foxnews — By ordering the airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, President Trump has demonstrated to Iran’s leaders that he will take “swift, decisive” actions to protect Americans, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday on “Fox & Friends.” Pompeo stressed that the Trump administration has shown military “restraint” in the face of dozens of attacks directed by Iran and its proxies against American interests, culminating in the death of an American contractor in Iraq last week. “I think the Iranian leadership understands President Trump will take action. … We made very clear that these responses would be swift and decisive. We have now demonstrated that. I hope the Iranian leadership will see that and see American resolve and that their decision will be to de-escalate and take actions consistent with what normal nations do. In the event that they do not and they go in the other direction, I know that President Trump and the entire United States government is prepared to respond appropriately,” said Pompeo. The Pentagon confirmed Thursday evening that Trump had ordered the attack that killed Soleimani and other military officials at Baghdad International Airport in Iraq. Iran’s top “shadow commander” was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more, the State Department said. Pompeo said the strike was carried out to prevent an “imminent attack” by forces directed by Soleimani. “He’s got hundreds of American lives and blood on his hands. What was sitting before us was his travels throughout the region, his efforts to make a significant strike against Americans. There would have been many Muslims killed as well, Iraqis and people in other countries. It was a strike that was aimed at disrupting that plot, disrupting further aggression and we hope, setting the conditions for de-escalation as well,” he said.

By ERIC SCHMITT AND HELENE COOPER – Chicago tribune — — One night in January of 2007, American Special Operations commandos tracked a notorious adversary driving in a convoy from Iran into northern Iraq: Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top security and intelligence commander. But the Americans held their fire, and Soleimani slipped away into the darkness. “To avoid a firefight, and the contentious politics that would follow, I decided that we should monitor the caravan, not strike immediately,” Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the head of the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, recalled in an article last year. But early Friday, a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone from McChrystal’s former command — operating under President Donald Trump’s orders — fired missiles into a convoy carrying Soleimani as it was leaving Baghdad’s international airport.

Tracking Soleimani’s location had long been a priority for the American and Israeli spy services and militaries, especially when he was in Iraq. Soleimani often traveled with an air of impunity, as if he felt he was untouchable, officials said. One former senior American commander recalled parking his military jet next to Soleimani’s plane at the Irbil airport in northern Iraq. Current and former American commanders and intelligence officials said that Friday morning’s attack drew specifically upon a combination of information from secret informants, electronic intercepts, reconnaissance aircraft and other surveillance tools. The highly classified mission was set in motion after the death of an American contractor on Dec. 27, a senior American official said. Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani was one that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had rejected, fearing it would lead to war. McChrystal praised Trump’s decision to try and kill the Iranian commander now.

“The targeting was appropriate given Soleimani’s very public role in orchestrating Iranian attacks on the U.S. and our allies,” McChrystal said in an email. But the general added a somber warning: “We can’t consider this as an isolated action. As with all such actions it will impact the dynamics of the region, and Iran will likely feel compelled to respond in kind. “There is the potential for a stair-step escalation of attacks, and we must think several moves ahead to determine how far we will take this — and what the new level of conflict we are prepared to engage in,” he said.

 

U.S. military officials said they were aware that Iran or its proxy forces potentially could respond violently, and were taking steps to protect American personnel in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world. They declined to provide details. “I can only hope that embassies and consulates across the region were put on heightened alert in the last 48 hours or more,” said Barbara A. Leaf, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates who is now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “That said, I would be surprised to see the Iranians respond quickly to this,” Leaf said. “Once the regime has recovered from its initial shock, it will take its time plotting reprisals. And reprisals there will be, most likely in Iraq first. But our Gulf partners should worry as well — assassinations, strikes on shipping and energy infrastructure.”

In the end, Soleimani’s brazenness may have been his undoing. Unlike terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Soleimani often operated in the open. “Soleimani was treated like royalty, and was not particularly hard to find,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA operations officer with extensive counterterrorism experience overseas who retired last year. “Soleimani absolutely felt untouchable, particularly in Iraq. He took selfies of himself on the battlefield and openly taunted the U.S., because he felt safe in doing so.” A senior American official said that the administration’s hope was that the killing of Soleimani would force Iran to back down after months of assertive behavior, much as Tehran backed down from rapidly escalating hostilities during the oil tanker wars of the 1980s. United States sending 3,000 more troops to Middle East after vow of revenge by Iran for targeted killings » The officials said there was worry among the president’s senior advisers that Trump has indicated so many times that he did not want a war with Iran that Tehran had become convinced the United States would not act forcibly. But the official, who spoke on grounds of anonymity, acknowledged that the assassination of Soleimani was a huge risk for Trump and could just as likely prompt an outsize reaction from both Iran and Iraq. “Iran has a lot of levers to pull too,” warned Derek Chollet, who served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration. “So much for ending ‘endless wars.’”

‘International face of resistance’: Two big reasons why Qassem Soleimani was revered by the Iranian people

by marketwatch.com — QUENTIN FOTTRELL —While some U.S. lawmakers have branded Qassem Soleimani a terrorist, the late Iranian general’s significance to the Iranian people was on full display on state TV and in the streets of Tehran. Many Iranians reacted with shock and anger to the killing of Soleimani, the leader of the foreign wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), by a U.S. airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport Friday. In the immediate aftermath of the general’s killing, which the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed Friday had been authorized by President Trump, multiple media outlets and reporters in the Middle East reported that Iranian state television had stopped all scheduled broadcasts and, instead, cut to the Islamic prayer for the dead: “From God we came, and to God we return.” ‘He has remained above factional conflicts in Iran and is respected by a variety of segments of the Iranian elite, and he enjoys popularity in Iran as a nationalist symbol.’ —Arang Keshavarzian, a professor in the department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University

 

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, called Soleimani “the international face of resistance” in a statement on state TV, the Associated Press reported. Iranian military spokesman Ramezan Sharif broke down in tears on live television. Arang Keshavarzian, a professor in New York University’s department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, put the reaction of Iranian media, government and people in context: “He has no religious authority or social standing,” he said. “He, however, has had a central position in the IRGC for over 20 years and is trusted by the Ali Khamenei and other leaders of the Islamic republic.” “What distinguishes him from most IRGC and military leaders is twofold,” Keshavarzian told MarketWatch. “He has remained above factional conflicts in Iran and is respected by a variety of segments of the Iranian elite, and he enjoys popularity in Iran as a nationalist symbol who helped repel the Iraqi invasion in the 1980s and stand up to U.S. aggression since then.”

Anoush Ehteshami, professor of international relations in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University in the U.K., said Soleimani had also potentially been a successful candidate for president. “Three previous IRGC commanders tried to win the presidency and they failed. Solaimani was the exception, and would have made a popular president.” ‘President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, and he owes the American people an explanation of the strategy and plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel.’ —Former vice-president Joe Biden and candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president in 2020

Soleimani was born in 1957 and spent nearly his entire adulthood in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which he joined after the 1979 revolution in Iran, according to the Wall Street Journal. Soleimani served since 1998 as major general of the Quds Force, which has been described as “analogous to a combined CIA and Special Forces,” according to a 2013 New Yorker article. In a commentary, Iran’s state TV called Trump’s order to kill Soleimani “the biggest miscalculation by the U.S.” in the years since World War II, the AP reported. “The people of the region will no longer allow Americans to stay,” the statement said. Trump tweeted Friday: “Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!”

Joe Biden, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, tweeted that Soleimani “supported terror and sowed chaos.” “President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox, and he owes the American people an explanation of the strategy and plan to keep safe our troops and embassy personnel, our people and our interests,” he said. On Friday, Trump tweeted a different view of Soleimani than was presented on state TV. “While Iran will never be able to properly admit it, Soleimani was both hated and feared within the country,” he wrote. “They are not nearly as saddened as the leaders will let the outside world believe. He should have been taken out many years ago!”

Iran’s ‘forceful revenge’ against the US is likely to include cyberwarfare, and experts warn that the attacks could be devastating

by Aaron Holmes — Business Insider — Iran’s leaders on Friday vowed to exact “a forceful revenge” against the US in response to the American drone strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, late Thursday. Now, cybersecurity and defense experts are bracing for an Iranian cyberoffensive that could target online infrastructure across the US military and the private sector. Experts told Business Insider that Iran had spent years building out its computer-warfare capabilities. Since 2010, when Iran faced a cyberattack on its nuclear facilities, the country has focused heavily on beefing up its defense operations. “Iran is an intelligent cyber opponent with an army of people testing our systems every minute of every day. It is the ultimate game of cat and mouse,” Sam Curry, the chief security officer at Cybereason, told Business Insider.

However, the US has also focused heavily on building up its cyber defenses, said Kiersten Todt, a cybersecurity adviser in the Obama administration and the managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute. “I absolutely think that they will look to attack our critical infrastructure on the homeland,” Todt told Business Insider, adding that, however, “our capabilities and our preparedness for that type of attack is strong, and our military is extremely well prepared for this.” US defense efforts will also be bolstered by a recent leak of Iran’s cyber operations on a dark-web server, according to Charity Wright, a former National Security Agency analyst who is now a cyber-threat analyst at IntSights. “These types of attacks could be devastating if the target is ill-equipped with proper defense,” Wright said. “However, recent disclosures about how Iranian cyber groups operate has left them scrambling to change tactics and cover past operations. This does give Iranian opposition an advantage.” Here’s what we know about Iran’s capacity for online warfare and what a cyberattack could look like.

WHO IS ESMAIL GHAANI? COMMANDER’S PROFILE, REPLACING IRAN QASSEM SOLEIMANI

by news.abplive.com — Tehran [Iran]: Hours after Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani was killed in an American airstrike ordered by President Donald Trump, the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed Deputy Commander of the Quds Force Esmail Ghaani as the head of the unit. Tasnim News Agency quoted a statement by Khamenei as saying that the force’s programme will remain “unaltered from the time of Ghaani’s predecessor. “Following the martyrdom of glorious General Haj Qasem Soleimani, I name Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani as the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps”, Khamenei said, as reported by Sputnik.

5 Things To Know About Esmail Ghaani

• Esmail Ghaani was appointed Deputy Commander of the Quds Force in 1997 by IRGC Chief Commander Rahim Safavi, along with Qassem Soleimani as Chief Commander.
• Iranian media had reportedly quoted Ghaani as saying in 2017 that U.S. President Donald Trump’s “threats against Iran will damage America … We have buried several people … like Trump and know how to fight against America.”
• Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described Ghaani as “one of the most distinguished Revolutionary Guard commanders,” according to Radio Farda.
• Esmail Ghaani is known for his vociferous criticism of Israel Esmail Ghaani also served in the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.