Europe Should Tell US to Stop Listening to Clowns: Iran’s Zarif

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said Europe could play a useful role in defusing tensions with the United States “by informing the US of the serious error in their analysis, and that they should stop listening to clowns”.

Zarif said that Iran's next steps will depend on the US reaction, after Iran fired missiles at two Iraqi bases hosting US troops in retaliation for the US assassination of military commander Qassem Soleimani.

Al Jazeera's Dorsa Jabbari reports from Tehran; Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo reports from Washington, DC.

Bernie Sanders: Trump Administration Hasn't a Clue about What It's Doing

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says that the letter released by mistake regarding troops in Iraq sends a message that the "Trump administration hasn't a clue about what it is doing."

Former Top Bush Official: I Saw the March to War in 2003. I’m Seeing the Same Thing with Iran Now

We look at the Trump administration’s assassination of Iran’s top military commander Qassem Soleimani with Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired United States Army colonel who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2002 to 2005. On February 5, 2003, he watched as Powell made the case for war in a speech to the United Nations. He has since become an outspoken critic of U.S. intervention in the Middle East. In 2018, Wilkerson wrote an article for The New York Times titled “I Helped Sell the False Choice of War Once. It’s Happening Again.”

Soleimani’s Death Could Galvanize Shia Coalitions against One “Foreign Aggressor” — The US

Fallout continues to mount following the U.S. assassination of Iran’s top military commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad last week. Iranian media reports that over a million mourners took to the streets of Tehran today for the funeral of Soleimani, who headed Iran’s elite Quds Force. On Sunday, Iran announced it would suspend its commitments under the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, which the U.S. pulled out of in 2018. Trump has also threatened to target 52 locations in Iran, including cultural sites, if Iran retaliates against the U.S. The targeting of cultural sites is widely viewed as an international war crime. Meanwhile, Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi has revealed he had plans to meet with Soleimani on the day he was killed to discuss a Saudi proposal to defuse tension in the region. From Washington, D.C., we speak with Narges Bajoghli, professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic.”

U.S. and Iran Exchange More Threats as Democrats Question Timing of Strike

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Oil prices surged and the stock market fell after President Trump ordered the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad.

WASHINGTON — The United States and Iran exchanged escalating military threats on Friday as President Trump warned that he was “prepared to take whatever action is necessary” if Iran threatened Americans and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed to exact vengeance for the killing on Mr. Trump’s order of Iran’s most valued general.

Although the president insisted that he took the action to avoid a war with Iran, the continuing threats further rattled foreign capitals, global markets and Capitol Hill, where Democrats demanded more information about the strike and Mr. Trump’s grounds for taking such a provocative move without consulting Congress.

Democrats also pressed questions about the attack’s timing and whether it was meant to deflect attention from the president’s expected impeachment trial this month in the Senate. They said he risked suspicion that he was taking action overseas to distract from his political troubles at home, as in the political movie “Wag the Dog.” » | Michael Crowley, Peter Baker, Edward Wong and Maggie Haberman | Friday, January 3, 2020

US Forces Kill Top Iranian General in Airstrike

US forces have killed a top Iranian general in a drone airstrike on Baghdad airport - an attack that marks a dramatic escalation of tensions with Tehran.

Iran immediately threatened a "crushing revenge" for the assassination in Iraq of Major General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force and spearhead of Iran's spreading military influence in the Middle East.

The Pentagon confirmed US forces had killed the general, a revered figure in the region, on Friday.