunday as United States forces braced for retaliation from Iran over a strike that killed a powerful Iranian commander, military officials said.

In a statement, the American command said that after repeated attacks on Iraqi and American bases in recent weeks, one of which killed an American contractor on Dec. 27, “we have therefore paused these activities, subject to continuous review.”

The article points out how the turn of events over the past few days is a potential lifeline to ISIS:

The cessation of those missions, to instead focus on security, is likely to allow what remains of the terrorist group to reconstitute itself in the ungoverned spaces where it flourishes, much as it did when Turkey invaded northern Syria in October. Worsening the situation, Iran-backed militias that were also fighting the Islamic State have turned their attention toward the United States.

In terms of possible retaliation, representatives and proxies of Iran have publicly stressed that civilians will not be targeted, only military assets with an aim of getting the U.S. military presence out of the Middle East:

Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, Iran’s former defense minister and current military adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei, says Iran is not seeking war with the United States and will only target military sites. There are also military targets in the region that could be attacked by Iranian allies including those of the US and its allies such as Israel.  General Gholamali Abuhamzeh, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said: “Some 35 US targets in the region, as well as Tel Aviv, are within our reach.” 

Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah said during a speech that American civilians will not be targeted as that would only play into Washington’s hands:

#Nasrallah stresses that American citizens and civilians in the region or anywhere else cannot be harmed. Harming them would only serve #Trump‘s agenda. #Iran #Iraq #QassemSoleimani pic.twitter.com/PryoJtqTeA

— Walid (@walid970721) January 5, 2020

As further background on the Trump administration’s aggression toward Iran, award-winning journalist, Jeremy Scahill, wrote an article for the Intercept outlining how a “cabal” of interests that wanted war with Iran embedded themselves in Trump’s campaign.

On August 3, 2016 — just three months before Donald Trump would win the Electoral College vote and ascend to power — Blackwater founder Erik Prince arranged a meeting at Trump Tower. For decades, Prince had been agitating for a war with Iran and, as early as 2010, had developed a fantastical proposal for using mercenaries to wage it.

At this meeting was George Nader, an American citizen who had a long history of being a quiet emissary for the United States in the Middle East. Nader, who had also worked for Blackwater and Prince, was a convicted pedophile in the Czech Republic and is facing similar allegations in the United States. Nader worked as an adviser for the Emirati royals and has close ties to Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince.

There was also an Israeli at the Trump Tower meeting: Joel Zamel. He was there supposedly pitching a multimillion-dollar social media manipulation campaign to the Trump team. Zamel’s company, Psy-Group, boasts of employing former Israeli intelligence operatives. Nader and Zamel were joined by Donald Trump Jr. According to the New York Times, the purpose of the meeting was “primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months, past the election and well into President Trump’s first year in office.”

One major common goal ran through the agendas of all the participants in this Trump Tower meeting: regime change in Iran. Trump campaigned on belligerence toward Iran and trashing the Obama-led Iran nuclear deal, and he has followed through on those threats, filling his administration with the most vile, hawkish figures in the U.S. national security establishment. After appointing notorious warmonger John Bolton as national security adviser, Trump fired him last September. But despite reports that Trump had soured on Bolton because of his interventionist posture toward Iran, Bolton’s firing merely opened the door for the equally belligerent Mike Pompeo to take over the administration’s Iran policy at the State Department. Now Pompeo is the public face of the Suleimani assassination…

Read the full article here.

From the archive:

In a day of coordinated actions across the country protesting the assassination of Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad this past week, dozens of people showed up in the cold drizzle to express their opposition to this act of war. Most of the crowd was white, but it was an otherwise diverse group, from young millenials who are relative newcomers to protesting to seasoned older people who’d been doing it for decades.

The first people I encountered were three young men and a young woman who were with the local chapter of a socialist worker’s organization. I introduced myself and chatted briefly with them as they waited for the rest of their group. They handed me a leaflet that said “Defeat U.S. Imperialism – Defend Iran.” The leaflet described the bipartisan imperial project of the U.S. government and decried the corporate media’s characterization of the assassination as an “impulsive” move by Trump. “Nonsense. It was a brazen provocation to force Iran to escalate…The Pentagon brass who carried out this act of state terrorism knew full well that they were starting a war. They figure that the U.S. overwhelming military might will prevail.”

I then walked down the block to where more people were congregating. As I made my way closer, I could see signs bobbing up and down. Slogans were being chanted as the first wave of cars passing through the intersection honked their horns in support.

I introduced myself to the two women in front who were enthusiastically waving their signs on the corner. One woman, waving a “Lock Him Up” sign said she had been in the military for 25 years and she was mortified by Trump as president. “I had visions of him starting WWIII if he became president,” she told me. The other woman spoke of her experience opposing the Iraq invasion in 2003.

A young couple was standing nearby with their signs to “end endless wars.” They were Bernie supporters and were new to protesting against war, having attended other protests against immigration policy earlier in the Trump presidency. They told me they liked Bernie’s unequivocal denunciation of the assassination. When I asked them what they thought of Tulsi’s antiwar stance they said they didn’t really know much about her.

At one point I spotted a couple who appeared to be Muslims as the woman had the traditional scarf on. I wondered if maybe they had family from the Middle East and wanted to get their perspective. When I tried to ask them about what brought them out to the protest, however, they were reticent to open up, so I moved along.

Another young couple was talking to a young woman they’d met at the protest when I approached. They also were Bernie supporters but said that Tulsi was their second choice, citing concerns about Tulsi only seeming to oppose wars that would involve regime change but not necessarily opposing the bombing of perceived terrorists. They weren’t happy with most of the other Democratic candidates’ responses to the assassination and said they didn’t really pay attention to the corporate media anymore, relying instead on alternative outlets like the Empire Files and the Gray Zone. They had recently participated in protests involving climate change and racism.

The young lady they were talking to said she had majored in Middle East studies in college and said, “I’m sick of wars based on lies.” She considered herself an anti-imperialist.

Another couple, probably in their 30’s, was out with their toddler in a stroller and a friend. The woman told me that this seemed like “the time to get up off the couch and act.” The man, originally from New York, had past experience as an organizer and spoke to me at length about how we didn’t have a real antiwar movement right now in this country but how it was badly needed. He described the U.S. as an imperial power that had not respected other nations’ sovereignty for years, with the political class assuming that they’d never have to bear the costs of their reckless decisions.

He also considered the mainstream media to be jingoistic and consistently remiss in doing their job when it comes to war and peace issues. While he lamented the lack of an antiwar movement, he did express some hope that one could emerge due to the technological capability of the internet and social media, which had enabled major scale-ups very quickly on other issues like the climate. However, he also emphasized that major work would have to be done to build up the movement locally in various places in order to actually effect change – such as sustained direct actions – as opposed to just mobilizing rallies.

I spoke to an older couple who said they’d been involved in antiwar protesting since the 1980’s. They also were Bernie supporters, stating that he’d been consistent in his opposition to war and the defense budgets that enable the war machine. The woman said she appreciated Tulsi speaking out against war but that she had other concerns about her as a candidate. They expressed distrust of the corporate media and said they followed some alternative media like Truthdig. The man was a fan of Chris Hedges’ writing, stating that the provocation this past week was another escalation in a long line of militarist policies by the U.S. in which many “corporations and the military-industrial-complex profit from war.”

Mass rally in Times Square, New York:

Mass rally in Los Angeles, CA:

In the wake of the U.S. drone assassination of the head of the Iran’s IRGC, Qassem Soleimani, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets in protest of Soleimani’s death amid the official 3 days of mourning, uniting a sometimes fractured country. Common Dreams reported yesterday:

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians flooded the streets of Tehran and other cities across the country Friday to condemn the U.S. assassination of military leader Qassem Soleimani, discrediting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s prediction that the people of Iran would “view the American action last night as giving them freedom.”

Images and videos of massive rallies circulated on social media as Iranians gathered following Friday prayers to denounce Soleimani’s killing, which was ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump and carried out via drone strike Thursday night.

Soleimani’s assassination, according to Al-Jazeera, “triggered a wave of emotions and garnered a response of solidarity and retribution across the otherwise divided Iranian political spectrum.”

The Iraqi parliament is set to hold an emergency meeting today to consider the expulsion of U.S. troops from the country. The two largest political blocs in parliament, which don’t always agree, will likely unite behind giving U.S. forces – which had a specific mandate of fighting ISIS to justify their presence – the boot.

Meanwhile, the leader of one of those blocs. Moqtada Al-Sadr, has announced reactivation of his once formidable army. According to Antiwar.com:

Influential Shi’ite cleric and leader of the top political bloc in Iraq Moqtada al-Sadr has announced Friday that he is reactivating his paramilitary group, the Mahdi Army, issuing a statement on Twitter telling them to “be ready.”

The Mahdi Army was a major faction from the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 until 2007, when they made a deal with the Iraqi government to disband. Sadr has at times suggested he would reform the militia to ensure the US complied with pullout dates.

Sadr has long opposed the Iraqi government’s reliance on both Iran and the US, and the reconstitution of the Mahdi Army is a response to recent US attacks against other Shi’ite militias.

Washington has not been content to rest since it’s deadly attack on Soleimani’s convoy on Thursday. It followed up with another drone attack on a convoy of Iraqi militia leaders in northern Baghdad yesterday. Zerohedge reports:

Less than 24 hours after a US drone shockingly killed the top Iranian military leader, Qasem Soleimani, resulting in equity markets groaning around the globe in fear over Iranian reprisals (and potentially, World War III), the US has gone for round two with Reuters and various other social media sources reporting that US air strikes targeting Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units umbrella grouping of Iran-backed Shi’ite militias near camp Taji north of Baghdad, have killed six people and critically wounded three, an Iraqi army source said late on Friday.

Iraqi official media has also confirm that two vehicles were targeted north of Baghdad, carrying commanders of the pro-Iran militias in the PMUs.

The Pentagon also announced yesterday that it’s sending 3.500 more troops to the Middle East, most likely Kuwait.

Some of you may have heard Soleimani referred to as someone with “blood on his hands” and responsible for the deaths of Americans. Award-winning journalist and expert on Iran, Gareth Porter, has debunked those claims. Linking to an article he wrote recently for Truthout, Porter announced on Twitter:

Big media are all repeating the Trump-Pompeo justification that #Soleimani was responsible for killing 600 American boys in Iraq. But as I’ve documented in great detail, that was a completely fabricated story Cheney was using to justify an attack on Iran.

In the article from July of 2019, Porter explains how this claim made by Trump administration officials this past summer was a repackaging of claims made by vice president Dick Cheney during the Bush II administration:

The history of the myth begins with Vice President Dick Cheney’s determination to attack Iran sometime before the end of the George W. Bush administration. Cheney had contemplated a campaign of U.S. airstrikes on Iran, to be justified by charging that Iran was trying to produce a nuclear weapon. But that rationale for a U.S. military strike on Iran was unanimously rejected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a December 13, 2006, meeting with Cheney and President George W. Bush, according to a report by political columnist Joe Klein in TIME magazine.

After that rebuff, Cheney began to focus on another rationale for war on Iran: the alleged Iranian role in killing U.S. troops in Iraq. On January 10, 2007, President George W. Bush gave a speech that included language accusing Iran of “providing material support for attacks on American troops.” Although Bush did not threaten in that speech to retaliate against Iran, his words established a legal and political basis for a possible future attack, according to Hillary Mann Leverett, former National Security Council staff director for the Persian Gulf, in an interview with me in 2008.

After Gen. David Petraeus took over as commander of coalition forces in Iraq in January 2007, the command went all out to support Cheney’s strategy. Its main argument was that Iran was providing Shiite militias with the powerful roadside bombs called Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs) that were causing increasing number of U.S. casualties in Iraq.

But the evidence proved otherwise. Hezbollah — not Iran — had been well known as the world’s most knowledgeable designer and user of EFPs. Michael Knights, who had been following the role of EFPs in Iraq for nearly three years for a private security company in London, told me in an exclusive interview in January 2007 that it was Hezbollah that had transferred EFPs and components for manufacture to Palestinian militants after the second intifada began in 2000. He also observed in a detailed account in Jane’s Intelligence Review in 2006 that the first EFPs to appear in Iraq in 2004 were believed to have come from Hezbollah.

Newsday had reported on August 12, 2005, moreover, that Shiite militiamen had begun copying Hezbollah techniques for building as well as using EFPs, based on Lebanese and Iraqi official sources.

The U.S. military intelligence chief in Iraq had claimed in September 2006 that the C-4 explosive used in EFPs in Iraq bore the same batch number as the C-4 found on a Hezbollah ship said by Israeli officials to be bound for Palestinian fighters in 2003. But Knights observed this statement showed that Iran wasn’t shipping the materials for EFPs to Shiites in Iraq. If Iran had been shipping the C-4 to Iraq the previous year, he pointed out, the batch number would have been different from the one given to Hezbollah at least four years earlier.

Read the full article here.

This compilation is courtesy of Russia Matters, a project of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School at Harvard:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron have expressed concern over the killing of Soleimani by U.S. forces during a phone call on Jan. 3. “Both sides have expressed concern over the death of Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force Q. Soleimani in a U.S. missile strike at the Baghdad airport,” according to the Kremlin press service. (TASS, 01.03.20)
• “We regard the killing of Soleimani as a result of an American missile strike on the outskirts of Baghdad as a reckless step which could lead to a growth of tensions across the region,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. (RFE/RL, 01.03.20)
• “We have encountered a new reality—the murder of a representative of the government of a sovereign state, an official in the absence of any legal grounds for these actions,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said. (Interfax, 01.03.20)
• The killing of Soleimani will lead to an escalation of military-political tensions in the Middle East, negatively affecting the global security system, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement Jan. 3. The ministry has highlighted the contribution of Soleimani to combating the Islamic State in Syria. (TASS, 01.03.20)
• By killing Soleimani, the U.S. ruined any hope for resolving the problem around the Iranian nuclear program, chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev has said. “The last hopes for resolving the problem of the Iranian nuclear program have been bombed. Iran can now accelerate production if of nuclear weapons, even if it has not been planning to do so,” Kosavhev wrote on his Facebook page.  Kosachev has called the killing “the worst-case scenario.” (The Moscow Times, 01.03.20, Interfax, 01.03.20, Kosachev’s Facebook page, 01.03.20)
• “The Americans have crossed the ‘red line,’ and this time the consequences can be most serious,” chairman of the Russian State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee Leonid Slutsky said. (TASS, 01.03.20)

Details are still coming in but it is being reported by Iraqi media and others that Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, has been killed in a U.S. airstrike. Almasdar News is reporting:

The head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, has reportedly been killed in a strike near the Baghdad International Airport, along with senior leaders of the Iraqi Shia militia the US blamed for the attack on its embassy.

“The American and Israeli enemy is responsible for killing the mujahideen Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Qassem Soleimani,” said Ahmed al-Assadi, a spokesman for Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, as cited by Reuters…

…Reuters reported that the Pentagon has claimed responsibility for the strike, citing an unnamed US official.

According to the military analyst The Saker, Russian media is reporting the following:

The Telegram channel of RIA News reports that the US has claimed that it was responsible for that attack.

So far, PressTV [Iranian state news outlet] has NOT confirmed the death of Soleimani but other media outlets have.

Middle East analyst Danny Makki explained on Twitter the significance of the killing of Soleimani:

Qassem Suleimani was more than just a General or a military leader, he was Iran’s ultimate symbol of power, strength & influence in the Middle East, rushing between Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, his assassination is not just an escalation, its effectively a declaration of war.

Two questions come to mind. First, how can Iran not treat this as an overt act of war? Secondly, how was this act by the U.S. government in the interest of Americans?

Update #1: It is now being reported that Trump personally ordered the assassination of Suleimani.

Iran expert Trita Parsi has publicly said the following:

Spoke to a very knowledgeable person about what Iran’s response to Soleimani’s assassination might be. This would be the equivalent of Iran assassinating Petreus or Mattis, I argued. No, he responded, this is much bigger than that…

Update #2: Here are a couple of videos from The Hill’s Rising morning show in which Iran expert Trita Parsi is interviewed, along with journalist Aaron Mate.