ISIS has claimed the death of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was an act of ‘divine intervention’ and that it will benefit their jihadist cause.
After the assassination of Soleimani, the head of the Iran’s elite Quds force, the US-led coalition tasked with holding back ISIS in Iraq paused all operations, turning itself instead on Iranian aggression directed towards America.
In the weekly ISIS newspaper al-Naba, the extremists said that while their enemies were fighting each other, draining energy and resources, the jihadists would be able to regroup, according to the BBC.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters march shown in propaganda photos released by the militants
A few days after the attack, NATO pulled ‘some personnel’ from the country, explaining that ‘the safety of our personnel is paramount’, after fears were raised that the Islamic Republic could lash out at Westerners in Iraq after the hit.
Germany extracted all military training personnel from Iraq to Jordan and Kuwait.
Those personnel, along with other European allies, were in Iraq tasked with training the country’s security forces to stop the extremist regrouping in the region after they were finally vanquished in December 2017.
Despite the recent lull in aggression from both Iran and US President Donald Trump, Iraq’s Shi’a militias have pledged to avenge Soleimani’s death.
Soleimani (left), the architect of Tehran’s overseas clandestine and military operations as head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, was killed on Friday in a US drone strike (President Trump right) on his convoy at Baghdad airport
upporters of Iran-backed Iraqi Shiite armed groups popular mobilization forces gather around the coffins of slain Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and his companions during a funeral procession in Basra city, southern Iraq on 07 January 2020
The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) a state-sponsored umbrella organisation composed of some 40 independent Shi’a militia groups, have pledged to drive US forces from the region and have not opted out of attacking Western personnel as Iran are alleged to have done with their botched missile strike.
This bodes well for the Sunni extremists who were only stopped by a two-year campaign carried out by a US-led coalition advising the Iraqi army, according to the BBC.
In December 2017, three years after the extremists commandeered a third of the country, then Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced that the extremists had been driven out.
Soleimani’s body was returned to Iran on Sunday. People are seen carrying his casket upon arrival at Ahvaz International Airport in Tehran. The casket was greeted by chants of ‘Death to America’ as Iran issued new threats of retaliation
The UK has armed forces personnel deployed in a variety of locations across the Middle East
According to the BBC, they still stomp across the lives of thousands in areas where they first laid their roots.
Less open combat, and more guerilla tactics, the ISIS machine could start once more, should the US coalition be hampered in its attempts to stop them.
Iraqi and Kurdish news feature grisly murders, reports of extortion and ambushes on Iraqi forces with increasing regularity.
Those Iraqi security forces, who developed into a semi-elite fighting force because of US and European training, are now in a difficult position since the US-coalition paused its operations.
Men suspected of being Islamic State (IS) fighters wait to be searched by members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) after leaving the IS group’s last holdout of Baghouz, in Syria’s northern Deir Ezzor province in February 2019
The BBC reported that once ISIS took control of Mosul in 2014, the PMF were rallied by Soleimani and Iraq’s chief cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who told them to drive the fight to the Sunni extremists.
Since then, the PMF went on a brutal campaign of reaping against the Sunni extremists.
According to the BBC, the death of Soleimani would have been a sight to celebrate for the hardliners.