The targeted killing of Iranian Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani already has seen his replacement vow to take revenge. Additionally, Tehran has abandoned the remaining limits of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in response to the slaying while in Iraq, the parliament has called for the expulsion of all American troops from Iraqi soil.

 Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The developments could bring Iran closer to building an atomic bomb, set off a proxy or military attack launched by Tehran against America and enable the Islamic State group to stage a comeback in Iraq, making the Middle East a far more dangerous and unstable place.

Video: Reuters

Adding to the tensions, US President Donald Trump threatened to demand billions of dollars in compensation from Iraq or impose "sanctions like they've never seen before" if it goes through with expelling US troops.
Soleimani's daughter, Zeinab, directly threatened an attack on the US military in the Mideast while speaking to a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Tehran that stretched as far as the eye could see. Iranian state TV put the crowd size at "millions," though that number could not be verified.

"The families of the American soldiers in western Asia ... will spend their days waiting for the death of their children," she said to cheers.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself prayed over the caskets of Soleimani and others slain in the attack. Khamenei, who had a close relationship with Soleimani, wept at one point during the traditional Muslim prayers for the dead. The crowd wailed.

Soleimani's successor, Gen. Esmail Ghaani stood near Khamenei's side, as did Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other top leaders in the Islamic Republic. While Iran recently faced nationwide protests over government-set gasoline prices that reportedly killed over 300 people, Soleimani's mass processionals has seen politicians and leaders across the Islamic Republic's political spectrum take part, temporarily silencing that anger.

Ghaani made his own threat in an interview with Iranian state television aired Monday. "God the almighty has promised to get his revenge, and God is the main avenger. Certainly actions will be taken," he said.

Ghaani, a longtime Soleimani deputy, has now taken over as the head of the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, an expeditionary arm of the paramilitary organization answerable only to Khamenei. Ghaani has been sanctioned by the US since 2012 for his work funding its operations around the world, including its work with proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

Those proxies likely will be involved in any operation targeting US interests in the Mideast or elsewhere in the world.

Already, the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia warned Americans "of the heightened risk of missile and drone attacks."

In Lebanon, the leader of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said Soleimani's killing made US military bases, warships, and service members across the region fair game for attacks. A former Iranian Revolutionary Guards leader suggested the Israeli city of Haifa and others could be targeted should the US attack Iran.
"We promise to continue down martyr Soleimani's path as firmly as before with help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to get rid of America from the region," Ghaani said.

The head of the Guards' aerospace program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, suggested Iran's response wouldn't stop with a single attack.

"Firing a couple of missiles, hitting a base or even killing (Donald) Trump is not valuable enough to compensate for martyr Soleimani's blood," Hajizadeh said on state TV. "The only thing that can compensate for his blood is the complete removal of America from the region and taking away their evil from the oppressed people of the region."

Soleimani's killing has escalated the crisis between Tehran and Washington after months of back-and-forth attacks and threats that have put the wider Middle East on edge.

The post 'My father's death spells dark days for US, Israel,' Soleimani's daughter vows appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The Quds Force is part of the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guards, 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 US Navy in the Persian Gulf, and includes an all-volunteer Basij force.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Like his predecessor, 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 US 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 IRGC 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 Quds Force, which directs the activities of Tehran's proxies worldwide, which include Iraqi militiamen, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and Yemen's Houthi rebels.

In announcing Ghaani as Soleimani's replacement, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called him "one of the most prominent commanders" in service to Iran.

The Quds Force "will be unchanged from the time of his predecessor," Khamenei said.

Soleimani had long been the face of the Quds Force, but while Soleimani's exploits in Iraq and Syria launched a thousand analyses, Ghaani has remained in the shadows. He has only occasionally come up in the Western or even Iranian media. But his personal story broadly mirrors that of Soleimani.

Born Aug. 8, 1957 in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, Ghaani grew up during the last decade of monarchy. He joined the IRGC 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 a million people killed. Many of the dead were lightly armed members of the IRGC, some of whom were young boys killed in human-wave assaults on Iraqi positions.

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 IRGC. 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 US Treasury sanctioned Ghaani, describing him as having authority over "financial disbursements" to proxies affiliated to 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.

Also in 2012, Ghaani drew criticism from the US 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.

"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 Nunland said at the time.

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

"The US 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 is, Ghaani likely will be involved.

On Friday Ghaani was quick to make threats of revenge against the US: "Be patient, and you will see the bodies of Americans all over the Middle East," he said.

The post Who is Esmail Ghaani, the new head of Iran's formidable Quds Force? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

State media quoted Hossein Taeb, the Revolutionary Guards security chief, as telling a conference that the plotters had planned to buy property adjacent to the grave of Soleimani's father and rig it with explosives to kill the commander when he attended a religious ceremony in the southeastern Kerman Province in September.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

It said the attackers had planned to plant nearly 500 kilograms, about 1,100 pounds, of explosives in an underground tunnel beneath where Soleimani would have been standing.

The report didn't elaborate on the number of suspects but said they were linked to Israeli and Arab intelligence services.

Soleimani leads the foreign arm of the Guards and has had a key role in fighting in Syria and Iraq.

Taeb said an unspecified number of people had been arrested in the plot, which he said had been "years in planning."

Taeb did not name the Arab countries allegedly involved in the plot, but Iran has had tense relations with US-allied regional rival Saudi Arabia.

According to the Tasnim media outlet, Taeb said the hope was to trigger a religious war inside the country and make it look as if Soleimani's assassination was an "act of domestic revenge." He said the Revolutionary Guards had been keeping a close eye on the terrorist cell, including when it was dispatched to neighboring countries for training in preparation of the attack.

It was not possible to independently verify the events described by Iranian media.

Soleimani's Quds Force, tasked with carrying out operations beyond Iran's borders, has shored up support for Syria's President Bashar Assad when he looked close to defeat in the civil war raging since 2011 and also helped militiamen defeat the Islamic State group in Iraq.

Its successes have made Soleimani instrumental in the steady spread of Iranian influence in the Middle East, which the United States and Tehran's foes Saudi Arabia and Israel have struggled to keep in check.

There have been repeated air attacks on Quds bases in Syria, and in August, Israel accused the force of planning "killer drone attacks" and said its airstrike showed Tehran that its forces were vulnerable anywhere.

Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz said at the time that Israel was working to "uproot" Soleimani, according to Israeli media.

The post Iran says it foiled Arab, Israeli plot to kill Quds chief Soleimani appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

According to the reports, the poisoning can be traced to water in one of Damascus's southern suburbs, although it was unclear why it had been contaminated and whether this was intentional.

According to various reports in the foreign media, the Revolutionary Guards have recently been working on setting up a command center just south of the Syrian capital, to Russia's chagrin.

One report claimed that Russia, which apparently views this as a blatant effort on the part of Iran to establish a high-profile and permanent presence in Syria, has tried to sabotage those plans.

It remains to be seen whether this latest incident was a result of foul play.

The post Report: Hezbollah, Iranian forces suffer from mysterious poisoning in Damascus appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

The Israeli attack in Syria, which kicked off the latest round of strikes, was inevitable. It was preceded by many weeks of intelligence surveillance of weaponry (Chinese-manufactured drones purchased by Iran and operated by its offshoots in Yemen, Iraq and now Syria), and members of a terrorist cell (Hezbollah fighters, who in this instance were acting at the orders and with the financing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force) that were supposed to operate said weaponry.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

Last Thursday, the cell made its first attempt at launching the drones, which failed. The drones were supposed to either drop explosives on Israeli targets or serve as suicide drones and explode upon reaching their targets. From the Iranians' perspective, this was supposed to serve as an act of revenge for the attacks attributed to Israel against its forces in Iraq.

On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces explicitly and formally determined that the official who personally commanded and oversaw this mission was Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. While it is doubtful intelligence supporting this determination will be revealed to the public, it seems Soleimani was more involved than usual this time around, according to officials. It may be that the series of attacks on his men and arms shipments, and as a result his plans, were what led him to go out of his way to seek revenge.

This was the fourth time in the last 18 months in which Iran has tried to attack Israel openly and directly. Tehran's previous attempts were either thwarted or intercepted, which indicates a high level of intelligence and an accurate and focused point of operation.

And yet, the working assumption should be that this time, too, Iran will not take this insult, which was exposed to the public, quietly. It will seek to respond, and it has a vast array of options at its disposal, from striking Israeli targets overseas (an unlikely scenario) to looking for available military targets on the northern border (a far more likely option), to do so.

The activity attributed to Israel in Beirut also brings Hezbollah, a far more dangerous and skilled enemy than the militias operated by the Quds Force, and the Lebanese border into the retaliatory equation.

The post Take Nasrallah's threats seriously appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

"Our country is always the arena for testing a variety of defense and strategic systems and these are non-stop movements towards the growth of our deterrent power," Salami said. "And yesterday was one of the successful days for this nation."

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

He did not provide any additional information about the missile.

Iran displayed what it described as a domestically built long-range, surface-to-air missile air defense system on Thursday.

US President Donald Trump pulled out of an international agreement on Iran's nuclear program last year and stepped up sanctions on Tehran in order to curb its development of ballistic missiles and its support for its proxies in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq. The two countries have been exchanging threats and warnings since then.

Iran shot down a US military surveillance drone in the Gulf with a surface-to-air missile in June, nearly setting off a conflict with the United States. The Islamic republic says that the drone was over its territory, but Washington says it was in international airspace.

The post Revolutionary Guard commander says Iran test fired new missile appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Reports said that the strikes included about 10 separate sorties that targeted military infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency initially reported that four civilians were killed and over 20 injured in the strikes near Damascus, which it characterized as "Zionist aggression."

Initials reports mentioned that several massive blasts had been noted in the capital. Later, Syrian state TV issued a message that Syrian army anti-aircraft defenses had "confronted hostile missiles launched by Israeli warplanes."

The SANA report said the strikes had begun at midnight between Sunday and Monday and had damaged several civilian homes in the Sahnaya neighborhood of Damascus. SANA reported that several civilians had been slightly injured.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog reported that several Syrian army soldiers were rushed to hospitals following the strikes, which it said targeted a research and development center for weapons and a military airport.

Meanwhile, media outlets aligned with the rebel forces in Syria reported that targets of the overnight strikes included the First Division of the Syrian Army where – according to claims – personnel from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as well as members of Shiite militias supported by Iran are headquartered.

Meanwhile, an unidentified object that may have been a stray missile crashed north of the Cypriot capital Nicosia early on Monday, but no one was hurt, Turkish Cypriot officials said.

The explosion occurred around 1 a.m. in the region of Tashkent, also known as Vouno, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Nicosia.

Mustafa Akinci, the Turkish Cypriot leader, linked the incident to military operations in the Middle East but further investigations were underway by the military to establish what it was, he said.

"It is evident it is not something stemming from our soil. … It is one of the bad sides of the war in the region falling into our country," he said.

Officials were studying debris at the crash site, said Kudret Özersay, the foreign minister of Northern Cyprus, a breakaway state recognized only by Turkey.

"Initial findings indicate the object that caused the explosion was either an aircraft carrying explosives or a direct explosive [missile]. The writings and signs on the debris will allow us to understand exactly what happened soon," Özersay said.

If verified, it would be the first time that Cyprus has been caught up in military operations in the Middle East despite its proximity to the region.

The post Arab media: Israeli airstrikes in Syria kill at least 16 appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.