Free Republic

BAGHDAD — Qasem Soleimani, Iranian Major general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and his Deputy General, have been killed in an airstrike at the Baghdad International airport, Iraqi media says. An engineer was also among those killed. An unknown number of rockets struck at least two vehicles belonging to the Popular Mobilization Forces that were transporting the high ranking officials. Initial reports say seven people were confirmed killed but the number could rise as the vehicles and bodies were badly charred.

Photos appearing to show the leader of Iran's powerful Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, liaising with Iraqi authorities near Baghdad have prompted speculation — and concern — over the role Iran and its proxies intend to play in driving ISIS out of Mosul and Fallujah. Soleimani's presence in Iraq amid two major counter-ISIS offensives — in Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, and in Mosul, further north — has unnerved those familiar with Iran's campaign to cultivate influence in the region through Shiite proxy militias, whose presence in Sunni-majority areas could provoke sectarian violence. Iraqi officials deny that the PMU is...

Iranian militia leader Hadi al-Amiri, one of several identified as leading an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, reportedly visited the White House in 2011 during the presidency of Barack Obama. On Tuesday, a mob in Baghdad attacked the U.S. embassy in retaliation against last weekend’s U.S. airstrikes against the Iran-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah (KH), responsible for killing an American civilian contractor. KH is one of a number of pro-Iran militias that make up the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU), which legally became a wing of the Iraqi military after fighting the Sunni Islamic State terrorist group....

In the background of the strike stands Iran's attempt to construct a network of friendly forces stretching from Iraq through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. In 2016, pro-western sources in Iraq warned that Iran was building just such a conduit. In December 2017, The New Arab reported that convoys of unmarked vehicle had passed into Syria from Iraq through checkpoints manned by the Hashd al-Shaabi, the mostly Shi'ite militias that are known as Popular Mobilization Units (PMU). These militias play a complex role, forming one of a patchwork of similar groups that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has enlisted to...

Counterterrorism efforts got a major boost last week when a U.S. district court found three Muslim organizations and one individual, mostly based in the Chicago area, guilty of funding Hamas and fined them an astonishing $156 million. The four were found liable for their roles in the murder of an American teenager, David Boim, on May 13, 1996, when he was shot by Hamas operatives as he waited for a bus near Jerusalem. This case is important in itself, providing some measure of justice and relief for the Boim family. Beyond that, it helps fight terrorism in four ways. First,...

Muqtedar Khan of the Brookings Institution has announced, in a recent article in the Daily Times of Lahore, the coming into existence on Dec. 13, 2004, of yet another organization of American Muslims claiming to be moderates. It does not lack for ambitions: “Now with the constitution of the American Muslim Group for Policy Planning, Moderate Muslims in America have a name and an address.” Unfortunately, in its initial form, the AMGPP does not at all appear to be moderate. Rather, it resembles the Progressive Muslim Union (which opened its virtual doors a month earlier, and which I have analyzed...