Via – The Daily Mail
The leader of an Iran-backed US embassy siege in Baghdad was welcomed to the White House by Barack Obama eight years ago before becoming Tehran’s ‘point man’ in Iraq.
Hadi al Amiri joined Iraq‘s then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as his Minister for Transport when he stood in the Oval Office in December 2011.
On Tuesday, he was leading the charge against the US embassy in Baghdad when it was stormed and set alight by pro-Iran militants. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shared a photograph of Amiri amid the rioters, condemning him as an ‘Iranian proxy,’ and calling those shoulder-to-shoulder with him ‘terrorists.’
The head of a leading pro-Iran Shia faction, Amiri exerts great power within Iraq’s state-sanctioned Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and was highlighted by Pompeo among three other men as the ringleaders of the siege.
The ease with which Amiri and these other commanders breezed through the heavily fortified ‘Green Zone’ has alarmed US officials, who have noted their militia’s increased presence around diplomatic buildings in recent weeks.
A former guerrilla fighter who fought for Tehran in the Iran-Iraq War, Amiri has been accused of terrorism against the US, of helping Iran to ship arms to Bashar al-Assad in Syria and has been pictured bowing before the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
As Commander of the Badr Corps, an Iranian vassal within the PMF, Amiri’s men helped the US in their fight against ISIS in 2014 and 2015. But a recent spate of missile attacks by the Kataeb Hezbollah branch of the PMF, climaxing last Friday with the death of an American contractor at US base north of Baghdad, has revealed that Washington’s friends in the region can soon become enemies.
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