Islamic State terrorists rejoiced at the death of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani at the hands of his American 'allies,' according to a weekly newspaper affiliated with the group that once controlled much of Syria and Iraq.

Soleimani was killed by a US drone strike on January 3, as he was being driven, with others, near Baghdad international airport. In reprisal, Iran launched a limited strike on US bases in Iraq with ballistic missiles on Tuesday, causing no casualties but demonstrating a capability to hit US assets at will.

The weekly Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) newspaper Al-Naba portrayed Soleimani's death as an act of god in support of its cause, and Muslims in general, according to BBC Monitoring.



An editorial in the jihadi paper was careful not to credit the US or even mention Soleimani by name. It couched the gloating in a historical analogy, referring to "Roman-Persian wars" that enabled early Muslims to overrun both Persia - today's Iran - and parts of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium.

I spent my childhood and my young adulthood in bomb shelters every time America had a spat with one of our neighbors. But the truth is we have so much more in common with Arab countries than with WASPs in New Hampshire

When I was nine years old, my family and I, all wearing gas masks, would huddle in our bomb shelter, which doubles as my parents' closet. It was the Gulf War, and Saddam Hussein was lobbing Scud missiles at Israel in retaliation to the US and its allies invading Iraq.

In 2003, in the ramp-up to the second Iraq war, tensions were high again: I took my gas mask to the bar in which I worked. People sat with their brown boxes to their sides, sipping beer and waiting to hear whether the air siren would sound.

It's been this way ever since I can remember. Besides the direct daily conflict with Palestinians and tensions with our neighbors, every time the White House gave out a "special statement" about the region, we Israelis began to brace ourselves for the unknown.

Donald Trump's response to the Iranian missile attack on US military bases in Iraq is defying the expectations (and perhaps the hopes) of both Democratic and Republican neocon hawks.

After he ordered the drone strike that killed Iran's "second-most popular" leader, General Qassem Soleimani, Trump has faced condemnation from Democratic lawmakers, as well as criticism from a prominent member of the otherwise pro-Trump media and at least one member of his own party. They claim that he has been treading dangerously close to a war with Iran.

"President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox," stated former vice president and 2020 presidential hopeful Joe Biden, in response to the action.

Surveillance video footage from outside the jail cell of accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein during his first reported suicide attempt in July has been inadvertently deleted, federal prosecutors revealed Thursday.


Prosecutors, in a filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, said the video was deleted as the result of a jailhouse computer error about the location of Epstein's cellmate at the time Epstein tried to kill himself.

A lawyer for Epstein's former cellmate said that it was "deeply troubling" to learn that the footage no longer exists. That lawyer, Bruce Barket, has been trying since July to obtain the video.

There is this morning a chink of light to avoid yet more devastation in the Middle East. Iran's missile strikes last night were calibrated to satisfy honour while avoiding damage that would trigger automatically the next round. The missiles appear to have been fitted out with very light warhead payloads indeed - their purpose was to look good in the dark going up into the night sky. There is every reason to believe the apparent lack of US casualties was deliberate.

Even more important was the Iraqi statement that "proportionate measures" had been "taken and concluded" and they did not seek "further escalation".

I agree their response was proportionate and I would say that I regard the Iranian action so far, unlike the assassination of Soleimani by the US, legal in international law.

The entire world should congratulate Iran for its maturity in handling the illegal assassination of its General, who was on a peace mission, travelling as a civilian on a commercial flight, carrying a mediation message the US had been instrumental in instigating. If as seems possible the US actively manipulated the diplomatic process to assassinate someone on a diplomatic mission and traveling on a diplomatic passport, that is a dreadful outrage which will come back to haunt them. Life insurance rates for US diplomats no doubt just went up.

Iran's anticipated retaliation for the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani sent a clear signal to Donald Trump that while the current round of violence may be over, Iran stands ready to respond to any future US provocation.

Tehran warned Iraq to spare US soldiers

On Tuesday night, the Iranian nation buried the body of Qassem Soleimani, the charismatic senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer assassinated by the US this past week. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, that task completed, Soleimani's IRGC comrades, acting on the orders of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, launched some 22 ballistic missiles from Iranian territory into neighboring Iraq, targeting the huge US air base Al Asad, in western Iraq, and the US consulate in the city of Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The crash of the Ukrainian plane in Iran so soon after the country launched a missile strike would have been a geopolitical event no matter what. Then came the strangely certain statements, and the retractions.

Iran blames technical issues, Ukraine not so sure

Iranian authorities were quick to blame a technical fault for the fatal crash of the Ukrainian airliner which took off from Tehran bound for Kiev Wednesday morning, with all 176 onboard losing their lives.

Ali Abedzedah, head of Iran's civil aviation authority, attributed the cause of the crash to engine failure, and said there was no involvement of terrorism.

While Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky warned against "speculation and unchecked theories", his prime minister Oleksiy Honcharuk told a press conference that he was not ruling out the possibility that a missile could have brought down the plane.

The mainstream media are carefully sidestepping the method behind America's seeming madness in assassinating Islamic Revolutionary Guard general Qassim Suleimani to start the New Year. The logic behind the assassination was a long-standing application of U.S. global policy, not just a personality quirk of Donald Trump's impulsive action. His assassination of Iranian military leader Suleimani was indeed a unilateral act of war in violation of international law, but it was a logical step in a long-standing U.S. strategy. It was explicitly authorized by the Senate in the funding bill for the Pentagon that it passed last year.

The assassination was intended to escalate America's presence in Iraq to keep control of the region's oil reserves, and to back Saudi Arabia's Wahabi troops (Isis, Al Quaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are actually America's foreign legion) to support U.S. control of Near Eastern oil as a buttress of the U.S. dollar. That remains the key to understanding this policy, and why it is in the process of escalating, not dying down.

An earthquake has struck near the Bushehr nuclear power plant on a crucial day for Iran which has seen tensions in the Middle East erupt.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the earthquake struck 10km southeast of Borazjan in Iran with a magnitude of 4.9. The quake also struck at a depth of 10km. Borazjan is a almost a 70km drive away from Bushehr.

The quake struck at 3.19am this morning.

Summary:

• President Trump has tweeted that "All is well!"

"Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq.
Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now. So far, so good!
We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far!
I will be making a statement tomorrow morning."

• Iranian foreign minister Javid Zarif has tweeted:

"Iran took and concluded proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of UN Charter targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens and senior officials were launched."

• Iran has launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles against multiple bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq, and have threatened "more crushing responses" if Washington carried out further strikes.
• Initially, nine rockets hit the sprawling Ain al-Asad airbase in the country's west, the largest of the Iraqi military compounds where foreign troops are based. The attack came in three waves just after midnight, AFP reported.
• Iran swiftly claimed responsibility for the attack, with state TV saying it had launched "tens of missiles" on the base.
• Iranian sources are claiming that the operation has a name: 'Operation Martyr Suleimani'. Iran's airforce has reportedly been deployed.
• Iraqi PMF announced the start of military operation "Overwhelming Response."
• No confirmed details on injured/casualties - "working on initial battle damage assessments." According to social media sources, the Pentagon has said that the Iranian missile attack resulted in casualties among Iraqis only
• President Trump "has been briefed" is "monitoring the situation closely and consulting with his national security team," and despite initial reports from CNN he was set to address the nation, the press secretary has denied that Trump will address the nation tonight.
• The FAA has imposed restrictions for civilian flights over the Persian Gulf.
• Markets are turmoiling: Safe-haven assets are soaring (bonds, bitcoin, and gold), Oil prices are jumping, and Stocks are getting slammed