On December 25, 2023, Razi Mousavi, a senior officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was assassinated by an Israeli airstrike in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Mousavi was close to former IRGC Quds force commander, Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in 2020 by US President Donald Trump in Baghdad. Israeli airstrikes in Syria earlier in December also killed two other Iranian generals.
On January 2, an Israeli drone strike assassinated Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut, Lebanon along with six others.
Al-Arouri was the deputy chief of the Hamas political bureau, and one of the founding members of Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades. On October 31, Israeli forces destroyed al-Arouri’s house in Aroura near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
On January 3, at least 93 people were killed in twin bombings in Kerman, Iran, with 284 wounded, including children. The crowd there was gathered to mark the fourth anniversary of the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani.
On January 4, ISIS claimed responsibility for the two explosions in a statement posted on its affiliate Telegram channels, and said two ISIS members had detonated explosive belts in the crowd in Kerman.
Experts pointed to the Islamic State branch based in neighboring Afghanistan, known as ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS-K. Tehran has alleged that ISIS-K has been behind many foiled plots in the last five years. Most of those arrested were Iranians, Central Asians, or Afghans from the Afghanistan-based affiliate’s network.
On January 4, a US airstrike assassinated Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi in central Baghdad, Iraq. The Iraqi deputy commander was killed on Palestine Street, at the headquarters of an Iraqi military group, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, which has claimed several attacks on US forces.
Hezbollah al-Nujaba falls under the command of the Iraqi army, and had played a vital role in the defeat of ISIS in Iraq. The group immediately condemned the assassination of al-Saidi, and said the US-Iraqi military agreement had been violated.
Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that US forces carried out an airstrike in Baghdad, killing a military commander, but excused the killing because al-Saidi was backed by Iran.
Iraqis in the streets promised revenge against the US after the assassination. “No American soldier shall stay in Iraq!” one man yelled, firing his gun into the air.
Besides the 2,500 US troops in Iraq, which were invited to Iraq initially, there are 900 US troops in Syria illegally occupying the most productive oil wells in the northeast.
Now that the US-supported genocide on Gaza has killed well over 20,000 Palestinians, local groups in Iraq and Syria have been attacking US troops there in an effort to drive them out.
US officials have ordered about 120 attacks since October 17, usually using drones or rockets against groups in Iraq. The Pentagon acknowledged they had killed a number of “militants”.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, had said last year he backed the need for US troops in Iraq, but condemned the US attack in Iraq, which killed an Iraqi service member and injured 18 other people, including civilians.
Hellbound and Down 