Inside the plot by Soleimani to attack US
In mid-October, Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani met with his Iraqi Shia militia allies at a villa on the banks of the Tigris River, looking across at the US embassy complex in Baghdad.
The Revolutionary Guards commander instructed his top ally in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and other powerful militia leaders to step up attacks on US targets in the country using sophisticated new weapons provided by Iran, two militia commanders and two security sources briefed on the gathering told Reuters.
The strategy session, which has not been previously reported, came as mass protests against Iran’s growing influence in Iraq were gaining momentum, putting the Islamic Republic in an unwelcome spotlight. Soleimani’s plans to attack US forces aimed to provoke a military response that would redirect that rising anger toward the United States, according to the sources briefed on the gathering, Iraqi Shia politicians and government officials close to Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi.
Soleimani’s efforts ended up provoking the US attack on Friday that killed him and Muhandis, marking a major escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran.
Before the attacks, the US intelligence community had reason to believe that Soleimani was involved in “late stage” planning to strike Americans in multiple countries, including Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, US officials told Reuters Friday on condition of anonymity.
There had been a spat of rocket attacks recently, including the Dec 27 attack on an Iraqi military base near the northern Iraq city of Kirkuk that killed a US civilian contractor, to support this view.
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