Today's D Brief: ISIS leader killed in Iraq; Overture to Iran; Italy halts UAE arms deal; JAIC’s nex

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Threats
Today's D Brief: ISIS leader killed in Iraq; Overture to Iran; Italy halts UAE arms deal; JAIC’s next steps; And a bit more.
 
By Ben Watson
January 29, 2021 10:42 AM ET
 

ISIS just lost its senior-most Iraqi leader in an airstrike, the U.S. military announced this morning. It happened on Wednesday about two hours north of Baghdad.

His name: Abu Yasir, and he was killed south of Tikrit in a joint operation with coalition forces that also killed 10 suspected ISIS fighters, coalition spox U.S. Army Col. Wayne Marotto tweeted. “The Coalition will continue to remove key leaders from the battlefield and degrade the terrorist organization,” said Marotta in a follow-up tweet. “Terrorists-you will never live in peace- you will be pursued to the ends of the earth.”

Context: The area around Tikrit “has been an ISIS fallback zone and leadership sanctuary since 2018,” tweeted regional security analyst Alex Mello. In fact, he added, Iraq special operations forces “killed the [ISIS] deputy wali of Iraq in an air assault in this same area in Dec[ember],” and that mission likely drove the operation to kill Yasir.

https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2021/01/the-d-brief-january-29-2021/171724/