US-IRAN Relations: US airstrike killed top Iran general, Qassem Soleimani, at Baghdad airport

Excellent study material for all civil services aspirants - begin learning - Kar ke dikhayenge!

US-IRAN Relations: US airstrike killed top Iran general, Qassem Soleimani, at Baghdad airport

---

Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

---

1. The head of Iran's elite Quds Force, General Qassem Soleimani, has been killed alongside six others following a US airstrike at Baghdad's international airport.
2. Gen. Qassem Soleimani was a commander of Iran's military forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere throughout the Middle East.
3. The deadly airstrike raised tensions between the U.S. and Iran, which were already heightened by the New Year's attacks on the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad.
4. Another man, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, said to be the deputy of the militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units and a close adviser to Soleimani, was also killed in the airstrike near Baghdad's airport.
5. Soleimani was widely seen as the second most powerful figure in Iran, behind the Ayatollah Khamenei.
6. He was widely considered the architect of President Bashar al-Assad's war in Syria, the on-going conflict in Iraq, the fight against Islamic State, and many battles beyond.
7. From 1998, he led Iran's Quds Force which handles clandestine operations abroad. Iran has acknowledged the role of the Quds Force in the conflicts in Syria, where it has advised forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad and armed thousands of Shia Muslim militiamen fighting alongside them, and in Iraq, where it has backed a Shia-dominated paramilitary force that helped tackle IS. These conflicts turned the once-reclusive Soleimani into a something of celebrity in Iran.
8. In the past, the United States has credited Soleimani's militias with combating a U.S. enemy in Iraq, the Islamic State militant group. 
9. Soleimani's Quds Force was a division of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, widely believed to support many terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah.
10. The Pentagon said Soleimani had been actively developing plans to attack U.S. diplomats and service members in Iraq and elsewhere throughout the region. His death comes after rioters tried for two days to scale the fortress-like walls at the United States' largest embassy.
11. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper threatened a preemptive strike against Iranian militias if there were any renewed attacks against U.S. personnel or interests in Iraq.
12. The conflict at the embassy occurred after U.S. fighter jets struck weapons depots in Iraq and Syria that the United States said were linked with a group called Kataeb Hezbollah, which it blames for attacks on bases of the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS in recent months.
13. At least 25 militia fighters were killed in the airstrikes. The strikes followed the death of a U.S. contractor who was killed Dec. 27 in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk that also hosted coalition forces. Several U.S. service members were also injured.
14. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif called the U.S. action "an extremely dangerous and foolish escalation."
15. The Trump administration announced in April that it was designating the Revolutionary Guard a foreign terrorist organization, which is the first time the United States had used that designation on part of another country's government.
16. Iran in June 2019 shot down a U.S. surveillance drone that the Revolutionary Guard said had entered Iranian airspace. 
17. The Trump administration also blamed Iran for an attack in September on oil sites in Saudi Arabia, which prompted the United States to deploy military forces to the Middle East.
18. Al-Muhandis, the militia official who was killed in Jan 3 attack, had been accused of plotting attacks on the United States since the 1980s. He was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death by Kuwait for his role in the 1983 attacks on the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait, in which five Kuwaitis were killed.

Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

Join UPSC Self Prep course | Online Course (PT Gurukul)  | Covid Special Course | Join PT courses

* Content sourced from free internet sources (publications, PIB site, international sites, etc.). Take your own subscriptions. Copyrights acknowledged.