Terrorists in the Middle East posed a significant threat to the United States and President Trump during the summer of 2020. Trump approved a surgical drone hit that killed IRGC General Soleimani, eliminating the renowned terrorist financier. The Iranians reacted by firing missiles against an American base in Iraq.
Both Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were murdered by a drone attack outside the capital airport in January of last year.
Trump’s actions were praised but controversial, as many Americans applauded the strike and Trump’s decision to battle the infamous Iranian terrorist without initiating a bigger war with Iran, as his predecessors could have done, while international groups such as the United Nations criticised him for the hit after it occurred. Reporting on this at the time, the BBC stated:
Soleimani died along with nine other people in a drone strike near Baghdad airport in Iraq in January. A report by the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard, says the US had not provided sufficient evidence of an imminent threat to life to justify the attack.
The US state department accused her of “giving a pass to terrorists”. Last week, Iran issued arrest warrants for US President Donald Trump and 35 others on charges of murder and terrorism in connection with the killing.
There haven’t been any reports of following action against the former president after that time. Now, as ex President Donald Trump re-enters the race for the U.S. presidency, a new warrant has been issued for Trump in relation to his military activity in 2020.
Politics in the News reports:
Faiq Zaidan, the president of Iraq’s “Supreme Judicial Council,” as according Baghdad Today, as reported by IraqNews, has issued an arrest order for former President Trump. Evidently, the warrant was issued on Thursday, as Iraq News reported on Friday, January 6:
The President of the Supreme Judicial Council, Faiq Zaidan, announced on Thursday the issuance of an arrest warrant for former U.S. President Donald Trump, according to Baghdad Today news agency. Zaidan mentioned in a statement that the Iraqi judiciary issued an arrest warrant for former U.S. President Donald Trump, who confessed to having committed the crime, calling on those investigating the assassination of the Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani, and chief of staff of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, to make an exceptional effort to uncover the perpetrators, Baghdad Today news agency reported. “Why has he not yet been held accountable for this heinous crime?” Zaidan asked, referring to Donald Trump.
Another journalist emphasizes the graveness of the charge.
“The arrest warrant charges Trump with premeditated murder,” Charles Kennedy writes on OilPrice, highlighting both the symbolic aspect of the warrant and the severe penalty the crime Trump is charged with by the Iraqi warrant carries. While the warrant is clearly symbolic, a conviction of this nature carries the death penalty.”
The same piece goes on to describe the political shifts that have occurred between the time of the action and the present, explaining why Iraq, a country that Trump liberated from the scourge of ISIS with a catastrophic bombing campaign combined with a Kurdish and Iraqi ground battle, would issue a warrant for arrest for a previous US president.
More on this story via The Republic Brief:
Iraq, the second-largest oil producer in OPEC, is caught between rivals Iran and the United States, while Iran’s influence has grown exponentially since the toppling of Saddam Hussein following the 2003 U.S. invasion. In October, ending a long-running stalemate, Iraq’s parliament named a new pro-Iranian prime minister and pro-Iranian parties now dominate, having sidelined Shi’ite rival Moqtada al Sadr, who had been paralyzing the government with anti-Iranian protests. CONTINUE READING…
