{"id":200379,"date":"2020-01-05T16:24:47","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T16:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=200379"},"modified":"2020-01-08T07:22:04","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T07:22:04","slug":"huge-crowds-mourn-qassim-soleimani-as-iraq-votes-to-expel-us-forces-over-assassination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=200379","title":{"rendered":"Huge crowds mourn Qassim Soleimani as Iraq votes to expel US forces over assassination"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Finbar Anderson and Roland Oliphant &#8212; The Telegraph.co.uk Jan 5, 2020<\/h1>\n<div align=\"center\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RH0HfYhA-Ic\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n&#8212;<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Hundreds of thousands of Iranians turned out to pay their respects to General Qassim Soleimani on Sunday as Iraq&#8217;s parliament voted to expel US forces from the country over his assassination in Baghdad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Iraqi MPs voted in favour of a resolution calling for an\u00a0end the presence of foreign forces in the country, paving the way to remove about 5000 US troops deployed there\u00a0and dealing a potentially serious blow to American\u00a0influence in the region.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The vote came after Adil Abdul-Mahdi, the acting prime minister, told an extraordinary session of\u00a0parliament he had a meeting scheduled with\u00a0Gen Soleimani on the day he was killed and called the assassination\u00a0&#8220;unacceptable.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The US military mission is in Iraq on the basis of a letter of request from the Iraqi government in 2014 to help fight Islamic State\u00a0as part of the international coalition, but there is no formal status of forces agreement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Although the caretaker prime minister may request US forces to leave, it is not immediately clear\u00a0how quickly the resolution may be enforced.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The influential leader of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was killed on Friday in a US airstrike as his convoy left Baghdad airport.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">American officials say they killed the general, who was in charge of Iran\u2019s main expeditionary covert warfare unit and is believed to have <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/politics\/2020\/01\/05\/war-middle-east-would-create-vacuum-isil-terrorists-says-dominic\/\">coordinated terrorist attacks across the region<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, to prevent attacks he was allegedly planning against US personnel.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Iran has described the attack as the illegal murder of a national hero and is <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2020\/01\/04\/wake-death-qassim-soleimani-iran-back-foot\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>widely expected to retaliate by striking US assets and allies<\/strong><\/span>, <\/a>raising fears of a regional war.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">An honour guard paraded as Soleimani\u2019s remains were flown to the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz, a key battlefield in the Iran-Iraq war in which he first rose to prominence, early on Sunday morning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The flight also carried the bodies of five other Iranian Revolutionary Guards and an Iraqi militia commander who were killed with him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">State television showed vast crowds of people, many dressed in black and beating their chests, thronging the caskets as they were driven slowly through the streets of the city.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Soleimani\u2019s body was flown to Mashhad, a shrine city in northeast Iran, for another public procession later on Sunday. It will be taken to Tehran and the holy city of Qom on Monday before being finally buried in Soleimani\u2019s hometown of Kerman on Tuesday<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The scale of the crowds, which clogged streets for miles, dwarfed anything seen in Iran since the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, in 1989.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Although Iran\u2019s regime is known to order people onto the streets for pro-government demonstrations, they seldom muster more than a few thousand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Military tensions continued to rise across the region\u00a0over the weekend.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">A rocket fell on Saturday evening inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, where the US Embassy is located, and two were fired at the Balad air base north of the capital, where US troops are stationed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Iraq\u2019s military said that no-one was killed, and there were no immediate claims of responsibility, although Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi pro-Iran militia, had warned Iraqi security forces to leave US military bases by Sunday afternoon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The US-led coalition against the Islamic State group, which includes <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/politics\/2020\/01\/04\/britain-sends-warships-persian-gulf-protect-citizens-wake-qassim\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>500 British troops based in Baghdad<\/strong><\/span>, <\/a>on Sunday halted training and support operations in Iraq amid concerns over security.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Mr Trump said on Saturday evening that\u00a0the United States would hit back if Americans or US assets were targeted by Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">But he was immediately accused of planning to commit war crimes when he said on Twitter that he had drawn up a list of 52 Iranian sites \u201cat a very high level &amp; important to Iran &amp; the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Javad Zarif, the Iranian Foreign Minister responded by saying Soleoimani\u2019s killing was a \u201cgrave breach\u201d of international law and that \u201ctargeting cultural sites is a WAR CRIME.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">He added: \u201cA reminder to those hallucinating about emulating ISIS war crimes by targeting our cultural heritage: Through MILLENNIA of history, barbarians have come and ravaged our cities, razed our monuments and burnt our libraries. Where are they now? We\u2019re still here, &amp; standing tall.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State,\u00a0 said on Sunday that the US would only strike \u201clawful\u201d targets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Iran is home to 24 UNESCO World Heritage sites.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which the US has ratified, forbids parties to conflict from attacking cultural property. Such sites could be targeted if they are being used for military purposes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The US Department of Defence\u2019s law of war manual states cultural property \u201cshould be safeguarded and respected.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The European Union\u2019s foreign policy chief on Sunday invited Mr Zarif to Brussels for talks designed to defuse the crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Josep Borrell told Mr Zarif during a phone call that diplomacy was the only way out of the crisis and reiterated support for the 2015 nuclear deal, his office said in a statement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The move reflects existing rifts between the United States and its European allies, including Britain, over Mr Trump\u2019s hard line Iran policy, including his decision last year to withdraw the US from the nuclear agreement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Dominic Raab, the UK\u2019s foreign minister, urged a de-escalation of tensions on Sunday, saying \u201cWe do not want to see a major war in the Middle East,\u201d but added that Soleimani had been a \u201cregional menace\u201d and he understood the Americans\u2019 position.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Labour MP Keir Starmer, currently favourite to win the party\u2019s leadership contest, criticised the killing, calling it the \u201cunilateral act of an irrational and erratic president.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2020\/01\/05\/millions-iranians-turn-mourn-qassem-soleimani-iraq-votes-expel\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Huge crowds gather to mourn Soleimani as the Iraqi parliament passes a resolution calling upon U.S. forces to leave the country<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":200383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[51,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Iran","category-Iraq"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=200379"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200385,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200379\/revisions\/200385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/200383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=200379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=200379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=200379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}