Responding to Iranian proxies in Iraq: Lowering the cost of accountability
People stand next to a roof damaged after a rocket attack on U.S.-led forces in and near Erbil International Airport last night, in Erbil, Iraq February 16, 2021. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari
The February 16 attack on US forces in Erbil that killed one US contractor and injured nine others, including one US service member, represents yet another escalation in the ongoing conflict between Iran and the United States. Especially concerning is that it spreads Iraq’s sectarian violence into the Kurdish region, which has been largely free of such attacks until now. But perhaps the more immediate concern is that the attack does place the Joe Biden administration in a bind. When a similar attack happened in December 2019, the Donald Trump administration launched a series of swift and effective air strikes that killed Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, Kataib Hezbollah leader A
Blame Game Intensifies Over Iranian Accomplice To Assassination Of Top Nuclear Scientist
February 17, 2021 16:49 GMT
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A blame game has intensified in Iran more than two months after the assassination of Iran s top nuclear scientist and the purported mastermind of an alleged atomic-weapons effort, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
The 59-year-old Fakhrizadeh was killed on a highway outside the Iranian capital in broad daylight in November in what was regarded as a major security failure.
Tehran has blamed the attack on Israel but also acknowledged the likely role of Iranian infiltrators in the killing of Fakhrizadeh, who officials say was also a deputy defense minister.
But personal accounts by three Iranian women, whose identities are known to RFE/RL but who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for their safety, suggest that the Iranian-born and U.K.-educated Ahmady s story may include a darker side including sexual assault and other predatory behavior against women.
Two of those women accuse him of sexual assaults that date back several years and, in one case, possibly with the use of illegal drugs. The other says he once emerged from a bathroom naked and wanted her to fondle him.
When contacted by RFE/RL via e-mail, Ahmady demanded the names of the women who accused him in order to defend himself. He also agreed to be interviewed by Skype but later e-mailed to say he was seeking legal advice.
The only declared candidate in Iran’s presidential elections this June has accused Joe Biden of continuing Donald Trump’s international policies, and warned that Tehran is preparing retaliatory measures to force the US to change its diplomatic trajectory. In an interview with the Guardian, Hossein Dehghan, a military adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Washington was not in a position to set preconditions for Iran’s.