Why was Soleimani sent to Syria?

Four years have passed since the assassination of Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Every time the anniversary passes, an exceptional biography of an exceptional hero comes to mind. He was a hero who devoted his entire life to others and supported the oppressed, standing tall as an impregnable barrier in the face of imperialist ambitions.

Undoubtedly, one of the most important battles Martyr Soleimani led was in Syria against the Takfiri barbarism engineered by Washington and Tel Aviv.

In his book “Sobh al-Sham,” Martyr Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian explains, at the request of Martyr Soleimani, the details of the Syrian crisis that began in 2011 “so that the young generation can learn about the events in Syria and part of our region, and learn about the heroism of General Soleimani.”

Abdollahian thoroughly explains the motives of Tehran and its allies behind supporting Damascus at that stage, “The reader can clearly see on every page of the book eloquent scenes that reflect the courage of Sayyed Ali Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, and his wisdom in preserving Iran’s security to the maximum extent. The great fingerprints of Gen. Soleimani are also clearly evident in its folds, for those who follow with an eye to the heart.”

Abdollahian explains how these efforts have warded off the victory of the “Western-Arab-Hebrew” coalition against the Syrian people, shedding light on “the events that swept West Asia and North Africa. In parallel, the US-Zionist axis was waiting for opportunities to exploit these pivotal transformations. 

“Why did the Egyptians go out and not a single bullet was fired? Why did ISIS not appear in Tahrir Square? Why did this not happen in Tunisia, while events in Syria took a deviant path and turned into a long terrorist war?” Abdollahian wonders 

Abdollahian reaches the conclusion: “Other rulers began to think about what they should do” for fear that the revolutions would not shake their thrones. Washington, too, was highly concerned about the fall of its historical and traditional allies one after the other without having a suitable alternative to them.

Nevertheless, the Zionist colonial entity was the most concerned, according to Abdollahian, so after an in-depth study, the Zionist officials deduced that it was necessary to prevent this torrent by implementing a “Reverse Plan”.

Accordingly, they decided to intervene in the Axis of Resistance’s countries. “In the first stage, they wanted to wreak havoc in Tehran ... They have seriously considered targeting Iran’s nuclear centers. They said we must cut off the head of the snake. After searching and examining, they reached the conclusion that this action entails complications, as it is not possible to attack Tehran and come out of the battle without losses,” he notes.

Abdollahian believed that they had no other options but to “cut off the executive arms protected by Iran” such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. At the height of these transformations, the Israeli entity made a wrong decision to wage war against Gaza on November 14, 2012, estimating that Iran was “preoccupied with the nuclear talks and had many problems that prevented it from paying attention to Gaza,” and that Hezbollah’s fighters “who would confront the Israelis had moved to Syria to combat ISIS.” 

Israel called its war “Pillar of Cloud,” while the Palestinians called it “The Battle of the Stones of Sijil”. The goal was to destroy the Palestinian resistance’s weapons depots. However, on the 8th day, the colonial occupation regime quickly requested a ceasefire without achieving any results. 

Abdollahian adds that the US-Zionist axis found out that among the most important factors that neutralized the scheme to attack Iran and weaken the resistance in Gaza was Syria’s might. Hence, they seriously thought that if they could strike Syria and cut the lines of resistance, the balance of power in the region would fundamentally change. They believed that after the fall of Syria, all routes of sending logistical aid to the resistance movement would be blocked, and the threats facing the Israeli entity in the Golan Heights would be removed. 

Foreign Minister Abdollahian says that the goal of this “Reverse Plan” has never changed, which is to weaken the countries surrounding the Israeli entity and their national armies.

Unfortunately, what he predicted came true. Syria fell, yet as Sayyed Ali Khamenei has asserted, the courageous Syrian youth – who have been inspired by Martyr Soleimani – will overcome the enemies through steadfastness and sacrifice.

Courtesy: Tehran Times

Iran celebrates 44th anniversary of Islamic Revolution

Millions of citizens in Iran took to the streets across the country on Saturday to celebrate the 44th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that toppled the despotic Pahlavi regime.

The rallies in the capital Tehran began at 9:30 a.m. local time (06:00 GMT), with marchers from various social strata and different parts of the city marching toward the iconic Azadi (Freedom) Square.

People waved photos of the late founder of the Islamic Revolution Imam Khomeini, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and legendary General Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in a 2020 US terrorist attack near the Iraqi capital Baghdad, as well as the martyrs of the Revolution.

The flight of colored balloons and iridescent papers from the Azadi Tower, the performance of professional parachutists of the Armed Forces and the mass recital of Iran’s national anthem were among the celebratory events held in the Azadi Square, Press TV reported.

On the eve of the 44th anniversary, fireworks displays were performed in Tehran and other cities, as people chanted Allahu Akbar (God is the Great) in an expression of support for the Islamic Revolution. 

The rallies were held in 1,400 Iranian cities and 38,000 villages.

The mass rallies on the 22nd of Bahman in the solar calendar, which corresponds with February 11, are held each year with tremendous patriotic fervor in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Iranian nation overthrew the despotic regime of Pahlavi, which was fully supported by the United States in the winter of 1979. The struggle against the shah regime reached full fruition on February 11, 1979.

By December 1978, millions of Iranians had taken to the streets in protest against the policies of the shah – Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – on a regular basis.

Imam Khomeini returned to Iran from exile on February 01, 1979. He was received by millions of people weeks after the departure of the shah in mid-January 1979.

The collapse of the Pahlavi regime became certain on February 11 when the military renounced its loyalty to the shah and joined the Revolution.

Delivering a speech at the Azadi Square, President Ebrahim Raisi lauded the 22nd of Bahman as the day of the triumph of “truth over falsity,” the day of the victory of “the oppressed over the arrogant,” and the realization of the “miracle of the century.”

Raisi said the epic day put an end to tyranny and dependence and marked the beginning of independence, freedom and the Islamic Republic, adding that the day brought about the crystallization of the will of the great nation of Iran.

Stressing that both the establishment and the continuation of the Pahlavi regime was against the nation’s will and accompanied with a coup d'état, the Iranian president said, “They committed crimes and treason during their rule, and they were unconcerned about Iranian people’s great capacities, and only cared for the pleasure of the global hegemony and the United States."

“Pahlavi's despotic rule only brought backwardness to this nation and country,” Raisi added, “They came to power against the principles of the Constitution and with a coup.”

 

 

 

Yemeni rebels seize UAE ship

According to an AP news, Yemen’s Houthi rebels seized an Emirati-flagged ship in the Red Sea on Monday. In another latest sign of Mideast turmoil hackers targeted a major Israeli newspaper’s website to mark the killing of a top Iranian general in 2020

The seizure of the Rwabee marks the latest assault in the Red Sea, a crucial route for international trade and energy shipments. The Iranian-backed Houthis acknowledged the incident off the coast of Hodeida, a long-contested prize of the grinding war in Yemen.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the hacking of The Jerusalem Post. The hackers replaced the Post’s homepage with an image depicting a missile coming down from a fist bearing a ring long associated with Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed by a US drone strike in Iraq two years ago.

First word of the Rwabee’s seizure came from the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which only said an attack targeted an unnamed vessel around midnight. The coordinates it offered corresponded to the Emirati-flagged landing craft Rwabee, which hadn’t given its location via satellite-tracking data for hours, according to the website MarineTraffic.com.

A statement from the Saudi-led coalition, carried by state media in the kingdom, acknowledged the attack hours later, saying the Houthis had committed an act of “armed piracy” involving the vessel. The coalition asserted the ship carried medical equipment from a dismantled Saudi field hospital in the distant island of Socotra, without offering evidence.

“The Houthi militia must immediately release the ship, otherwise the coalition forces shall take all necessary measures and procedures to deal with this violation, including the use of force,” Brig. Gen. Turki al-Malki said in a statement.

A Houthi military spokesman, Yahia Sarei, announced that rebel forces had seized what he described as an Emirati “military cargo ship” carrying equipment into Yemen’s territorial waters “without any license” to engage in “hostile acts” against Yemen’s stability. He said the rebels would offer more details on the seizure later.

An employee at the vessel’s owners, Abu Dhabi-based Liwa Marine Services, told The Associated Press that the Rwabee appeared to have been the target but said they had no other information and declined to comment further. The employee did not give her name and hung up.

A similar incident happened in 2016 involving the Emirati vessel SWIFT-1, which had been sailing back and forth in the Red Sea between an Emirati troop base in Eritrea and Yemen. The vessel came under attack by Houthi forces in 2016. The Emirati government asserted the SWIFT-1 had carried humanitarian aid; UN experts later said of the claim that they were ‘unconvinced of its veracity’.

In the attack targeting The Jerusalem Post’s website, the image posted by the hackers depicts an exploding target from a recent Iranian military drill designed to look like the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center near the city of Dimona. The facility is already home to decades-old underground laboratories that reprocess the reactor’s spent rods to obtain weapons-grade plutonium for Israel’s nuclear bomb program.

Under its policy of nuclear ambiguity, Israel neither confirms nor denies having atomic weapons.

In a tweet, the Post acknowledged being the target of hackers.

“We are aware of the apparent hacking of our website, alongside a direct threat to Israel,” the English-language newspaper wrote. “We are working to resolve the issue & thank readers for your patience and understanding.”

The newspaper later restored its website. It noted Iran-supporting hackers previously targeted its homepage in 2020 “with an illustration of Tel Aviv burning as then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swam” with a life preserver.

There was no immediate response from the Israeli government. The hack comes after Israel’s former military intelligence chief in late December publicly acknowledged his country was involved in Soleimani’s killing. The US drone killed Soleimani as he was leaving Baghdad’s international airport.

In Iraq on Monday, troops shot down two ‘suicide drones at the Baghdad airport, American and Iraqi officials said. No group immediately claimed the attack, though one of the drones’ wings had words ‘Soleimani’s revenge’ painted on it in Arabic. Militias backed by Iran have been suspected in similar assaults. No injuries or damage were reported in the incident.

Iran also did not immediately acknowledge the hack. However, the country has in recent days stepped up its commemorations of the slain Revolutionary Guard general. Memorial services were scheduled to be held Monday for Soleimani.

As the head of the Quds, or Jerusalem, Force of the Revolutionary Guard, Soleimani led all of its expeditionary forces and frequently shuttled between Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Quds Force members have deployed into Syria’s long war to support President Bashar Assad, as well as into Iraq in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, a longtime foe of Tehran.

Soleimani rose to prominence by advising forces fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and in Syria on behalf of the embattled Assad.

US officials say the Guard under Soleimani taught Iraqi militants how to manufacture and use especially deadly roadside bombs against US troops after the invasion of Iraq. Iran has denied that. Many Iranians to this day see Soleimani as a hero who fought Iran’s enemies abroad.

Tensions have been high in the region amid a shadow war between Iran and Israel, as well as the collapse of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers after then-President Donald Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew America from the accord. Negotiations aimed at resuscitating the deal continue in Vienna.

 

Trump administration justifies killing of Soleimani

Qassem Soleimani, Commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was killed in the US air strike in Baghdad, the attack was ordered by President Donald Trump.  His killing has instantly upped the military stakes in the region. Some believe that his killing was an adventurist step that will increase tensions throughout the region and make the world even more dangerous. Others believe that the incident opens the doors of the region to all possibilities, except peace and stability and United States will have to bear the responsibility for that. Let us review what the western media has to say.

According to media reports, Trump administration has justified killing of Soleimani as an act of self defense. This announcement came in response to the accusations that United States has violated international law and concerns raised by legal experts and a senior UN rights investigator.

According to Reuters, Republican and Democratic lawmakers dispute the wisdom of the attack. Some legal experts questioned whether Trump had the legal authority to target Soleimani on Iraqi soil without the permission of Iraq’s government, and whether it was legal under international and US law.

Iraq’s prime minister said Washington had with the attack violated a deal for keeping US troops in his country, and several Iraqi political factions united in a call for American troops to be expelled.

The UN Charter generally prohibits the use of force against other states but there is an exception if a state gives consent to the use of force on its territory. Legal experts said the absence of consent from Iraq makes it difficult for the United States to justify the killing.

Yale Law School professor Oona Hathaway, an international law expert, said on Twitter that the available facts “do not seem to support” the assertion that the strike was an act of self-defense, and concluded it was “legally tenuous under both domestic and international law.”

The Pentagon said targeting Soleimani was aimed at deterring “future Iranian attack plans,” while Trump said the Iranian general was targeted because he was planning “imminent and sinister” attacks on US diplomats and military personnel.

Robert Chesney, a national security law expert at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, said the administration’s best argument on the UN Charter issue is self defense. “If you accept that this guy was planning operations to kill Americans, that provides the authority to respond,” he said.

Scott Anderson, a former legal adviser to the US Embassy in Baghdad under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, said Trump’s justification so far under international law is questionable, but he could try to argue that the Iraqi government was either unwilling or unable to deal with the threat posed by Soleimani, giving the United States the right to act without Iraq’s consent.

Article 51 of the U.N. Charter covers an individual or collective right to self-defense against armed attack. The United States used the article to justify taking action in Syria against Islamic State militants in 2014. The US troops in Iraq had been fighting Islamic State, and about 5,000 troops remain, most of them in an advisory capacity.

A strategic framework agreement signed in 2008 between Washington and Baghdad called for close defense cooperation to deter threats to Iraqi “sovereignty, security and territorial integrity,” but prohibited the United States from using Iraq as a launching point for attacks on other countries.

Under historic norms of international law, a country can defend itself preemptively if it acts out of necessity and responds proportionally to the threat.

Agnes Callamard, the U.N. special rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, questioned whether the attack met this threshold.

The targeting of Soleimani “appears far more retaliatory for past acts than anticipatory for imminent self-defense,” she said. “Lawful justifications for such killings are very narrowly defined and it is hard to imagine how any of these can apply to these killings.”

Democratic lawmakers called on Trump to provide details about the imminent threat that he said Soleimani represented.

“I believe there was a threat, but the question of how imminent is still one I want answered,” Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Reuters.

Other critics raised questions about Trump’s authority to kill Soleimani under US law, and whether he should have acted without first notifying Congress.

Legal experts noted that recent US presidents from both parties have taken an expansive view of their unilateral ability to preemptively engage in force, including through targeted killings, a view bolstered by executive branch lawyers in successive administrations.

In the case of Soleimani, the administration’s self-defense arguments may hinge on disclosing specific knowledge of his imminent plans to attack Americans.

Self-defense could allow the administration to act without having to first notify Congress or act under a prior congressional authorization for the use of military force, Chesney said.

Democratic lawmakers did not defend Soleimani, who US officials have said is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, but they called on Trump to consult with Congress going forward.

“This administration, like all others, has the right to act in self-defense,” said Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who worked in Iraq focusing on Iranian-backed militias. “But the administration must come to Congress immediately and consult.”