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Furious Iran for ‘harsh revenge’
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had raised the risk of more violence in a dangerous region.
Pompeo, in interviews on Fox News and CNN, declined to discuss many details of the alleged threat but said it was “an intelligence based assessment” that drove the decision to target Soleimani.
In a tweet, Trump said Soleimani had “killed or badly wounded thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill many more”, but did not elaborate.
The attack also killed pro-Iran Iraqi militia Hashed al-Shaabi’s deputy chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
The attack followed a sharp increase in US-Iranian hostilities last week when pro-Iranian militiamen attacked the US embassy in Iraq following a deadly US air raid on the Kataib Hezbollah militia, founded by Muhandis.
Khamenei said “harsh revenge” awaited the “criminals” who killed Soleimani and said his death would redouble resistance against the United States and Israel. He called for three days of national mourning starting from today and appointed Soleimani’s deputy, Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, to replace him as Quds Force head.
“America should know that its criminal attack on General Soleimani has been the country’s biggest mistake in west Asia, and America will not avoid the consequences of this wrong calculation easily,” the Iranian Supreme National Security Council said in a statement.
“These criminals will face severe vengeance... in the right place and time,” it added.
US officials said Soleimani was killed in a drone strike. Iran said he died in an attack by US helicopters.
Tens of thousands of angry Iranians took to the streets of Tehran chanting “Death to America” and holding up posters of Soleimani, who was widely admired in the Islamic republic.
The US embassy in Baghdad urged all American citizens to leave Iraq “immediately” and US nationals working at southern oil fields were being evacuated, Iraq’s petrol ministry said.
Amid rising threats to American forces in the region, US officials yesterday said that Pentagon was sending up to 3,500 additional troops to the Middle East from the 82nd Airborne Division as a precaution.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the troops would be joining the roughly 750 forces that were sent to Kuwait earlier this week.
Since May, the United States has already dispatched about 14,000 additional troops to the Middle East.
Earlier yesterday, a precision drone strike, as claimed by US, struck two cars belonging to Iraq’s Hashed al-Shaabi, a paramilitary force with close ties to Iran, as they drove away from Baghdad International Airport.
Hours later, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps announced Soleimani “was martyred in an attack by America”. It said five Guards were killed in total as well as five members of the Hashed.
Both Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were targeted by US sanctions.
Iraq’s parliament is set to hold an emergency meeting today where the presence of US forces in the country is expected to be discussed. A leading Hashed member, Hadi al-Ameri, urged lawmakers “to take a bold decision to oust foreign troops from Iraq, because their presence has become a threat for Iraqis”.
Some 5,200 US troops are stationed across the country, and a US defence official told AFP that some additional forces had arrived in recent hours to boost security at the American embassy.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif slammed the US strike as “extremely dangerous and a foolish escalation,” as Khamenei declared three days of mourning.
Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi said the strike was a “flagrant violation” of a security accord with the US, warning it would “spark a devastating war in Iraq”.
And Iraqi President Barham Saleh called for “restraint” -- an appeal echoed by alarmed foreign governments. Israel put its army on high alert and US allies in Europe including Britain, France and Germany voiced concerns about an escalation in tensions.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for de-escalation in the Gulf, saying: “The world cannot afford another war in the Gulf.”
But paramilitary figures in Iraq including US-blacklisted Qais al-Khazali and militiaman-turned-politician Moqtada Sadr called on their fighters to “be ready”.
And in Lebanon, the leader of the Tehran-backed Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, warned of “punishment for these criminal assassins.”
As fears of a regional conflagration grew, Yemen’s pro-Tehran Huthi rebels -- who have launched a string of missile attacks on Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia -- called for “swift reprisals”.
But there were daring celebrations in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, the epicentre of a three-month-old protest movement that has slammed the Iraqi government as corrupt and beholden to Tehran.
“Oh Qasem Soleimani, this is a divine victory,” demonstrators chanted as some danced in the streets.
And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump “for acting swiftly, forcefully and decisively,” as Israeli tanks deployed along the occupied Golan Heights in fear of reprisal attacks.
Trump critics called the operation reckless.
“President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox,” said former Vice President Joe Biden, a contender in this year’s US presidential election.
As leader of the Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Guards, Soleimani had a key role in fighting in Syria and Iraq.
Over two decades he was at the forefront of projecting the Islamic Republic’s military influence across the Middle East, acquiring celebrity status at home and abroad.
Analysts said the strike -- which sent world oil prices soaring over concern about disruption to Middle East supplies-- would be a game-changer in the tensions between Iran and the US.
Phillip Smyth, a US-based specialist in Shiite armed groups, described the killing as “the most major decapitation strike that the US has ever pulled off”.
He told AFP it would have “bigger” ramifications than the 2011 US operation that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and the 2019 American raid that killed Islamic State group Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Ties between the US and Iran have deteriorated markedly since Washington abandoned a landmark nuclear deal with Tehran in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions.
On Tuesday, a mob of Hashed supporters surrounded the US embassy, angered by American air strikes that killed 25 fighters from the network’s hardline Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah faction.
The US had acted in response to a rocket attack days earlier that killed an American contractor working in Iraq on Friday.
Trump had blamed Iran for the embassy siege and rocket attacks, saying: “They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat.”

Australia Bushfires

Wildlife could take decades to recover
Afp, Sydney
The bushfires raging across Australia have had a devastating impact on the country’s unique flora and fauna, with some estimates putting the death toll at nearly half a billion animals in one state alone, and experts believe it could take decades for wildlife to recover.
Unprecedented temperatures across the continent have made this season’s fires particularly deadly, killing at least 20 people and bringing apocalyptic scenes to an area roughly twice the size of Belgium.
The crisis has focused attention on climate change, which scientists say is creating a longer and more intense bushfire season, and the Australian government has faced widespread criticism over its response and wider environmental policy.
Harrowing footage of desperate koalas drinking from water bottles handed to them by rescuers and kangaroos standing helpless in fire-ravaged towns and charred forests have shocked people across the world.
There is some hope, however, as experts believe scorched forests can recover in time, and decimated populations of koalas, kangaroos and other badly affected species may be able to return.
A University of Sydney study estimates that 480 million animals have been killed in just the state of New South Wales (NSW) since September 2019, and according to a statement released yesterday the authors said the “highly conservative” mortality calculations could mean the toll could be “substantially higher”.
In order to reach the figure, the researchers cross-referenced estimates of mammal population density in NSW with areas of vegetation known to have been scorched to work out the death toll, which includes mammals, birds and reptiles, but not insects, bats or frogs.
“The true loss of animal life is likely to be much higher than 480 million,” the statement said.
“NSW’s wildlife is seriously threatened and under increasing pressure from a range of threats, including land clearing, exotic pests and climate change.”
Professor Andrew Beattie from Macquarie University near Sydney told AFP he believes the death toll of animals nationwide could be in the billions, “if you think of mammals, and birds, and reptiles, amphibians and say the larger insects such as butterflies”.
“We can be pretty sure that in large parts of these very expansive fires, most of the wildlife will be dead,” the emeritus professor from the department of biological sciences said.
“The flora and fauna will be gone, and that includes the smaller animals which form the food chain for the bigger ones, which people often don’t think about.”
Koala populations have been hit particularly hard because they live in trees, feed only on certain types of eucalypts and cannot move quick enough away from the flames.
Even before this year’s bushfire crisis, numbers in NSW and Queensland had already dropped by 42 percent between 1990 and 2010, according to the federal threatened species scientific committee.
The plight of the marsupial -- native to Australia -- has been raised in the country’s parliament, with Nature Conservation Council ecologist Mark Graham telling lawmakers: “The fires have burnt so hot and so fast that there has been significant mortality of animals in the trees, but there is such a big area now that is still on fire and still burning that we will probably never find the bodies.”
Previous studies have found that fires do not spread across the landscape uniformly, and some places are left unscathed even if areas around them are totally devastated.
“It’s those areas that are untouched or have suffered less where wildlife tends to accumulate if they can get there,” Beattie told AFP, adding that if there are enough of these, the burnt forests should regenerate over time but only if conditions improve quickly.
Asked if there was hope for the repopulation of animals in the worst-hit areas, Beattie said it depends on factors including rainfall, climate and logging, and it could take up to 40 years for habitats to return to normal.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s handling of the crisis has provoked fury in Australia and further afield, and Beattie said the response, particularly from the federal government, has been “lamentably slow and their attitude is still lamentably casual”.
“You’ve got federal politicians with very little knowledge of the environment, which is, as we are now discovering ‘the real world’, and hence have not perceived the oncoming catastrophes.”