"From inside the rooms of Iraqi decision-making:
A meeting was held inside the Green Zone at the home of (N.M.) [Nouri Maliki ?], bringing together the commander of the Quds Force, Ismail Qaani, with the Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Army, Abdul Amir Yar Allah, where an agreement was reached on a joint plan to confront the United States and Israel, at the direct request of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
The plan included unifying efforts between the Iraqi Army, the Popular Mobilization Forces, and the armed factions, with the green light given to respond to American strikes, based on a request from Qaani and the approval of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
Exclusive to the account of Nouri Pasha Saeed — special information from inside the decision-making circles."
https://x.com/nurialsaid/status/2036820754298233030
Iraq today
Iraq today
Re: Iraq today
Clip of generous Iraqi families donating their gold jewelry for the cause of Iran's defense
"Iran and Iraq, one nation in two territories
"
https://x.com/Ansarii_rahim/status/2037292696772006366
Re: Iraq today
Same report announces American journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped Tuesday in Baghdad [see below for AP story April 1 2026]
"The US is in absolute panic mode in Iraq. The Embassy is warning citizens to stay away from ALL American businesses and facilities.
The final chilling message: do not travel to Iraq, and if you are there, leave immediately. The American empire is losing its grip"
https://x.com/FurkanGozukara/status/2039630260900102177
Re: Iraq today
"BAGHDAD (AP) — American freelance journalist Shelly Kittleson often works without formal assignments from editors and on a shoestring budget, taking shared taxis to lawless corners of Iraq where militia rule outweighs government control.
Kittleson, 49, has lived abroad for years, using Rome as her base for a time and building a respected journalism career across the Middle East.
On Tuesday, she vanished after being forced into a car by two men at a busy Baghdad intersection, surveillance camera footage showed.
“She is a great reporter and always wants to go to areas where no one wants to go,” said Patrizio Nissirio, a former editor at Italian news agency ANSA, who has known Kittleson since 2011, when she worked as a translator for the agency.
“I said to her, ‘You don’t need to be in a war zone to do good journalism,’ and she told me, ‘I think my work is worth something when I am in those areas,’” Nissirio said.
A curious reporter who often works alone
Friends and fellow journalists describe Kittleson as a determined, gutsy reporter who spent over a decade reporting from Iraq, Syria and the wider Middle East for a variety of news outlets, including Al-Monitor, a regional news site.
Deeply curious and self-directed, she often embeds herself in local communities, sometimes staying with families rather than in hotels.
Her independence meant frequently working alone, traveling long distances and carrying heavy belongings with her at all times, while operating without the backing of a larger news organization that might have offered some protection.
The Wisconsin native is kind and spiritual, friends say, and she embraced Islam.
She left Wisconsin in 1995, when she was 19, and headed first to Italy, where she went to school and worked as a nanny, according to her mother, Barb Kittleson. She spent about 10 years in Italy before eventually settling in Iraq, she added.
In recent weeks, Iraq has been caught in the crossfire of the Iran war as the only country facing strikes from both sides. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have launched regular attacks on American facilities there since the start of the fighting.
Kittleson’s mother said she has not seen her daughter in person since 2002, but they exchanged emails a couple of times a week, including on Monday, when her daughter sent her a couple of pictures.
“She said, ‘Here’s a current picture of me,’” her mother told The Associated Press. “That’s what she does a lot of times, quickly.”
She is a vegetarian, a lifestyle her close Iraqi friends said is often difficult to accommodate in meat-heavy Middle Eastern countries.
She frequently got teased for her backbreaking bags, which she was reluctant to leave behind at the modest hotel in Baghdad where she stayed.
Three Iraqi friends and acquaintances of Kittleson spoke about her on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal from armed groups if they were publicly linked to her.
In her final conversations before the abduction, she asked colleagues and friends about transport routes between cities while continuing to seek access to do stories.
US officials warned about militia threat
Hours before she was kidnapped, Kittleson met a friend in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood and said she had received a warning:
U.S. officials had told her a militia group intended to target her.
She did not believe the threat was credible.
Kittleson had been stopped before by security forces and militias at checkpoints, Iraqi colleagues said, and had always managed to secure her release.
“They will not hurt me,” she told her friend that afternoon before she was taken.
Instead, she spoke of mounting financial strain, saying she had no assignments while in Baghdad. She had long struggled financially, living a frugal existence.
As a freelancer, she often relied on the support of Iraqi journalists.
On March 9, Kittleson was in Syria, seeking to enter Iraq at the border crossing in al-Qaim. Border police gave her a visa, but she was soon stopped by Iraqi intelligence officers, who turned her back, citing kidnapping threats, according to three different accounts from people she called that day.
Kittleson then went to Jordan and entered Iraq from there with little issue.
“She always complained of the treatment of freelance journalists, saying they are not paid enough.
"She was always trying to make ends meet and said she would sleep on any couch she could find, unlike the big foreign correspondents that sleep in fancy hotels,” Nissirio said.
“Her job has always been difficult, but she had a burning passion for it that I respect and appreciate.”
Kittleson published her most recent story Monday in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio. It focused on the effect of the Iran war on Iraq’s Kurdish region.
“Journalism is what she wanted to do so bad,” Kittleson’s mother said. “I wanted her to come home and not do it, but she said, ‘I’m helping people.’”
Associated Press writers Trisha Thomas in Rome and Scott Bauer in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, contributed to this report"[/color][/i][/b]
Re: Iraq today
"Israel Built a Secret Base Inside Iraq to Bomb Iran, A SHEPARD Exposed It
The outpost housed Israeli special forces and search-and-rescue teams, was built just before the war started, and positioned forces closer to Iranian targets roughly 1,000 miles away. The U.S. knew about it.
When a local shepherd spotted unusual helicopter activity and Iraqi troops came to investigate, Israel launched airstrikes to protect the secret, killing one Iraqi soldier and wounding two others.
One shepherd in the Iraqi desert just exposed a covert operation Netanyahu never wanted the world to see."
https://x.com/RyanRozbiani/status/2053204641530167315
Re: Iraq today
More on the secret is not reali base
Fortunately the base is no longer secret OR real, either - hopefully dismantled by now
That audacity to set it up anywhere, let alone in the vicinity of the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala !
"a temporary 1.6km airstrip was set up in a dried up lake bed
about 180km southwest of Najaf/Karbala http://link.dataspace.copernicus.eu/m3xu
it probably became unusable by mid-March due to rain in the area"
*
Kathleen Tyson :
"When I flew into Erbil, Iraq, in 2003 the Israeli base was already common knowledge
The Israelis, I was told, all carried South African passports.
The question is why WSJ is documenting the Israeli base in 2026."
*
Max Blumenthal [one would have to see a map to tell better, but perhaps this base was right near the Tigris or the Euphrates rivers]
"The blue lines on the Israeli flag symbolize the Nile and Euphrates rivers – the borders of the biblical "Greater Israel"
Re: Iraq today
Trita Parsi is an Iranian Zoroastrian who is often featured in the American media. The name Parsi usually refers to Zoroastrians in India and Pakistan
Here he sums up the significance of the discovery of that clandestine base :
"The vast majority of the world views America's war in Iraq as a major failure. It destabilized the region, spread radicalism, and gave birth to ISIS.
But when John Bolton casts it as a success, he is not lying. He just has a different metric of success.
It achieved the key thing Bolton and his ilk aimed for: Iraq was eliminated from the regional chessboard as a major player that could project power and challenge the US or Israel.
We see evidence of that today, as Israel built a secret base in Iraq during the Iran war to attack Iran.
That is, 20 years later, the Iraq war has still left Iraq in such a weak state that Israel can willy-nilly set up secret bases on its territory to attack other countries.
It was never about human rights or democracy."
https://x.com/tparsi/status/2053200355798700171