American forces took out a serious bad guy on Thursday night. Qassim Soleimani of Iran was killed in an airstrike. Some people are saying that even though he is less known by the American public, that this is a bigger deal than the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Qassim Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers.
The Military Times reports:
Fears of new conflict rise after US kills Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general, in strike on Baghdad airport
One of Iran’s most revered and powerful military commanders has been killed in a U.S. strike near the Baghdad International Airport, the Pentagon confirmed Thursday.
The strike will intensify tensions between the U.S. and Iran and many experts say it escalates the risk of a new conflict spreading across the region.
“At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” the Department of Defense said in an emailed statement.
Also killed in the strike was a top Iraqi leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, which is known as the PMF and is part of a larger umbrella group that includes a number of Shia militant groups supported by Iran..
CNBC has more:
America just took out the world’s no. 1 bad guy
So, just who is this top Iranian general the U.S. just eliminated?
For many of us who watch and analyze news out of the Middle East daily, he was the world’s number one bad guy.
Qassim Soleimani has been in control of Iran’s Quds Force for more than 20 years. His current greatest hits include helping Bashar al Assad slaughter hundreds of thousands of his own people in the Syrian civil war, stoking the Houthis in Yemen’s civil war, and overseeing the killing of hundreds of Iraqi protesters recently demonstrating against Iranian influence in their country.
But most importantly for Americans, Soleimani was behind the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers during the Iraq War. Last year, the U.S. State Department put the number of Americans killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq at 608 since 2003.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
◆ Latest news videos:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Videos can use content-based copyright law contains reasonable use Fair Use (
0 Comments