By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

These days forty years ago when the people of Iran on the call from exile of the Father of the Islamic Revolution were staging million-strong rallies throughout the country against the British-installed and U.S.-backed Pahlavi regime and calling for end of a quarter century of American-Israeli hegemony, the greatest impact of this grassroots movement was having on the people of neighbouring Iraq.
Imam Khomeini (RA) who after fourteen years in holy Najaf, had recently taken up residence in Paris on a visit visa, had so inspired the ulema of Iraq, especially Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Baqer as-Sadr, that the masses living in repression under rule of the Godless Ba’th minority regime, were saying in hushed tones and in some rare cases, publicly, "al-Youm Iran Ghadan Iraq” (Today Iran tomorrow will be Iraq).
It is another thing that shortly after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in February 1979, Ayatollah Sadr, who had called on the Iraqi Muslims to absorb themselves in the path and teachings of Imam Khomeini in the same manner that the latter had absorbed himself completely in Islam, was imprisoned by the tyrant Saddam and soon brutally martyred on the assumption that the events in Iran will not be repeated in Iraq.
The Americans were also delighted and in September 1980 ordered Saddam to impose the devastating 8-year war on the Islamic Republic, thinking that they were about to kill two birds with one stone – overthrow Imam Khomeini and create bad blood between the Iranian and Iraq Muslim.
Washington failed in its satanic plot, thanks to the Islamic spirit of resistance of the Iranian people, among whose legion of heroes of the holy defence was Qassem Soleimani, and fighting alongside them against the Ba’thist dictator and his U.S. masters were thousands of patriotic Iraqi Muslims like Abu Mahdi al-Muhanddis,
In 2003 Saddam, outlived his use, was overthrown by his masters and in 2006 executed, but neither the American occupiers succeeded in endearing themselves to the Iraqis nor did they succeed in checking the age-old influence of Iran on the fellow Muslims of Mesopotamia.
The Great Satan, however, continued to plot against the Iranian and Iraqi Muslims by hiring a few hundred thugs and traitors to indulge in vandalism and shouting of hateful slogans in a vain attempt to undermine the legal governments of the two countries and to create a rift between the two peoples.
When such devilry failed, because of massive assemblies like the annual Arba’een pilgrimage when the fraternal spirit of the Iraqi and Iranian Muslims is at its peak, the harebrained criminal Donald Trump in a cowardly act of terrorism martyred both General Soleimani and General Abu Mahdi.
The result was the eruption of a massive volcano of anger against the Americans on both sides of the border, the latest being the grand million-man march of the Iraqi people in Baghdad, with the unanimous demand of Death to the U.S. and End to the American occupation.
The placards, the posters, the burning of the effigies of Trump and the American flag, gave one the impression that this might be Tehran. It was the Iraqi capital where people calling for liberation of their country, similar to their fraternal and friendly neighbours, the Iranian people, displaying their resolve to kick out the U.S.    
Insha Allah, this mass awakening will end once and for all the presence of CENTCOM terrorists in not just Iraq but throughout the region.