Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire

It was only a matter of time before US President Donald Trump got the recognition he deserved for America’s military exploits these past two weeks. Yesterday, Trump received glowing praise from the official international ISIS newspaper, Al Naba, for Washington’s assassination of Iranian IRGC’s General Qasem Soleimani on January 3rd.

In an ideal world, this latest endorsement by ISIS for Trump’s actions should really put to rest the well-worn Washington and Israeli propaganda talking point that Soleimani was an “evil and deadly terrorist.” Unfortunately, the current American political discourse is so thoroughly coated in layers of media propaganda that this might take a while to sink in.

One only has to take a cursory look at reports over the last few years to quickly realise exactly how valuable the Iranian military was in the global war on terror. Yet, this reality is mostly lost on US war hawks and America’s Conservative punditry class.

In a recent report, BBC Monitoring editor Mimi Al-Lami described how Islamic State terrorists are now “thanking God, US and Iran are today busy targeting each other “indifferent to the impact it has on their mutual fight against the Islamic State.”

Thread: In the editorial of its weekly paper #AlNaba, #ISIS welcomes the death of #Soleimani in a US drone strike, but is careful not to openly credit the US for his demise but portrays it as an act of God to support IS and Muslims more broadly. pic.twitter.com/6bNXiMyOcX

— Mina Al-Lami (@Minalami) January 10, 2020

The inconvenient fact that Soleimani was actually leading the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017, has been carefully airbrushed from most US media coverage and commentary. Even leading pro-war outlets like CNN admitted as far back as 2015 how US military officials acknowledged the pivotal leadership role played by the Iranian Quds Force commander which helped turn the tide against the deadly terrorist wave.

Retired US Army General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, praised Iran and Soleimani’s role in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and in particular, in the Battle of Tikrik, calling it ‘a positive step’. Newsweek said at the time, “without Iranian assistance and Soleimani’s guidance, the offensive on Tikrit may not have been possible.”

US Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis reiterated the praise for Soleimani back in November 2014, saying, “The fighting that’s going on now in Iraq [against Islamic state] quite frankly has been led by General Soleimani, the Quds Force out of Tehran.”

Another example of when western media used to admit Soleimani fought ISIS