American military commander: Iran's militia is more dangerous than ISIS

A US military official said that Iranian-backed armed militias "pose a greater threat than IS (Islamic State)," stressing that it is too early to talk about the results of the killing of the Quds Force Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Soleimani.

This came at a press conference of the Commander of the Operations of the International Alliance in the War against the Organization of State in Syria and Iraq, General Alex Greenwich, on Wednesday evening.

And Greenwich considered that the pursuit of ISIS cells "is at the core of the missions that are still related to the operations of the American forces that they carry out in coordination with the allies in the Iraqi army, Iraqi security forces, and the Syrian Democratic Forces."

He pointed out that the organization is still active in the middle of the Euphrates River Valley in Syria as an extension to the Iraqi border, and that it still constitutes a real danger, and then "operations against it should not be stopped and pressured so that it does not have the opportunity to reappear."

The general added that ISIS is lacking in capabilities, and that stopping operations against it in Iraq due to the demonstrations did not affect the course of maintaining pressure on it.

He added that "the strikes against the organization stopped for a while in Iraq", but monitoring his movements "did not stop for one day, by continuing to consult with the Iraqi authorities."

In 2017, Iraq declared victory over ISIS by reclaiming about a third of the country’s area that ISIS invaded in the summer of 2014.

Soleimani
Greenwich said that the Iraqi parliament's vote on the law to remove US forces "did not win the approval of all Iraqi parties, especially by the Kurdish and Sunni sides."

He added, "It is too early to draw the results of the operation to eliminate the commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani."

The United States killed Soleimani, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, earlier this month. Iran responded by bombing the Ain al-Assad base in Iraq, leaving deep craters and charred debris in several locations of the base.

US officials initially said that no service personnel had been killed or injured, and indicated that Washington was not looking for additional armed conflict with Iran, but later announced that 11 soldiers had left Iraq for treatment.