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Israeli forces devastated an Iranian airbase recently, destroying hundreds of drone aircraft in a massive airstrike, Ha’aretz reported Tuesday morning. According to the report, six Israeli drone aircraft carried out an attack on an airbase in western Iran near Kermanshah in mid-February, destroying hundreds of drones. The incident went unreported until this week, and was first disclosed by Al Mayadeen, a Beirut-based media outlet aligned with the Hezbollah terrorist group and the Iranian government. Iran, an Al Mayadeen report Sunday said, has blamed Israel, though the Jewish state has neither confirmed nor denied the claim. Al Mayadeen linked the attack...

The AP reports on the message from the mullahs that landed in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan province: “Iran has claimed responsibility for a missile barrage that struck early Sunday near a sprawling U.S. consulate complex in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, saying it was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard….Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard said on its website that it launched the attack against an Israeli ‘strategic center of conspiracy’ in Irbil.” MENA’s Simon Rushton has more here and Israel National News adds this: “A senior US official confirmed to Fox News...

IRBIL, IRAQ — Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence made an unannounced Thanksgiving-week visit to Erbil Air Base, about 100-miles west of Iraq's capital city of Baghdad, on Saturday. The visit was meant to reassure U.S. allies in the region and to surprise U.S. troops ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday with a festive meal.

German Anti-ISIS Coalition Chief Found Dead in Iraq Hotel by Andy Eckardtand Sarah Burke MAINZ, Germany — A German army chief in the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq was found dead in his hotel room there Wednesday, officials said. Colonel Stephan Spoettel was found dead at 8:50 a.m. local time (1:50 a.m. ET) in the Cristal Erbil Hotel in the northern Kurdish city of Irbil, the German armed forces said in a statement. Spoettel was the head of the coalition's German training contingent in northern Iraq. There was no information to suggest suicide or "third-party involvement," the statement added....

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Only the Islamic State (ISIS) can “fulfill our ambitions and dreams,” said firebrand Kurdish cleric Mulla Krekar, who was recently freed from a Norwegian jail. “The Islamic State is not something strange; it is the only element that can fulfill our ambitions and dreams,” he said in an Al Jazeera interview. The 58-year-old preacher added that all Muslims calling for resistance to the extremist Sunni ISIS “Caliphate” are “cowards,” and accused them of following orders from the United States and Shiite Iran. He called upon ISIS to appoint someone “with the courage to fight the infidels...

Reports and photos from the Kurdish Regional Government capital of Irbil in northern Iraq that bombing attack took place near the U.S. consulate.Large explosion near US consulate in #erbil followed by gunfire Source.An explosion in #Ainkawa #Erbil close to #US consulate #TwitterKurds Source.I am at the scene my camera a bi explosion rocks ankawa erbil the christian city Source with video at link.Just shot this and was shot at live bullets , ankawa erbil bad daySource.Many injuries i watched several foreigners injured #ankawa #erbil Source.

On Wednesday evening, moments after finishing a summit meeting with African leaders at the State Department, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered a stark message to President Obama as they rode back to the White House in Mr. Obama’s limousine. The Kurdish capital, Erbil, once an island of pro-American tranquillity, was in the path of rampaging Sunni militants, the chairman, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, told the president. And to the west, the militants had trapped thousands of members of Iraqi minority groups on a barren mountaintop, with dwindling supplies, raising concerns about a potential genocide. With American...

US military aircraft conduct strike on ISIL artillery. Artillery was used against Kurdish forces defending Erbil, near US personnel.

July 11, 2009 Obama Frees Iranian Terror Masters The release of the Irbil Five is a continuation of a shameful policy. By Andrew C. McCarthy There are a few things you need to know about President Obama’s shameful release on Thursday of the “Irbil Five” — Quds Force commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds — yes, hundreds — of American soldiers and Marines. First, of the 4,322 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003, 10 percent of them (i.e., more than 400) have been murdered by...

In the safe haven of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Jews and Israel are remembered fondly,if increasingly vaguely. "THEY CALL That lack of restraint?" the former Iraqi army officer exclaimed, while watching the BBC’s coverage of the Al-Aqsa Intifada on satellite TV last winter. "If this demonstration were held in Baghdad, there’d be 10,000 bodies in the street," said the Arab from Baghdad who now teaches in Iraqi Kurdistan. Almost 4 million people live in the safe haven of northern Iraq. A de facto autonomous region, it has been administered by the Kurds since 1991 when Saddam Hussein withdrew his administration in ...

This is problematic: Five Iranian officials held in Iraq for more than two years by U.S. forces returned home Sunday after the U.S. released them under pressure from the Iraqi government.

U.S. Opts to Continue to Hold 5 Iranian Agents April 13, 2007 Washington Post Robin Wright The Bush administration has decided to hold onto five Iranian Revolutionary Guard intelligence agents captured in Iraq, overruling a recommendation from the State Department to release them because they are no longer useful, according to U.S. officials. At a meeting of the president's top foreign policy team Tuesday, the administration decided that the five Iranians will remain in custody and go through the periodic six-month review used for other foreign detainees picked up in Iraq, U.S. officials said. The next review may not happen...

January 11, 2007: A US led raid on a consular office in Irbil, Iraq leads to the capture of six Iranians including(link): Hassan Abbassi, a strategist “close to” President Ahmedinejad and the only individual with any diplomatic credentials.Mohammad Jaafari, an aid to National Security advisor Ali Larijani Jalal Sharifi, a professional intelligence officer. Brig. Gen. Mohammad Djafari Sahraroudi, a Kurdish affairs expert wanted by Interpol Mojhadi Safderi, two Revolutionary Guard officers (link).One of the six, (Hassan?) is released. The other five remain in custody.

US warns Iran on Iraq insurgents The US says Iran is providing more lethal bombs to insurgents The US has issued the latest in a series of warnings to Iran, telling Tehran to stop helping Iraqi militants make lethal bombs to attack US troops.Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said US forces had detained several Iranians suspected of providing weapons technology to Shia insurgents. He said Iranian help for insurgents had spread from Basra north to Baghdad, leading to higher UK and US casualties. Tehran has repeatedly denied that it is fuelling the violence in Iraq. Mr Burns told the...

January 27, 2007 -- Those who insist so loudly on following Geneva Conventions rules regarding captured terrorists need to take a long, hard look at the latest atrocity in Iraq, news of which broke yesterday. Four U.S. soldiers, one of them a New Yorker, were captured - and promptly murdered - last Saturday in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles from Baghdad, officials confirmed. Two of the slain soldiers were found handcuffed together in the back of a vehicle. Soldiers die in combat, of course. But the murder of disarmed and helpless troops - killing POWs, in effect...

U.S. Deadlocked on Whether To Free Iranian Terror Suspects ELI LAKE January 19, 2007 WASHINGTON — The American government is deadlocked on the issue of whether to allow five Iranians captured last Wednesday in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil to return home, according to three administration officials. While the five individuals picked up in last week's raid have been determined not to have diplomatic immunity, as Iran's Foreign Ministry has insisted, it is still unclear whether Tehran might prevail in the standoff. The military has said those detained were members of Iran's elite al-Quds force, a unit of the...

The Irbil Five New York Sun Staff Editorial January 19, 2007 Quite a tug of war is going on within the Bush administration over what to do with a clutch of Iranian saboteurs seized in the Iraqi theater. The Iranians were seized only hours after President Bush, in his nationally televised address on his plan to reinforce our troops in Iraq, declared that we would interdict the efforts of our enemies to support the insurgency from redoubts in Iran and Syria. In a dramatic raid on the morning of January 10 in Irbil, American forces entered an Iranian building and...

<p>WASHINGTON - An order from President Bush authorized a series of U.S. raids against Iranians in Iraq as part of a broad military offensive, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday.</p> <p>Bush issued the order several months ago, Rice told The New York Times as she prepared to visit the Middle East. She said the president acted "after a period of time in which we saw increasing activity" among Iranians in Iraq "and increasing lethality in what they were producing."</p>

Condoleezza Rice in Iraqi Kurdistan after Baghdad ERBIL (Iraq) - the American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived Friday morning at Erbil, principal city of Iraqi Kurdistan, for discussions with the president of the autonomous area of Kurdistan Massoud Barzani, noted a journalist of AFP. Mrs. Rice had arrived Thursday to Iraq, in Baghdad, for a surprised visit intended to encourage the process of national reconciliation Iraqi, after visits in Israel and in the Palestinian territories. The American Secretary of State must go to London later in the course of the day to take part in the meeting of...

Trade Show Highlights Progress in Irbil More than 800 companies from 27 countries were represented insidea makeshift convention center in the capital of the Kurdistan region. By U.S. Army Sgt. Frank Pellegrini IRBIL, Iraq, Sept. 19, 2006 -- It was just an ordinary trade show - booths papered with colorful displays and overflowing with brochures. It was the hum of business, the sound of sales pitches and the slap of handshakes. Except this trade show was in Iraq.The city of Irbil hosted “Rebuild Iraq 2006” Sept. 14-17. More than 800 companies from 27 countries were represented inside a makeshift...