Cargo ships sail off the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas. (AFP) June 5, 2020 The head of Iran’s maritime and ports association said Friday an Iranian cargo ship sank in Iraqi waters, and at least one crew member was dead and two others missing, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported. Nader Pasandeh [...]
Iraqi President Barham Salih, right, shakes hands with visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, at Salam Palace in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, March 11, 2019. (AP) June 4, 2020 President Hassan Rouhani ordered the transfer of more than $30 billion through “smuggling gangs” to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2017, an Iranian lawmaker claimed on Tuesday. Rouhani oversaw [...]
Brigadier General Esmail Qaani (Ghaani), IRGC Quds Force deputy, undated. (IRNA) June 4, 2020 The head of Iran’s Quds Force Esmail Ghaani arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday as part of an Iranian delegation after receiving an entry visa from Iraq, according to reports. Ghaani accompanied an Iranian delegation to Baghdad on Wednesday in [...]
Iranians gather outside their buildings after a 5.1 earthquake was felt in the capital Tehran on May 7, 2020. (AFP) June 3, 2020 An earthquake of magnitude 4.9 struck the Iran-Iraq border region on Wednesday at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), the US Geological Survey said. Iranian media said there was no [...]
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf speaks after being elected as Speaker of Parliament in Tehran, Iran, on May 28, 2020. (AP) June 3, 2020 Iran’s new Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC’s) Air Force, slammed May 31 any negotiations between Baghdad and Washington as “futile.” Ghalibaf, [...]
Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim men from the Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah hold the party's flags as they walk along a street. (Reuters) By Yaghoub Fazeli June 1, 2020 Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia, issued a statement last week calling for terrorist attacks to be launched against Saudi Arabia. The militant organization has been central in the [...]
An Iraqi Shia woman holding a poster bearing portraits of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) and Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani during a parade in the southern city of Basra in 2015. (AFP) By Track Persia May 30, 2020 The destruction of the Iraqi state by the 2003 US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq resulted [...]
A militiaman of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, an Iranian Kurdish opposition group, looks over the sandbags at a section of the frontline near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, Sept. 5, 2016. (AP) May 29, 2020 Unknown gunmen on Friday killed three Iranian border guards in a Kurdish area near the country’s western border [...]
A group calling itself the “Revenge of Muhandis Brigade,” also emerged to claim a few attacks on American forces. (AFP) By Caleb Weiss & Joe Truzman May 26, 2020 Several new Shia militias have emerged in Iraq since March that claim to have targeted American forces and American-contracted companies. Most of these groups, however, [...]
The new commander of IRGC's Qods Force Esmail Qaani (L) and Lebanese Shiite cleric Muhammad Kawtharani, who has long spearheaded Hezbollah's Iraq policy. (Mashregh) By Track Persia May 25, 2020 Attacks targeting US troops by Iran-proxies in Iraq have dramatically decreased in the past few weeks. This coincides with circulated reports that Tehran [...]
