Trump threatens Iran with 'major retaliation' for future attacks, warns Iraq of sanctions if US troops ousted

President Trump warned Sunday that Iran could suffer a "major retaliation" if the rogue nation targets the U.S., as tensions continue to escalate in the Middle East after the U.S.-led airstrike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Iran has vowed to retaliate and avenge the death of the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force. However, Trump said Sunday of a potential attack: "If it happens, it happens. If they do anything, there will be major retaliation."
Iranian officials also announced they would be abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal, signaling threats of further nuclear proliferation.
Trump had tweeted Saturday that the Iran’s cultural sites were potential targets for U.S. military action. "They're allowed to kill our people. They're allowed to torture and maim our people. They're allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people, and we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn't work that way," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday.
Earlier that day, Iraqi lawmakers approved a resolution calling to expel U.S. troops from the country, who were sent there more than four years ago to aid in the fight against the Islamic State terror group.
Trump said American troops would refuse to leave unless the Iraqi government paid back the U.S. for "a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there."
He continued, "It cost billions of dollars to build, long before my time. We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it."
The president also threatened to charge Iraq "sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever," if they ousted U.S. troops prematurely.
"It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame. If there’s any hostility, that they do anything we think is inappropriate, we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions on Iraq," Trump said.

Soleimani's daughter warns families of U.S. troops, 'waiting' for their death

The daughter of slain Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani warned the families of U.S. soldiers deployed in the Middle East that they "will spend their days waiting for the death of their children" during the funeral Monday in Tehran.
While speaking to a vast crowd at Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) square, Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened an attack on the U.S. military in the region, following an increase in tensions between Tehran and Washington.
"Families of the American soldiers in western Asia have witnessed America's humiliation in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yemen and Palestine wars, and will spend their days waiting for the death of their children," she said in Farsi, which was translated by the Associated Press.

Coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and others who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners during a funeral procession, in the city of Mashhad, Iran, Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020. (Mohammad Hossein Thaghi/Tasnim News Agency via AP)

During the funeral, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- who had a close relationship with Soleimani -- wept and prayed over his casket and the caskets of others killed during traditional Muslim prayers for the dead.
Esmail Ghaani, the general replacing Soleimani reportedly stood near Khamenei during the funeral. Iranian President Hassan Rouhbaani and other top leaders within the Islamic Republic were also in attendance.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, fourth from left, leads a prayer over the coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and others who were killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike on Friday. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

Demonstrators unfurled red Shiite flags, which traditionally symbolize both the spilled blood of someone unjustly killed and a call for vengeance.

Mourners holding posters of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani attend a funeral ceremony for him and his comrades, who were killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike on Friday, at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) Square in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

The processions mark the first time Iran honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic, received such a processional with his death in 1989. Soleimani on Monday will lie in state at Tehran’s famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him.
Soleimani will be buried in his hometown of Kerman.
The Associated Press contributed to the report

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Cartoons

With hours’ notice, US fast-response force flies to Mideast

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) — Hundreds of U.S. soldiers deployed Saturday from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Kuwait to serve as reinforcements in the Middle East amid rising tensions following the U.S. killing of a top Iranian general.

Lt. Col. Mike Burns, a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division, told The Associated Press 3,500 members of the division’s quick-deployment brigade, known officially as its Immediate Response Force, will have deployed within a few days. The most recent group of service members to deploy will join about 700 who left earlier in the week, Burns said.

A loading ramp at Fort Bragg was filled Saturday morning with combat gear and restless soldiers. Some tried to grab a last-minute nap on wooden benches. Reporters saw others filing onto buses.

The additional troop deployments reflect concerns about potential Iranian retaliatory action in the volatile aftermath of Friday’s drone strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force who has been blamed for attacks on U.S. troops and American allies going back decades.

President Donald Trump ordered the airstrike near Baghdad’s international airport. Iran has vowed retribution, raising fears of an all-out war, but it’s unclear how or when a response might come.

Reporters weren’t able to interview the soldiers leaving Fort Bragg on Saturday, but an airman loading one of the cargo planes told an Army cameraman he was making New Year’s plans when he got a call to help load up the soldiers, according to video footage released by the military.

“We’re responsible for loading the cargo. Almost our whole squadron got alerted. Like a bunch of planes are coming over here,” the unnamed airman said. “I was getting ready to go out for New Year’s when they called me.”

In the gray early morning light Saturday, Army video showed soldiers dressed in camouflage fatigues filing into planes, carrying rucksacks and rifles. Humvees were rolled onto another cargo plane and chained in place for the flight to the Middle East.

Burns said the soldiers within the Immediate Response Force train constantly to be ready to respond quickly to crises abroad. When called by their superiors, they have two hours to get to base with their gear and must maintain a state of readiness so that they can be in the air headed to their next location within 18 hours.

“So whether they were on leave, whether they were home drinking a beer, whether they were, you know, hanging out, throwing the kids up in the yard, you get the call and it’s time to go,” he said.

He said that soldiers typically keep individual “go-bags” of their personal gear with them at their living quarters.

The wife of a member of the 82nd Airborne who deployed earlier this week said his departure was so abrupt she didn’t have the chance to say goodbye in person or by phone.

April Shumard said she was at work on New Year’s Eve and he was watching their five children when he texted her that he had to rush to base. He wasn’t sure if it was a drill or a deployment. She said her husband has been in the military since 2010 and has already deployed twice to Afghanistan. But with those prior deployments, the family had much more time to prepare and say goodbye. This time, she got a second message confirming he was leaving, and he departed in a plane on the afternoon of New Year’s Day.

“The kids kept going, ‘When’s Dad going to be home?’” said Shumard, 42. “It’s literally thrown me for a loop. And him as well. He’s still in disbelief of where he’s gone. Our heads are spun.”

She said that Fayetteville is a tight-knit community, and she expects people to work together to support families who are suddenly missing a parent.

“This was so last-minute,” she said, urging people to reach out to 82nd Airborne families. “Just try to help out whoever you know who might need some babysitting or help or just get some groceries and bring it to their house.”

Similarly, Bri’anna Ferry’s husband got the call on New Year’s Eve, and she said he was on a plane to the Middle East within hours. She fears he could miss milestones with their young daughter but also wants him to focus on his mission.

“I told him, don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine,” she said. “Focus on your mission.”

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Drew reported from Durham, North Carolina.

Iran general steps out of Soleimani’s shadow to lead proxies

This undated photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, shows Maj. Gen. Esmail Ghaani. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei later on Friday appointed Qassem Soleimani's deputy, Maj. Gen. Esmail Ghaani as the new commander of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. Soleimani was killed in the U.S. airstrike in Iraq. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A new Iranian general has stepped out of the shadows to lead the country’s expeditionary Quds Force, becoming responsible for Tehran’s proxies across the Mideast as the Islamic Republic threatens the U.S. with “harsh revenge” for killing its previous head, Qassem Soleimani.

The Quds Force is part of the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard, a paramilitary organization that answers only to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Guard oversees Iran’s ballistic missile program, has its naval forces shadow the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf and includes an all-volunteer Basij force.

Like his predecessor, a young Esmail Ghaani faced the carnage of Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s and later joined the newly founded Quds, or Jerusalem, Force.

While much still remains unknown about Ghaani, 62, Western sanctions suggest he’s long been in a position of power in the organization. And likely one of his first duties will be to oversee whatever revenge Iran intends to seek for the U.S. airstrike early Friday that killed his longtime friend Soleimani.

“We are children of war,” Ghaani once said of his relationship with Soleimani, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency. “We are comrades on the battlefield and we have become friends in battle.”

The Guard has seen its influence grow ever-stronger both militarily and politically in recent decades. Iran’s conventional military was decimated by the execution of its old officer class during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and later by sanctions.

A key driver of that influence comes from the elite Quds Force, which works across the region with allied groups to offer an asymmetrical threat to counter the advanced weaponry wielded by the U.S. and its regional allies. Those partners include Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

In announcing Ghaani as Soleimani’s replacement, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the new leader “one of the most prominent commanders” in service to Iran.

The Quds Force “will be unchanged from the time of his predecessor,” Khamenei said, according to IRNA.

Soleimani long has been the face of the Quds Force. His fame surged after American officials began blaming him for deadly roadside bombs targeting U.S. troops in Iraq. Images of him, long a feature of hard-line Instagram accounts and mobile phone lockscreens, now plaster billboards calling for Iran to avenge his death.

But while Soleimani’s exploits in Iraq and Syria launched a thousand analyses, Ghaani has remained much more in the shadows of the organization. He has only occasionally come up in the Western or even Iranian media. But his personal story broadly mirrors that of Soleimani.

Born on Aug. 8, 1957 in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, Ghaani grew up during the last decade of monarchy. He joined the Guard a year after the 1979 revolution. Like Soleimani, he first deployed to put down the Kurdish uprising in Iran that followed the shah’s downfall.

Iraq then invaded Iran, launching an eight-year war that would see 1 million people killed. Many of the dead were lightly armed members of the Guard, some of whom were young boys killed in human-wave assaults on Iraqi positions.

Volunteers “were seeing that all of them are being killed, but when we ordered them to go, would not hesitate,” Ghaani later recounted. “The commander is looking to his soldiers as his children, and in the soldier’s point of view, it seems that he received an order from God and he must to do that.”

He survived the war to join the Quds Force shortly after its creation. He worked with Soleimani, as well as led counterintelligence efforts at the Guard. Western analysts believe while Soleimani focused on nations to Iran’s west, Ghaani’s remit was those to the east like Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, Iranian state media has not elaborated on his time in the Guard.

In 2012, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Ghaani, describing him as having authority over “financial disbursements” to proxies affiliated with the Quds Force. The sanctions particularly tied Ghaani to an intercepted shipment of weapons seized at a port in 2010 in Nigeria’s most-populous city, Lagos.

Authorities broke into 13 shipping containers labeled as carrying “packages of glass wool and pallets of stone.” They instead found 107 mm Katyusha rockets, rifle rounds and other weapons. The Katyusha remains a favored weapon of Iranian proxy forces, including Iraqi militias and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

An Iranian and his Nigerian partner later received five-year prison sentences over the shipment, which appeared bound for Gambia, then under the rule of dictator Yahya Jammeh. Israeli officials had claimed the rockets would be shipped to militants in the Gaza Strip, while Nigerian authorities alleged that local politicians could use the arms in upcoming elections.

Also in 2012, Ghaani drew criticism from the U.S. State Department after reportedly saying that “if the Islamic Republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale.” That comment came just after gunmen backing Syrian President Bashar Assad killed over 100 people in Houla in the country’s Homs province.

“Over the weekend we had the deputy head of the Quds Force saying publicly that they were proud of the role that they had played in training and assisting the Syrian forces — and look what this has wrought,” then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at the time.

In January 2015, Ghaani indirectly said that Iran sends missiles and weapons to Palestinians to fight Israel.

“The U.S. and Israel are too small to consider themselves in line with Iran’s military power,” Ghaani said at the time. “This power has now appeared alongside the oppressed people of Palestine and Gaza in the form of missiles and weapons.”

Now, Ghaani is firmly in control of the Quds Force. While Iran’s leaders say they have a plan to avenge Soleimani’s death, no plan has been announced as the country prepares for funerals for the general starting Sunday.

Whatever that plan for revenge is, Ghaani likely will be involved.

“That Qaani survived at such high ranks in the (Guard), and remained Soleimani’s deputy for so long, says a lot about the trust both Khamenei and Soleimani had in him,” said Afshon Ostovar, the author of a book on the Guard. “I suspect he’ll have little difficulty filling Soleimani’s shoes when it comes to operations and strategy.”

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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Thousands mourn Soleimani in Iran as Trump threatens strikes

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Thousands of mourners accompanied a casket carrying the remains of the slain Gen. Qassem Soleimani through two major Iranian cities Sunday as part of a grand funeral procession across the Islamic Republic amid soaring tensions between Iran and the U.S.

President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb 52 sites in Iran if it retaliates by attacking Americans. The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia separately warned Americans “of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks.” Meanwhile, Iran vowed to take an even-greater step away from its unraveling nuclear deal with world powers as a response to Soleimani’s slaying.

The U.S. drone strike killing Soleimani in Iraq Friday escalated the crisis between Tehran and Washington after months of trading attacks and threats that put the wider Middle East on edge. The conflict is rooted in Trump pulling out of Iran’s atomic accord.

Iran has promised “harsh revenge” for the U.S. attack, which shocked Iranians across all political lines. Many saw Soleimani as a pillar of the Islamic Republic at a moment when it is beset by U.S. sanctions and recent anti-government protests.

Retaliation for Soleimani could potentially come through the proxy forces which he oversaw as the head of an elite unit within the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. Soleimani’s longtime deputy Esmail Ghaani already has taken over as the Quds Force’s commander.

Late Saturday, a series of rockets launched in Baghdad fell inside or near the Green Zone, which houses government offices and foreign embassies, including the U.S. Embassy.

Trump wrote on Twitter afterward that the U.S. had already “targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture.”

Trump did not identify the targets but added that they would be “HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD.”

The 1954 Hague Convention, of which the U.S. is a party, bars any military from “direct hostilities against cultural property.” However, such sites can be targeted if they have been re-purposed and turned into a legitimate “military objective,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Iran, home to 24 UNESCO World Heritage sites, has in the past reportedly guarded the sprawling tomb complex of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with surface-to-air missiles.

After thousands in Baghdad on Saturday mourned Soleimani and others killed in the strike, authorities flew the general’s body to the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz. An honor guard stood by early Sunday as mourners carried the flag-draped coffins of Soleimani and other Guard members off the tarmac.

The caskets then moved slowly through streets choked with mourners wearing black, beating their chests and carrying posters with Soleimani’s portrait. Demonstrators also carried red Shiite flags, which traditionally both symbolize the spilled blood of someone unjustly killed and call for their deaths to avenged.

Officials brought Soleimani’s body to Ahvaz, a city that was a focus of fighting during the bloody, 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran in which the general slowly grew to prominence. After that war, Soleimani joined the Guard’s newly formed Quds, or Jersualem, Force, an expeditionary force that works with Iranian proxy forces in countries like Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Authorities then took Soleimani’s body to Mashhad later Sunday. His remains will go to Tehran and Qom on Monday for public mourning processions, followed by his hometown of Kerman for burial Tuesday.

This marks the first time Iran honored a single man with a multi-city ceremony. Not even Khomeini received such a processional with his death in 1989. Soleimani on Monday will lie in state at Tehran’s famed Musalla mosque as the revolutionary leader did before him.

Soleimani was the architect of Iran’s regional policy of mobilizing militias across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, including in the war against the Islamic State group. He was also blamed for attacks on U.S. troops and American allies going back decades.

Though it’s unclear how or when Iran may respond, any retaliation was likely to come after three days of mourning declared in both Iran and Iraq.

Iranian officials planned to meet Sunday night to discuss taking a fifth step away from its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, one that could be even greater than planned, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi told journalists.

“In the world of politics, all developments are interconnected,” Mousavi said.

Iran previously has broken limits of its enrichment, its stockpiles and its centrifuges, as well as restarted enrichment at an underground facility.

After the airstrike early Friday, the U.S.-led coalition has scaled back operations and boosted “security and defensive measures” at bases hosting coalition forces in Iraq, a coalition official said on condition of anonymity according to regulations.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has dispatched another 3,000 troops to neighboring Kuwait, the latest in a series of deployments in recent months as the standoff with Iran has worsened. Protesters held demonstrations in dozens of U.S. cities Saturday over Trump’s decisions to kill Soleimani and deploy more troops to the Mideast.

In a thinly veiled threat, one of the Iran-backed militias, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or League of the Righteous, called on Iraqi security forces to stay at least a kilometer (0.6 miles) away from U.S. bases starting Sunday night. However, U.S. troops are invariably based in Iraqi military posts alongside local forces.

The Iranian parliament on Sunday opened with lawmakers in unison chanting: “Death to America!” Parliament speaker Ali Larijani compared Soleimani’s killing to the 1953 CIA-backed coup that cemented the shah’s power and to the U.S. Navy’s shootdown of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988 that killed 290 people. He also described American officials as following “the law of the jungle.”

“Mr. Trump! This is the voice of Iranian nation. Listen!” Larijani said as lawmakers chanted.

A spokesman for Iran’s armed forces, Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, likewise threatened the U.S. by saying Iran and the “resistance front will decide the time, place and way” revenge will be carried out.

Iraq’s parliament is meeting for an emergency session Sunday. Its government has come under mounting pressure to expel the 5,200 American troops who are based in the country to help prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group.

The U.S. has ordered all citizens to leave Iraq and temporarily closed its embassy in Baghdad, where Iran-backed militiamen and their supporters staged two days of violent protests in which they breached the compound. Britain and France have warned their citizens to avoid or strictly limit travel in Iraq, as London said it would begin escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Oman, long an interlocutor between Iran and the West, urged Tehran and Washington on Sunday to pursue dialogue.

No one was hurt in the embassy protests, which came in response to U.S. airstrikes that killed 25 Iran-backed militiamen in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. blamed the militia for a rocket attack that killed a U.S. contractor in northern Iraq.

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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Aya Batrawy in Dubai, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Zeina Karam and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.

Trump warns Iran: US has targeted '52 Iranian sites' and will 'hit very fast and very hard' if needed

President Trump issued a stern warning to Iran on Saturday through a series of Twitter messages intended to deter the country from retaliating after the U.S.-ordered airstrike that killed Iran's Gen. Qassem Soleimani last week.
"Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently hundreds of Iranian protesters," Trump tweeted.
The president continued: "He was already attacking our Embassy, and preparing for additional hits in other locations. Iran has been nothing but problems for many years."
Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force, was killed in an airstrike Friday in Baghdad that was ordered by President Trump.
"Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD," Trump wrote Saturday, explicitly laying out that the U.S. will act if Iran retaliates.
Following Soleimani's death, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said "harsh retaliation is waiting for the criminals whose filthy hands spilled his blood."
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani promised to "take revenge for this heinous crime."
The Iran-backed militias that spawned in Iraq, known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), have been quick to threaten revenge on U.S. personnel and interests. Killed alongside Soleimani at the airport in Baghdad was his close confidante Abu Mahdi al-Mohandas, the deputy head of the PMF.
Trump has made it clear that he expects the Iranians to stop threatening the United States.
"The USA wants no more threats!" Trump had tweeted.
Fox News' Danielle Wallace and Hollie McKay contributed to this report.

Obama's Pallets of Money to Iran Cartoons