Region

GIOIA TAURO, Italy — The international operation to destroy Syrian chemical weapons entered its final phase on Wednesday, as they were transferred by workers at an Italian port from a Danish freighter to a US military ship equipped to dispose of them.

The first three containers to be transferred held a total of 20 tonnes of mustard gas. The remaining 75 contain the raw materials for Sarin nerve gas, among other things.

After three hours, with the vessels moored stern-to-stern within a wide safety zone set up around the port, 26 containers had been taken off the Ark Futura by crane and manoeuvred onto the MV Cape Ray by a vast climbing platform.

“Proud of Italy’s contribution to international security, [and] a transparent operation which is environmentally safe,” Italy’s Environment Minister Gian Luca Galletti said on Twitter as the transfer began.

“For now everything is going well. We have put in a huge amount of effort... to manage the transfer operation smoothly,” he said as he watched over the delicate procedure in the port of Gioia Tauro in the southern Reggio Calabria region.

The operation is being overseen by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Safety officials in the area are constantly monitoring for the possible release of dangerous toxins into the air.

Officials at the scene said between six and seven containers were being loaded onto the Cape Ray per hour.

Once the chemical agents have been safely transferred, they will be destroyed in international waters.

It marks the culmination of a programme to rid Syria of its chemical arms stockpile that followed chemical attacks in the suburbs of Damascus on August 23 last year.

The transfer and disposal is the result of “the only positive, successful operation carried out on Syrian territory, which could open up new possibilities for disarmament and non-proliferation in the region,” Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini said.

‘The poison ship’ 

Despite government reassurances that the port was used to handling class 6.1 toxic substances — those liable either to cause death or serious harm through exposure — the procedure has sparked concern among local inhabitants.

Dozens of protesters gathered in the nearby town of San Ferdinando late on Tuesday, saying they were concerned over the possible health fallout from the Ark Futura, which they have dubbed “the poison ship”.

“This is not a routine operation, it’s a military operation and we are very worried,” trade unionist Domenico Macri told AFP television.

“We have never carried out this type of operation in Gioia Tauro before. If there’s an accident, a container breaks or falls, the substances which would come out could do serious damage,” he said.

The protest group SOS Mediterraneo said destroying the weapons at sea risked having a devastating effect on Italy’s pristine beaches and sea-side communities, with a spokesman saying “securing such dangerous agents should be done on land, in absolutely secure conditions.”

The port has stepped up security for the transfer, sealing off access roads and barring entry to any non-authorised people, while a military helicopter flew overhead as the Cape Ray arrived before dawn. OPCW inspectors boarded the Ark Futura to check the cargo before the transfer began.

Once the Cape Ray moves back out into international waters, the process to destroy the agents and materials is expected to take between 45 and 90 days.

The US vessel has been equipped with two Field Deployable Hydrolysis Systems — portable treatment plants capable of “neutralising” the most dangerous Syrian chemical agents.

The process should destroy more than 99 per cent of the chemicals, reducing the lethal agents into a sludge similar to low-level hazardous industrial waste, which will then be disposed of by private waste treatment facilities.

Syria shipped out its stockpile of chemical weapons under the terms of a UN-backed and US-Russia brokered agreement to head off Western air strikes against the regime last year.

VIENNA — Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took to YouTube on Wednesday to deliver a message that Iran was ready to take steps to ensure its nuclear programme remains peaceful but would not “kneel in submission” to do a deal with major powers.

As talks to resolve the long-running nuclear standoff resumed in Vienna, Zarif’s remarks, delivered in English in a slick five-minute video, appeared to be a response to a US warning that Tehran has yet to prove that its atomic ambitions are peaceful.

The statements highlighted how much work the negotiators from Iran and from the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia still have to do to meet a self-imposed deadline of July 20.

The sixth round of talks since February between Iran and the six powers formally gets under way in Vienna on Thursday morning, and on Wednesday Zarif met with US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, the six powers’ lead negotiator, a US official said.

Washington and some of its allies have imposed sanctions on Iran over suspicions that its nuclear programme is designed to produce weapons — a charge denied by Iran, which says it is only interested in producing electricity and other peaceful projects.

In the video, Zarif said a nuclear deal would make history, and Iran was “willing to take concrete measures to guarantee that our nuclear programme will always remain peaceful”.

But he added: “To those who continue to believe that sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating table, I can only say that pressure has been tried for the past eight years, in fact for the past 35 years.

“It didn’t bring the Iranian people to kneel in submission. And it will not now, nor in the future.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague struck a similarly sober tone.

“We will not accept a deal at any price,” he said in a statement. “A deal that does not provide sufficient assurances that Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon is not in the interests of the UK, the region or the international community.”

July 20 is the expiry date of an interim accord that grants Iran modest relief from economic sanctions in return for some curbs on its atomic work, but Western officials acknowledge that an extension is looking increasingly likely.

In an article in Monday’s Washington Post, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Iran’s “public optimism about the potential outcome of these negotiations has not been matched, to date, by the positions they have articulated behind closed doors”.

But Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told Iranian media the fact that almost three weeks had been scheduled for final negotiations was “a sign the two sides are serious about driving the talks to a conclusion”.

“We’ll decide by the July 20 deadline, based on how the talks proceed, whether to extend the talks, take a pause, or even bother to continue. It is too soon to predict,” he said.

The powers want Iran to scale back its uranium enrichment programme sharply to deny it any capability to make a nuclear bomb quickly. Iran says it needs to expand its enrichment capacity to fuel a planned network of nuclear power plants.

Araqchi said that “any limitation we submit to would be short-term and on a trial basis”, ISNA news agency reported.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — A Palestinian teen was abducted and killed Wednesday, Palestinians said, accusing Israeli settlers of carrying out a revenge attack for the deaths of three Israeli youths. The accusation sparked clashes with Israeli forces and demands by the Palestinian president that Israel hold the killers accountable.

The latest claim stoked tensions already heightened by the deaths of the three Israeli teens, whose bodies were found this week 18 days after they were abducted in the West Bank, and a surge in fighting between Israel and Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip.

Just hours after Israel buried the three teens, relatives of Mohammed Abu Khdeir said the 17-year-old was forced into a car in a neighbourhood of East Jerusalem before it sped off. A burned body was found shortly afterward in a Jerusalem forest.

The youth’s relatives said they believed he was killed by extremist Israelis to avenge the deaths of the Israeli teenagers.

“Who else could do this? There’s no one else,” said Saed Abu Khdeir, the teen’s father. He said he had spent the day with police and given DNA samples to help identify the body, and was waiting for 100 per cent confirmation from a forensics lab.

As of Wednesday evening, Israeli forces said the testing was still ongoing. Officials were also reviewing security camera footage taken from the scene. Relatives said the video showed a car nearing the youth, people stepping out and then forcing him into the vehicle as it drove away.

In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused extremist Jewish settlers of “killing and burning a little boy” and demanded that Israel “hold the killers accountable”.

As news of the youth’s disappearance spread, hundreds of Palestinians in East Jerusalem torched light rail train stations and hurled stones at Israeli forces, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on authorities to swiftly investigate the “reprehensible murder” and urged all sides “not to take the law into their own hands”.

In Washington, the Obama administration condemned the killing as a “heinous murder” and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

In a series of posts on Twitter, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the US was paying close attention to the investigation into the teen’s death and sent condolences to his family and the Palestinian people.

Secretary of State John Kerry called the killing “sickening” and said “there are no words to convey adequately our condolences to the Palestinian people”.

On Tuesday, hundreds of right-wing Jewish youths marched through occupied Jerusalem, calling for revenge for the deaths of the Israeli teens, who Israel says were abducted and killed by Hamas fighters. Israeli security forces have arrested hundreds of Hamas operatives across the West Bank.

Meanwhile, rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has intensified, and been met with Israeli air strikes.

The barrage continued Wednesday, with the military saying nine mortar shells were launched from Gaza into Israel. It said Israel responded with an air strike on one of the launch sites, scoring a “direct hit”. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The clashes in East Jerusalem continued throughout the day. At mid-afternoon, masked men holed up in a mosque in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina lobbed rocks towards Israeli security forces in the street below. Security forces responded by firing stun grenades towards the mosque.

The street was largely deserted and littered with rocks and debris, as a small fire set next to a trash bin spewed black smoke into the air. There were no reports of injuries.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said security was heightened following the clashes, with extra units dispatched and light rail service suspended because of the violence. Security forces also closed a key holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City to visitors after rock throwing there.

Israeli officials urged calm as security personnel investigated the incidents.

“Everything is being examined. There are many possibilities. There is a criminal possibility, as well as a political one,” Israel’s public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, told Israel Radio. “I am telling everyone, let us wait patiently.”

The incident elicited international condemnation, with the UN envoy, Robert Serry, calling on all sides “not to further exacerbate an already tense atmosphere”.

On Tuesday, thousands of Israelis attended the funerals of Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, 16, who has dual Israel-American citizenship, whose bodies were found Monday in a field near the West Bank city of Hebron. Their disappearance gripped the country and the discovery of their bodies prompted an outpouring of grief.

Also Wednesday, Israel demolished the West Bank home of Ziad Awad, who was found guilty by a military court of killing an Israeli security officer in April. The demolition marked a return to a policy abandoned by the military in 2005. Israel sees house demolitions as a deterrent to violence, while critics charge it is a form of collective punishment.

In a separate incident, Palestinians in the West Bank town of Aqrabeh said their home was set on fire and the Hebrew words for “price tag” sprayed on the walls.

Radical Israeli settlers have been carrying out so-called “price tag” acts of vandalism in recent years to protest what they perceive as the Israeli government’s pro-Palestinian policies and in retaliation for Palestinian attacks.

The vandals have targeted mosques, churches, dovish Israeli groups and even Israeli military bases.

BAGHDAD — The US and UN have sharply criticised Iraqi leaders, warning time is running out after chaos in parliament despite calls for unity in the face of a Sunni militant offensive.

Political rifts were plainly on display at the opening of the new Council of Representatives, which world leaders had hoped would approve a new government to confront the jihadist-led alliance that has overrun parts of five provinces.

As Iraq struggles to make political or military progress, the head of a powerful jihadist group urged professionals to flock to help its newly proclaimed pan-Islamic state.

Baghdad on Wednesday sought to press hurriedly bought Russian warplanes into service to help break the military stalemate with insurgents whose advance has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Tuesday’s first session of parliament, since April elections, ended in chaos with so many Sunni and Kurdish deputies staying away after a break meant to soothe soaring tempers that the quorum was lost and a speaker could not be elected.

Washington quickly warned that “time is not on Iraq’s side”, with State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf calling for “extreme urgency”.

UN special envoy Nickolay Mladenov said Iraqi politicians “need to realise that it is no longer business as usual”.

Under a de facto agreement, the premier is a Shiite Arab, the speaker Sunni Arab and the president a Kurd.

‘End blockade on Kurds’ 

Kurdish lawmaker Najiba Najib interrupted efforts to select a new speaker, calling on the government to “end the blockade” and send withheld budget funds to Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

Kadhim Al Sayadi, an MP in Shiite premier Nouri Al Maliki’s bloc, responded by threatening to “crush the heads” of the Kurds, whose regional leader Massud Barzani told the BBC they would hold an independence referendum within months.

Some Sunni MPs walked out at the mention of the Islamic State (IS), the jihadist group leading the anti-government offensive, and enough Sunnis and Kurds did not return after the break that the session was without a quorum.

Presiding MP Mahdi Hafez said the legislature would reconvene on July 8 if leaders were able to agree on senior posts.

Iraq has bought more than a dozen Sukhoi warplanes from Russia and has touted the arrival of the 10 it has received so far, releasing video of some of the camouflage-painted jets in flight.

Baghdad has said it aims to begin using them for combat operations on Wednesday.

At least five are Su25 ground attack jets, which will be used to try to oust Sunni Arab insurgents from a string of captured towns and cities.

Iraqi forces initially wilted before the militant onslaught but have since performed more capably, albeit with limited success in offensive operations.

However, the cost has been high. Nearly 900 security personnel were among 2,400 people killed in June, the highest figure in years, according to the United Nations.

IS calls for allegiance

Loyalists are battling militants led by the IS, which Sunday declared a “caliphate”, an Islamic form of government last seen under the Ottoman Empire, and ordered Muslims worldwide to pledge allegiance to their chief.

The announcement is an indicator of IS confidence, with its leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi even calling Tuesday for skilled professionals to join the cause, and marks a move against Al Qaeda, from which the group broke away.

Also Tuesday, the Pentagon said that the nearly 500 US troops sent to Baghdad to bolster security are equipped with Apache attack helicopters and small unarmed surveillance drones.

The American security contingent will concentrate on safeguarding access to Baghdad airport and the embassy, a senior defence official who requested anonymity told AFP.

Maliki seems increasingly to be on the way out, with his bid for a third term in tatters despite his bloc winning by far the most seats in April.

He has come under fire from all three of Iraq’s major religious and ethnic communities for alleged sectarianism, sidelining partners and over a marked deterioration in security that culminated in the militant offensive erupting on June 9.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Wednesday directed a Libyan militant charged in the 2012 Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans to remain in US custody after his own lawyer conceded that he had no reasonable chance of being released.

A lawyer for Ahmed Abu Khattala acknowledged that it was appropriate for her client to remain behind bars at the moment, given the nature of the charge he faces and his lack of ties to the United States. But she said she had so far seen no evidence of any role by Khattala in the September 11, 2012 attacks that killed the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

“What’s been filed has shown, quite frankly, an utter lack of evidence of Mr. Khattala’s involvement in the incident in Benghazi,” said Michelle Peterson, an assistant federal public defender, adding, “We are left to glean from press reports what the government’s evidence is”.

Khattala’s expected trial will take place alongside ongoing congressional and Justice Department investigations into the 2012 attack that killed an ambassador, and the Obama administration’s response to it shortly before the 2012 presidential election.

Prosecutors provided some new details in a court filing Tuesday night, arguing that he was part of a group of roughly 20 militants who stormed the diplomatic compound on the night of the attacks. They say he was motivated to participate in the attacks by an extremist ideology.

Abu Khattala appeared briefly in federal court in Washington, wearing a green prison jumpsuit and a long, graying beard. He listened to the proceedings through headphones as an interpreter translated the conversation into Arabic. Peterson requested that he be served a halal diet and be provided with a copy of the Quran.

Abu Khattala was captured in Libya more than two weeks ago and then brought to the United States aboard a Navy ship, where he was interrogated by federal agents. He has pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiring to provide support to terrorists — a crime punishable by up to life in prison — but the Justice Department has said it expects additional charges soon.

The rampage in Benghazi on the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks has long been politically divisive. Republicans have criticised the response by Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the secretary of state, to the attacks. Republicans have accused the White House of misleading Americans and downplaying a terrorist attack ahead of Barack Obama’s re-election. The White House has accused Republicans of seeking political gains from the violence.

HONOLULU — A key role of the American troops in Iraq is assessing whether the country’s security forces can hold together and whether its leaders are confident they can do their jobs, a top US military official said Tuesday.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters after a speech that some of the 750 troops in Iraq are specifically there to help determine what the United States might do next to help Iraq fight an insurgency.

Some troops are manning a joint operations centre with Iraqi security forces to give a better picture of how the situation is evolving, while others are visiting Iraqi units to answer some basic questions, Dempsey said.

“Will they hold? What’s their makeup? Are they still a force that represents all Iraqis?” Dempsey said, adding that they are also asking whether Iraq’s leaders are confident they can do their jobs.

“When we have that assessment in hand... we’ll make some decisions about whether there’s other kinds of support that we can provide,” he said.

The other role of the US troop presence in Iraq is providing increased security at the US Embassy and elsewhere in Baghdad, including the Baghdad International Airport.

Iraq has been seeking US aid to help counter a threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq trying to create an Islamic state in the region. Baghdad’s top envoy to the United States said Tuesday that Iraq is turning to other governments like Russia, Iran and Syria for help because it can’t wait for more American military aid.

The US assessment is happening at the same time as Iraq’s political leaders try to form a government, Dempsey said.

AL KHAZAR, Iraq — Dozens of families who fled a Shiite Turkmen town in northern Iraq overrun by Sunni militants want to move south but are stuck in limbo between the Kurdish authorities and insurgents.

The families said they initially fled Tal Afar, part of a swathe of territory across five provinces which fell to jihadist-led fighters in an offensive that began June 9, for the nearby town of Sinjar.

They then moved to camps on the outskirts of Iraq’s autonomous three-province Kurdish region, they told AFP.

But land routes to the Shiite-dominated south, which is markedly more stable than the conflict-hit north and west, are controlled by militants led by the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group.

And Kurdish authorities have blocked those fleeing the conflict in northern Iraq from entering the autonomous region without a resident sponsor.

They have also barred them from the regional capital Erbil entirely, meaning they cannot get to the airport to fly south.

“When we arrived at the camp, they provided us with food, but we do not want to live in a camp,” said Murtada Qassem, who fled Tal Afar to Sinjar, and then later to a camp bordering the Kurdish region.

“We want to go to the south, to get jobs and better housing,” the father of seven said.

Kadhim Naqi, a 64-year-old with nine children, added that his family wanted to move south because “there is no war or dispute there... It is more stable”.

Around 1.2 million people have been displaced within Iraq by unrest this year, including hundreds of thousands who fled their homes following the militant offensive.

Many have sought refuge in hotels in Kurdistan as tourists, thereby evading the requirement for a local sponsor, but a large number have been prevented from entering the autonomous area because they have not found a resident to support their entry.

As a result, they have been forced to stay in camps near Al Khazar checkpoint, the main entry route from Arab areas of northern Iraq to Erbil.

“The situation is very difficult, and our policy now is to settle those refugees in the camps,” said Dindar Zebari, deputy chief of the Kurdish foreign relations department.

Zebari said those in the camps were free to leave, but without safe overland routes and with air transport inaccessible, they have little option but to stay.

The International Organisation for Migration has urged the establishment of safe routes to provide aid to the needy, amid worries of a worsening humanitarian crisis.

Amnesty International said Tuesday that the Islamic State was specifically targeting the region’s many minorities, which include Turkmen Shiites, Shabaks, Yazidis and Christians.

The London-based rights watchdog said it had “documented a string of abductions carried out by [IS] targeting minority communities”.

Among the worst affected were the Yazidis, a small group chronically referred to by IS militants as “devil-worshippers” for following a unique blend of Islam, Zoroastrianism and other religions.

BAGHDAD — Up to 45 people were killed in clashes between Iraqi security forces and followers of a radical cleric in the holy Shiite city of Karbala on Wednesday, security sources said, signalling divisions among Shiite factions as a Sunni insurgency rages.

The clashes erupted when police and army personnel tried to arrest Shiite cleric Mahmoud Al Sarkhi around midnight on Tuesday in the southern city of Karbala, an interior ministry intelligence officer and a police witness told Reuters.

Sarkhi and his armed followers have clashed in the past with US forces, Iraqi security forces and supporters of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq.

Security forces said they went to arrest Sarkhi after his supporters started blocking roads and manning checkpoints around his neighbourhood in the Shiite shrine city, home to the tomb of Imam Hussein, which millions of Shiite pilgrims flock to annually.

Sarkhi had published a letter on his website earlier this week criticising Sistani’s decree for Iraqis to fight alongside the security forces against Sunni militants.

Sistani issued his decree after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant swept across parts of northern and western Iraq. The group, which rules swathes of territory in an arc from Aleppo in Syria to near the western edge of Baghdad in Iraq, has since shortened its name to Islamic State and declared a “caliphate” to rule over the world’s Muslims.

Police and troops reinforced by five helicopter gunships surrounded the house but were prevented from entering by Sarkhi’s armed followers, the sources said, adding five police officers and about 40 of Sarkhi’s supporters were killed.

The sources said that when security forces managed to break into the house after six hours of clashes, they found Sarkhi had escaped during the battle. Sarkhi’s supporters posted on the cleric’s website a picture of an Iraqi military Humvee vehicle they said they had destroyed in the battle.

CAIRO — An Egyptian criminal court convicted Wednesday the youngest son of the ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on charges of drug possession and consumption, sentencing him and a friend to a year in prison, the state news agency reported.

Abdullah Morsi, 20, was not in court when Judge Abdel-Rahman Ayad issued the verdict. Morsi had been released on bail after his arrest in March. The two were also fined $1,400.

Morsi was arrested with a friend after police suspected they were smoking hashish cigarettes on the side of a road on the east edge of Cairo. He had denied the charges.

His family has dismissed the case as an attempt to tarnish their image and as part of a crackdown on Islamists.

His father has been jailed since he was ousted last year by the military following mass protests against him. He is also facing a number of trials on charges that include inciting murder and conspiring with foreign groups to destabilise Egypt.

At least 22,000 have been arrested since the government crackdown on Morsi supporters and Islamists, all pending trials, security officials said.

NICOSIA — For a man widely reported to be playing a key role in helping Iraq’s routed military recover lost ground, Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s feared Quds Force, remains invisible.

It is not a new strategy for Suleimani — the 57-year-old is rarely pictured, a trait that chimes with his apparent, although officially denied, presence in Baghdad in the past fortnight.

Having already helped Syrian President Bashar Assad reverse the gains of Sunni-led rebels in that country’s civil war, just when it looked like Assad was finished, Suleimani has cultivated a reputation as perhaps the most formidable security operative in the Middle East.

With multiple media outlets stating that the enigmatic general is now in Iraq, where Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s forces have as yet failed to repel a Sunni militant offensive, the political parallels are striking.

The jihadists laying siege to Maliki declared a “caliphate” — an Islamic system of government not seen since Ottoman times — on Monday.

Despite their limited numbers, they have led the occupation of Iraq’s second largest city Mosul and are fighting to hold Tikrit after a northern sweep shocking in both its speed and simplicity, with Iraqi troops melting away when confronted.

With the Iraqi military’s collapse all too visible, the presence of Sunni militants — now known as the Islamic State (IS) — near Iran’s border invokes fear in Tehran.

Bonded by Shiite Islam, Iran and Iraq have grown closer in the realms of government and security since the overthrow of Sunni leader Saddam Hussein in the US-led invasion of 2003.

Short in stature but feared on a grand scale, Suleimani joined Iran’s forces during the war Saddam launched against them in 1980, an eight-year conflict that left more than a million people dead.

Afterwards, he was sent to Iran’s eastern border to fight drug traffickers coming in from Afghanistan.

‘A living martyr’ 

He was named Quds commander in 1998 and in May 2005 was described by Iran’s ultimate authority, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, as “a living martyr”.

The Quds Force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guard, is highly secretive and conducts sensitive security functions abroad, such as intelligence, special operations and political action deemed necessary to protect the Islamic republic.

On the rare occasions he has spoken publicly, Suleimani’s obvious zeal has lived up to the air of mystique that has built up around his persona.

The few pictures of him show a face whose intense stare and focus sits within a closely cropped and greying beard.

His words have confirmed Iran’s regional reach.

“Iran has a presence in southern Lebanon and Iraq. In fact, those areas are in a way influenced by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ideology and conduct,” he said in a speech carried by Iranian media in January 2012.

Two years later, he went further: “No force or country except for Iran is capable of leading the Muslim world today... due to Iran’s support for revolutionary and Islamic movements and fighters as well as its defence of Muslims against aggressors.”

Suleimani has history with Maliki 

A diplomatic source told AFP: “He knows Syria like he was born there and has very good knowledge of Iraq.

“He is utterly respected by the Quds Force members, thanks to his career.”

A similar mission to the one he carried out in Syria would explain Suleimani’s presence in Baghdad, which has been denied by the foreign ministry in Tehran.

Moreover, Suleimani has history with Maliki.

Amid the political deadlock of Iraq’s inconclusive 2010 general election, the Iranian general allegedly organised a meeting in the shrine city of Qom, a two-hour drive south of Tehran.

It was at that meeting that Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr — the one-time head of Iraq’s Mehdi Army militia turned political leader based in self-imposed exile in Iran at the time — agreed to support Maliki’s bid for the premiership.

The deal effectively completed Baghdad’s political power shift from Washington to Tehran, and was followed a year later by a complete exit of US troops from Iraq.

“All of the important people in Iraq go to see him,” Iraqi Deputy PM Saleh Al Mutlaq said of Suleimani in 2011.

The dark side of the Quds Force’s activities is never far from foreign headlines. Suleimani was accused by the US military in 2008 of training Iraqi hit squads. And Israel said he orchestrated attacks on Israeli tourists in the summer of 2012.

“He is indeed like Keyser Soze,” a senior US official told The Guardian newspaper in 2011, referring to the seemingly invisible character portrayed by Kevin Spacey in “The Usual Suspects”.

“Nobody knew who he was and this guy’s the same,” the official said of the Quds commander. “He is everywhere, but nowhere.”