TEHRAN -- Washington says attacks against American forces went up 400 percent after the U.S. assassination of Iran’s top anti-terror General Qassem Soleimani.
Speaking at a press briefing on Thursday, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said between 2019 and 2020, the number of attacks in Iraq went up 400 percent.
“This was in the aftermath of the decision to abandon the JCPOA,” Price said, using an acronym for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran deal, which the U.S. left in May 2018 in pursuit of the so-called maximum pressure policy.

“It was in the aftermath of the decision to apply the designation to the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. It was in the aftermath of the killing of Soleimani, the IRGC chief,” he said.
According to Price, in almost everything that the former U.S. administration’s Iran policy promised, “the exact opposite has come to fruition”.
Washington designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization in April 2019, only a few months before the U.S. military carried out a terrorist attack in Baghdad, that led to the martyrdom of General Soleimani, who had played a major role in the defeat of Daesh terrorist group in the Arab country in 2017.
Following the attack – which also led to the martyrdom of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraqi resistance group PMU – Iran and Iraqi resistance groups vowed to exact vengeance on the aggressors and expel the U.S. military from the region.
As part of that revenge, Iran launched a volley of ballistic missiles at two U.S.-run bases in Iraq, as a result of which 110 American forces suffered traumatic brain injuries. Iran also vowed to hunt down the perpetrators, including the operators and commanders, behind the assassination.
The U.S. State Department recently said it was paying more than $2 million per month to provide 24-hour security to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, one of the key perpetrators.
According to the leaked report, the cost of protecting Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook between August 2021 and February 2022 amounted to $13.1 million.