A protest was held in front of the Iranian consulate in Karbala on Wednesday following the arrest of a prominent Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Sayyid al-Shirazi, by order of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The dozens of protesters, including some Shiite clerics, chanted the slogan ‘death to the Vilayat-e-Faqih (the guardianship of the Islamic Jurist)’ and called for Shirazi’s immediate release while holding Iraq responsible for allowing Iran to arrest the Iraqi cleric. According to Farsi media outlets, excessive violence was…

An official Iranian statistics affirmed, for the first time, that 2,100 soldiers from the Iranian forces were killed in Syria and Iraq during seven years of Iranian military intervention.Iran didn’t publish earlier any official statistics about the material and human costs of its forces' intervention, but it announced on Tuesday that 2,100 trees were planted equal to the number of those killed in battles in Syria and Iraq.This took place within events held on the occasion of Iran's National Tree…

(Beirut) – Kurdistan Regional Government security forces detained participants in December 2017 protests around Sulaymaniyah and forced them to sign statements promising not to criticize the government, Human Rights Watch said today. The detained protesters were held for up to eight days without being taken before a judge and were forced, before being released, to sign commitments not to protest or be critical of the government on social media. The KRG’s Asayish forces also detained three journalists who were covering protests, apparently…

Thousands of Iraqi teachers yesterday threatened to launch an open-ended protest in 15 provinces “if the government does not improve our [teachers] living conditions”. Demonstrating outside the Ministry of Finance in the capital Baghdad, teachers from about 14 provinces called on the central government and the ministry to pay outstanding salaries as well as improve their living conditions. The protesters also demanded government deductions to their salaries be halted. Kamel Abdul Karim Murad, a teacher from the southern city of…

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told an Iraq reconstruction conference Tuesday that the U.S. will remain the country’s “strong partner,” but the head of an Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia with American blood on its hands warned it will target U.S. forces if they remain in the country. “Iraq is at an important juncture in its history,” Tillerson told the conference in Kuwait. As the country rebuilds after liberating territory from ISIS, he said, “be assured that the United States will remain…

Iraq’s government on Monday called for billions of euros worth of foreign aid to rebuild the country after its three-year conflict with the Islamic State armed group, but observers say widespread corruption and a weakened social fabric threaten efforts to recover. Iraqi Planning Minister Salman al-Jumaili opened a three-day conference in Kuwait by announcing his country is seeking 88.2 billion US dollars, equivalent to upwards of 72 billion euros, to rebuild follow the defeat of the jihadists. The figure is…

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has insisted that the general elections will go ahead as planned, calling it a “constitutional commitment” that should be fulfilled. Abadi, speaking on the upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for May, “regardless of the results, our goal is to form a professional team” away from the quota system, which defines the ethnic representation in the Iraqi governance system. In an exclusive interview with Al Arabiya’s General Manager Turki al-Dakhil, the prime minister said the political process…

AMRIYAT AL-FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces are forcibly returning civilians from refugee camps to unsafe areas in the predominantly Sunni Anbar province, exposing them to death from booby-traps or acts of vigilantism, refugees and aid workers say. Managing more than two million Iraqis displaced by the war against Islamic State is one of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s most daunting tasks. But critics say he is more interested in winning elections in May than alleviating the suffering of displaced…

WASHINGTON DC, United States (Kurdistan 24) – The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, criticized Iran’s role in Iraq in an emergency Security Council meeting on Friday which the US called for in response to the popular protests in Iran and the regime’s heavy-handed suppression of them.  Haley affirmed that “freedom and human dignity cannot be separated from peace and security,” and she hailed the protests of the “brave people,” who have become so angry at “their oppressive government…

The United Nations rights office has urged Iraq to immediately halt all executions, stressing that putting to death 38 terrorist suspects was “deeply shocking.”"We are deeply shocked and appalled at the mass execution” at a prison in the southern city of Nasiriyah on Thursday, United Nations human rights office spokeswoman Liz Throssell told reporters in Geneva.“It appears extremely doubtful that strict due process and fair trial guarantees were followed in these 38 cases," Agence France Presse quoted Throssell as saying…