title: Duck Dynasty

text: Willie is Phil and Miss Kay's third son and CEO of Duck Commander. Willie has a bachelor's degree in Health and Human Performance from NE Louisiana University, with an emphasis on Business. He took Duck Commander from a family business to a multimillion-dollar empire. He and his wife Korie have six children.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: John Luke, the son of Willie and Korie, is the second-oldest child of the family after Rebecca. He attended Ouachita Christian High School and later Liberty University. Since summer 2019, John Luke has been the director of Camp Ch-Yo-Ca, a Christian summer camp in Calhoun, Louisiana. In October 2019, he and his wife Mary-Kate welcomed a son, John Shepherd. In April 2021, they announced the birth of their daughter, Ella.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: Mary Kate is John Luke's wife. Mary Kate and John Luke were married on June 28, 2015. She also attended Liberty University and studied Women's Leadership.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: Sadie, the daughter of Willie and Korie, attended Ouachita Christian High School. Her graduation is shown in Season 10. Sadie now is an influential speaker and author. She has been married to Christian Huff since November 25, 2019. In 2020, it was announced she was expecting her first child, a girl. On May 11, 2021, she and her husband welcomed a daughter named Honey James Huff.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: Youngest daughter of Willie and Korie. In November 2020, at age 18, she became engaged to her boyfriend of 6 months, Jacob Mayo. She married him on June 5, 2021.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: Rebecca is the foster daughter of Willie and Korie. The family originally hosted Rebecca when she was an exchange student from Taiwan and consider her one of the family. After completing a two-year fashion internship in Southern California, she returned home to West Monroe and opened a clothing boutique. She married John Reed Loflin in Mexico on December 3, 2016. Rebecca and John Reed have a son born on January 11, 2019. They welcomed a daughter on December 24, 2021


title: Duck Dynasty

text: Adopted son of Willie and Korie. The family's first adopted son, "Little Will" joined the Robertsons when he was just five weeks old. Will wasn't a regular on "Duck Dynasty", only making occasional appearances on the show, as he's not as involved in the family business as some of his siblings are.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: Jep is Phil and Miss Kay's youngest son who films and edits DVDs of the Robertson family's duck hunts. He is often seen at Duck Commander and at family dinners. Jep and Jessica have five children. They introduced the newest addition to their family, an adopted son they named Jules Augustus (nicknamed "Gus"), on the premiere of their spin-off series "Jep and Jessica: Growing the Dynasty" on January 20, 2016, which had an audience of more than two million. The second season premiered on February 22, 2017.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: Si, born , is Phil's brother, a Vietnam War veteran, and uncle to Phil and Miss Kay's four sons. Si worked at Duck Commander making the reeds that go into every duck call.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: Si also appears in the show's second spin-off "Going Si-Ral" alongside Willie Robertson where Si studies the Internet.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: An hour-long Christmas special premiered on December 5, 2012 as the Season 2 finale and became (at the time) the most-watched A&E episode in the network's history.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: On February 27, 2013, the Season 3 premiere tallied 8.9 million viewers, including five million in the adults 25–54 demographic and five million in adults 18–49 demographic, making the premiere (at the time) the most watched series in network history, beating the Season 2 finale. The one-hour Season 3 finale (shown on April 24, 2013) tallied 9.6 million viewers, with 5.6 million in the Adults 25–54 demographic and 5.5 million in the Adults 18–49 demographic, making it the highest rated telecast in A&E history.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: On August 14, 2013, the Season 4 premiere drew a total of 11.8 million viewers, an increase of 37% vs. the season three premiere, drawing 6.3 million viewers in the Adults 25–54 demographic, making it the most watched nonfiction series telecast in cable television history. According to "The Hollywood Reporter", the fourth season averaged 9.4 million viewers.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: "Duck Dynasty" topped the list of celebrity/pop culture-themed costume searches on Yahoo! in October 2013, according to data compiled by Yahoo Web trend expert Carolyn Clark. As of October 17, 2014, the show has averaged 8.3 million viewers for 2014. According to an October 2014 release from "E! Online", the majority of the series's Facebook audience is Republican. In 2016, "The New York Times" reported that "Duck Dynasty" "is the prototypical example of a show that is most popular in rural areas. The correlation between fandom and the percentage of people who voted for President Trump was higher ... than it was for any other" of the 50 shows with the most Facebook Likes. It was most popular in rural Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, and least popular in the Northeast US.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: Phil Robertson stated on "Sports Spectrum", a Christian sports publication, that he confronted producers about editors of the show telling them not to say Jesus's name while praying at the end of episodes, and that they added intermittent bleep censors over random portions of the cast's unscripted dialogue although there was no profanity being spoken. Robertson cited the issues as part of what is often called "spiritual warfare", that there was no swearing that needed to be edited out, and the prayers were being censored to avoid offending non-Christian religious people. A&E did not comment on the claims.


title: Duck Dynasty

text: A&E suspended Phil Robertson over remarks he made during an interview with Drew Magary for "GQ Magazine" which had attracted outside criticism. During the interview for a featured article in "GQ's" January 2014 issue, titled "What the Duck?", Magary asked Robertson: "What, in your mind, is sinful?" Robertson replied: "Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men." A&E stated they were "extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson's comments in "GQ", which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series "Duck Dynasty"". He said he is a "product of the '60s" but has since lived his life on Biblical principles. He added: "I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me." The Robertson family released a statement about A&E's decision, refusing to do the show without him and supporting Phil by saying that while some of his comments were "coarse," his beliefs are "grounded in the teachings of the Bible." In the first public interview since the "GQ" interview, Robertson stood by his words and said: "Jesus will take sins away. If you're a homosexual, He'll take it away. If you're an adulterer, if you're a liar, what's the difference?" Robertson's remarks were reported in the media, with reactions split. Many social conservatives, including his corporate sponsors, some religious groups, and some Republican politicians including Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee, supported his right to such opinions. Robertson faced significant opposition from individuals viewing his comments as anti-gay and bigoted. A&E reversed Robertson's suspension. The network cited Phil and the family's regret for the use of "coarse language" in discussing body parts, and stated that A&E would launch a public service announcement across the channel's "entire portfolio" that would promote "tolerance and acceptance among all people." A Human Rights Campaign representative saw the reinstatement and message as a positive step, and "the real harm that such anti-gay and racist comments can cause" and the governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal remarked on "tolerance of religious views".


title: Duck Dynasty

text: Duck Dynasty's success caused numerous spin-offs and expanded the media franchise for Duck Commander. This includes other television series, a music album, books, podcasts, and video games.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Carbon capture and storage (CCS) or carbon capture and sequestration is the process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO) before it enters the atmosphere, transporting it, and storing it (carbon sequestration) for centuries or millennia. Usually the CO is captured from large point sources, such as a chemical plant or biomass power plant, and then stored in an underground geological formation. The aim is to prevent the release of CO from heavy industry with the intent of mitigating the effects of climate change. CO has been injected into geological formations for several decades for enhanced oil recovery and after separation from natural gas, but this has been criticised for producing more emissions when the gas or oil is burned.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) and CCS are sometimes discussed collectively as carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS). This is because CCS is a relatively expensive process yielding a product which is often too cheap. Hence, carbon capture makes economically more sense where the carbon price is high enough, such as in much of Europe, or when combined with a utilization process where the cheap CO can be used to produce high-value chemicals to offset the high costs of capture operations.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: CO can be captured directly from an industrial source, such as a cement kiln, using a variety of technologies; including absorption, adsorption, chemical looping, membrane gas separation or gas hydration. , about one thousandth of global CO emissions are captured by CCS, and most projects are for fossil gas processing.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Storage of the CO is either in deep geological formations, or in the form of mineral carbonates. Pyrogenic carbon capture and storage (PyCCS) is also being researched. Geological formations are currently considered the most promising sequestration sites. The US National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) reported that North America has enough storage capacity for more than 900 years worth of CO at current production rates. A general problem is that long-term predictions about submarine or underground storage security are very difficult and uncertain, and there is still the risk that some CO might leak into the atmosphere. Despite this, a recent evaluation estimates the risk of substantial leakage to be fairly low.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Opponents point out that many CCS projects have failed to deliver on promised emissions reductions. Additionally, opponents argue that carbon capture and storage is only a justification for indefinite fossil fuel usage disguised as marginal emission reductions. One of the most well-known failures is the FutureGen program, partnerships between the US federal government and coal energy production companies which were intended to demonstrate ″clean coal″, but never succeeded in producing any carbon-free electricity from coal.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Capturing CO is most cost-effective at point sources, such as large carbon-based energy facilities, industries with major CO emissions (e.g. cement production, steelmaking), natural gas processing, synthetic fuel plants and fossil fuel-based hydrogen production plants. Extracting CO from air is possible, although the lower concentration of CO in air compared to combustion sources complicates the engineering and makes the process therefore more expensive.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Impurities in CO streams, like sulfurs and water, can have a significant effect on their phase behavior and could pose a significant threat of increased pipeline and well corrosion. In instances where CO impurities exist, especially with air capture, a scrubbing separation process is needed to initially clean the flue gas. It is possible to capture approximately 65% of CO embedded in it and sequester it in a solid form.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Absorption, or carbon scrubbing with amines is the dominant capture technology. It is the only carbon capture technology so far that has been used industrially. Monoethanolamine (MEA) solutions, the leading amine for capturing CO , have a heat capacity between 3–4 J/g K since they are mostly water. Higher heat capacities add to the energy penalty in the solvent regeneration step.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: About two thirds of CCS cost is attributed to capture, making it the limit to CCS deployment. Optimizing capture would significantly increase CCS feasibility since the transport and storage steps of CCS are rather mature.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: An alternate method is chemical looping combustion (CLC). Looping uses a metal oxide as a solid oxygen carrier. Metal oxide particles react with a solid, liquid or gaseous fuel in a fluidized bed combustor, producing solid metal particles and a mixture of CO and water vapor. The water vapor is condensed, leaving pure CO , which can then be sequestered. The solid metal particles are circulated to another fluidized bed where they react with air, producing heat and regenerating metal oxide particles for return to the combustor. A variant of chemical looping is calcium looping, which uses the alternating carbonation and then calcination of a calcium oxide based carrier.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: A 2019 study found CCS plants to be less effective than renewable electricity. The electrical energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) ratios of both production methods were estimated, accounting for their operational and infrastructural energy costs. Renewable electricity production included solar and wind with sufficient energy storage, plus dispatchable electricity production. Thus, rapid expansion of scalable renewable electricity and storage would be preferable over fossil-fuel with CCS. The study did not consider whether both options could be pursued in parallel.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: In 2021 High Hopes proposed using high-altitude balloons to capture CO cryogenically, using hydrogen to lower the already low-temperature atmosphere sufficiently to produce dry ice that is returned to earth for sequestration.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: In sorption enhanced water gas shift (SEWGS) technology a pre-combustion carbon capture process, based on solid adsorption, is combined with the water gas shift reaction (WGS) in order to produce a high pressure hydrogen stream. The CO stream produced can be stored or used for other industrial processes.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: After the CO2 has been captured, it is usually compressed into a supercritical fluid. The CO2 is compressed so that it can be more easily transported. Compression is done at the capture site. This process requires its own energy source. Like the capture stage, compression is achieved by increasing the parasitic load. Compression of CO2 is an energy intensive procedure that involves multi-stage complex compressors and a power-generated cooling process.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: For example, approximately 5,800 km of CO pipelines operated in the US in 2008, and a 160 km pipeline in Norway, used to transport CO to oil production sites where it is injected into older fields to extract oil. This injection is called "enhanced oil recovery". Pilot programs are in development to test long-term storage in non-oil producing geologic formations. In the United Kingdom, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology envisages pipelines as the main UK transport.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: In 2021, two companies, namely Navigator Ventures and Summit Carbon Solutions were planning pipelines through the Midwestern US from North Dakota to Illinois to connect ethanol companies to sites where liquefied is injected into porous rock.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Various approaches have been conceived for permanent storage. These include gaseous storage in deep geological formations (including saline formations and exhausted gas fields), and solid storage by reaction of CO with metal oxides to produce stable carbonates.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Geo-sequestration, involves injecting CO , generally in supercritical form, into underground geological formations. Oil fields, gas fields, saline formations, unmineable coal seams, and saline-filled basalt formations have been suggested as alternatives. Physical (e.g., highly impermeable caprock) and geochemical trapping mechanisms prevent the CO from escaping to the surface.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Unmineable coal seams can be used because CO molecules attach to the coal surface. Technical feasibility depends on the coal bed's permeability. In the process of absorption the coal releases previously absorbed methane, and the methane can be recovered (enhanced coal bed methane recovery). Methane revenues can offset a portion of the cost, although burning the resultant methane, however, produces another stream of CO to be sequestered.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Saline formations contain mineralized brines and have yet to produce benefit to humans. Saline aquifers have occasionally been used for storage of chemical waste in a few cases. The main advantage of saline aquifers is their large potential storage volume and their ubiquity. The major disadvantage of saline aquifers is that relatively little is known about them. To keep the cost of storage acceptable, geophysical exploration may be limited, resulting in larger uncertainty about the aquifer structure. Unlike storage in oil fields or coal beds, no side product offsets the storage cost. "Trapping mechanisms" such as structural trapping, residual trapping, solubility trapping and mineral trapping may immobilize the CO underground and reduce leakage risks.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: CO is occasionally injected into an oil field as an enhanced oil recovery technique, but because CO is released when the oil is burned, it is not carbon neutral.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: CO can be physically supplied to algae or bacteria that could degrade the CO. It would ultimately be ideal to exploit CO metabolizing bacterium "Clostridium thermocellum".


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: CO exothermically reacts with metal oxides, producing stable carbonates (e.g. calcite, magnesite). This process (CO-to-stone) occurs naturally over periods of years and is responsible for much surface limestone. Olivine is one such metal oxide. Rocks rich in metal oxides that react with CO, such as MgO and CaO as contained in basalts, have been proven as a viable means to achieve carbon-dioxide mineral storage. The reaction rate can in principle be accelerated with a catalyst or by increasing temperatures and/or pressures, or by mineral pre-treatment, although this method can require additional energy. The IPCC estimates that a power plant equipped with CCS using mineral storage would need 60–180% more energy than one without. Theoretically, up to 22% of crustal mineral mass is able to form carbonates.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Ultramafic mine tailings are a readily available source of fine-grained metal oxides that could serve this purpose. Accelerating passive CO sequestration via mineral carbonation may be achieved through microbial processes that enhance mineral dissolution and carbonate precipitation.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Cost is a significant factor affecting CCS. The cost of CCS, plus any subsidies, must be less than the expected cost of emitting CO for a project to be considered economically favorable.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: CCS technology is expected to use between 10 and 40 percent of the energy produced by a power station. Energy for CCS is called an energy penalty. It has been estimated that about 60% of the penalty originates from the capture process, 30% comes from compression of CO , while the remaining 10% comes from pumps and fans. CCS would increase the fuel requirement of a plant with CCS by about 15% (gas plant). The cost of this extra fuel, as well as storage and other system costs, are estimated to increase the costs of energy from a power plant with CCS by 30–60%.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Constructing CCS units is capital intensive. The additional costs of a large-scale CCS demonstration project are estimated to be €0.5–1.1 billion per project over the project lifetime. Other applications are possible. CCS trials for coal-fired plants in the early 21st century were economically unviable in most countries, including China, in part because revenue from enhanced oil recovery collapsed with the 2020 oil price collapse. A carbon price of at least 100 euros per tonne CO is estimated to be needed to make industrial CCS viable, together with carbon tariffs. But, as of mid-2022, the EU Allowance had never reached that price and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism had not yet been implemented. However a company making small modules claims it can get well below that price by mass production by 2022.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: According to UK government estimates made in the late 2010s, carbon capture (without storage) is estimated to add 7 GBP per MWh by 2025 to the cost of electricity from a gas-fired power plant: however most CO will need to be stored so in total the increase in cost for gas or biomass generated electricity is around 50%.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Governments have provided various types of funding for CCS demonstration projects, including tax credits, allocations and grants.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: One alternative could be through the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. At COP16 in 2010, The Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, at its thirty-third session, issued a draft document recommending the inclusion of CCS in geological formations in Clean Development Mechanism project activities. At COP17 in Durban, a final agreement was reached enabling CCS projects to receive support through the Clean Development Mechanism.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: CO can be captured with alkaline solvents at low temperatures in the absorber and released CO at higher temperatures in a desorber. Chilled ammonia CCS plants emit ammonia. "Functionalized Ammonia" emits less ammonia, but amines may form secondary amines that emit volatile nitrosamines by a side reaction with nitrogen dioxide, which is present in any flue gas. Alternative amines with little to no vapor pressure can avoid these emissions. Nevertheless, practically 100% of remaining sulfur dioxide from the plant is washed out of the flue gas, along with dust/ash.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: The Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis has criticised companies for not reporting greenhouse gas emissions from the use of their products. CO2 from natural-gas processing is often used for EOR. It has been suggested that enhanced oil recovery only be allowed to use anthropogenic CO2 and should only receive financial incentives such as tax credits when carbon negative, which is generally only in the early years of a project.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Although the global total CO2 emitted by fossil fuel power plants is very large, coal plant flue gas typically only contains 10–14% CO2, and gas power plants only 4–5% CO2. Cost per tonne CO2 increases as the capacity factor decreases (the plant is used less - for example only for times of highest demand or in emergencies).


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: The extra energy requirements deriving from CCS for natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) plants range from 11 to 22%. Fuel use and environmental problems (e.g., methane emissions) arising from gas extraction increase accordingly. Plants equipped with selective catalytic reduction systems for nitrogen oxides produced during combustion require proportionally greater amounts of ammonia.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: A 2020 study concluded that half as much CCS might be installed in coal-fired plants as in gas-fired: these would be mainly in China and India. However a 2022 study concluded that it would be too expensive for coal power in China.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: For super-critical pulverized coal (PC) plants, CCS' energy requirements range from 24 to 40%, while for coal-based gasification combined cycle (IGCC) systems it is 14–25%. Fuel use and environmental problems arising from coal extraction increase accordingly. Plants equipped with flue-gas desulfurization (FGD) systems for sulfur dioxide control require proportionally greater amounts of limestone, and systems equipped with selective catalytic reduction systems for nitrogen oxides produced during combustion require proportionally greater amounts of ammonia. Boundary Dam is the only coal-fired power station which uses post-combustion CCS.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: IPCC estimates that leakage risks at properly managed sites are comparable to those associated with current hydrocarbon activity. It recommends that limits be set to the amount of leakage that can take place. However, this finding is contested given the lack of experience. CO could be trapped for millions of years, and although some leakage may occur, appropriate storage sites are likely to retain over 99% for over 1000 years.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Norway's Sleipner gas field is the oldest industrial scale retention project. An environmental assessment conducted after ten years of operation concluded that geosequestration was the most definite form of permanent geological storage method:


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Available geological information shows absence of major tectonic events after the deposition of the Utsira formation [saline reservoir]. This implies that the geological environment is tectonically stable and a site suitable for CO storage. The solubility trapping [is] the most permanent and secure form of geological storage.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: In March 2009 StatoilHydro issued a study documenting the slow spread of CO in the formation after more than 10 years operation.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Gas leakage into the atmosphere may be detected via atmospheric gas monitoring, and can be quantified directly via eddy covariance flux measurements.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Transmission pipelines may leak or rupture. Pipelines can be fitted with remotely controlled valves that can limit the release quantity to one pipe section. For example, a severed 19" pipeline section 8 km long could release its 1,300 tonnes in about 3–4 min. At the storage site, the injection pipe can be fitted with non-return valves to prevent an uncontrolled release from the reservoir in case of upstream pipeline damage.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Large-scale releases present asphyxiation risk. In the 1953 Menzengraben mining accident, several thousand tonnes were released and asphyxiated a person 300 meters away. Malfunction of a CO industrial fire suppression system in a large warehouse released 50 t CO after which 14 people collapsed on the nearby public road. In the Berkel en Rodenrijs incident in December 2008 a modest release from a pipeline under a bridge killed some ducks sheltering there.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Monitoring allows leak detection with enough warning to minimize the amount lost, and to quantify the leak size. Monitoring can be done at both the surface and subsurface levels.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Subsurface monitoring can directly and/or indirectly track the reservoir's status. One direct method involves drilling deep enough to collect a sample. This drilling can be expensive due to the rock's physical properties. It also provides data only at a specific location.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: One indirect method sends sound or electromagnetic waves into the reservoir which reflects back for interpretation. This approach provides data over a much larger region; although with less precision.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Seismic monitoring is a type of indirect monitoring. It is done by creating seismic waves either at the surface using a seismic vibrator, or inside a well using a spinning eccentric mass. These waves propagate through geological layers and reflect back, creating patterns that are recorded by seismic sensors placed on the surface or in boreholes. It can identify migration pathways of the CO plume.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Examples of seismic monitoring of geological sequestration are the Sleipner sequestration project, the Frio CO injection test and the CO2CRC Otway Project. Seismic monitoring can confirm the presence of CO in a given region and map its lateral distribution, but is not sensitive to the concentration.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Organic chemical tracers, using no radioactive nor Cadmium components, can be used during the injection phase in a CCS project where CO is injected into an existing oil or gas field, either for EOR, pressure support or storage. Tracers and methodologies are compatible with CO – and at the same time unique and distinguishable from the CO itself or other molecules present in the sub-surface. Using laboratory methodology with an extreme detectability for tracer, regular samples at the producing wells will detect if injected CO has migrated from the injection point to the producing well. Therefore, a small tracer amount is sufficient to monitor large scale subsurface flow patterns. For this reason, tracer methodology is well-suited to monitor the state and possible movements of CO in CCS projects. Tracers can therefore be an aid in CCS projects by acting as an assurance that CO is contained in the desired location sub-surface. In the past, this technology has been used to monitor and study movements in CCS projects in Algeria (Mathieson et al. “In Salah CO 2 Storage JIP: CO 2 sequestration monitoring and verification technologies applied at Krechba, Algeria”, Energy Procedia 4:3596-3603), in the Netherlands (Vandeweijer et al. “Monitoring the CO injection site: K12B”, Energy Procedia 4 (2011) 5471–5478) as well as in Norway (Snøhvit).


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Eddy covariance is a surface monitoring technique that measures the flux of CO from the ground's surface. It involves measuring CO concentrations as well as vertical wind velocities using an anemometer. This provides a measure of the vertical CO flux. Eddy covariance towers could potentially detect leaks, after accounting for the natural carbon cycle, such as photosynthesis and plant respiration. An example of eddy covariance techniques is the Shallow Release test. Another similar approach is to use accumulation chambers for spot monitoring. These chambers are sealed to the ground with an inlet and outlet flow stream connected to a gas analyzer. They also measure vertical flux. Monitoring a large site would require a network of chambers.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: InSAR monitoring involves a satellite sending signals down to the Earth's surface where it is reflected back to the satellite's receiver. The satellite is thereby able to measure the distance to that point. CO injection into deep sublayers of geological sites creates high pressures. These layers affect layers above and below them, change the surface landscape. In areas of stored CO , the ground's surface often rises due to the high pressures. These changes correspond to a measurable change in the distance from the satellite.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Multiple studies indicate that risk and benefit perception are the most essential components of social acceptance.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Risk perception is mostly related to the concerns on its safety issues in terms of hazards from its operations and the possibility of CO leakage which may endanger communities, commodities, and the environment in the vicinity of the infrastructure. Other perceived risks relate to tourism and property values.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: People who are already affected by climate change, such as drought, tend to be more supportive of CCS. Locally, communities are sensitive to economic factors, including job creation, tourism or related investment.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Experience is another relevant feature. Several field studies concluded that people already involved or used to industry are likely to accept the technology. In the same way, communities who have been negatively affected by any industrial activity are also less supportive of CCS.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Few members of the public know about CCS. This can allow misconceptions that lead to less approval. No strong evidence links knowledge of CCS and public acceptance. However, one study found that communicating information about monitoring tends to have a negative impact on attitudes. Conversely, approval seems to be reinforced when CCS is compared to natural phenomena.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Due to the lack of knowledge, people rely on organizations that they trust. In general, non-governmental organizations and researchers experience higher trust than stakeholders and governments. Opinions amongst NGOs are mixed. Moreover, the link between trust and acceptance is at best indirect. Instead, trust has an influence on the perception of risks and benefits.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: CCS is embraced by the shallow ecology worldview, which promotes the search for solutions to the effects of climate change in lieu of/in addition to addressing the causes. This involves the use of advancing technology and CCS acceptance is common among techno-optimists. CCS is an "end-of-pipe" solution that reduces atmospheric CO, instead of minimizing the use of fossil fuel.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: On 21 January 2021, Elon Musk announced he was donating $100m for a prize for best carbon capture technology.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: A 2021 "DeSmog Blog" story highlighted, "CCS hubs are likely be sites in communities already being impacted by the climate crisis like Lake Charles and those along the Mississippi River corridor, where most of the state carbon pollution is emitted from fossil fuel power plants. Exxon, for example, is backing a carbon storage project in Houston's shipping channel, another environmental justice community."


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: CCS has been discussed by political actors at least since the start of the UNFCCC negotiations in the beginning of the 1990s, and remains a very divisive issue.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Some environmental groups raised concerns over leakage given the long storage time required, comparing CCS to storing radioactive waste from nuclear power stations.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Other controversies arose from the use of CCS by policy makers as a tool to fight climate change. In the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report in 2022, most pathways to keep the increase of global temperature below 2 °C include the use of negative emission technologies (NETs).


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Opponents claimed that CCS could legitimize the continued use of fossil fuels, as well obviate commitments on emission reduction.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Some examples such as in Norway shows that CCS and other carbon removal technologies gained traction because it allowed the country to pursue its interests regarding the petroleum industry. Norway was a pioneer in emission mitigation, and established a CO tax in 1991.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Environmental NGOs are not in widespread agreement about CCS as a potential climate mitigation tool. The main disagreement amid NGOs is whether CCS will reduce CO emissions or just perpetuate the use of fossil fuels.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: For instance, Greenpeace is strongly against CCS. According to the organization, the use of the technology will keep the world dependent on fossil fuels.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: On the other hand, BECCS is used in some IPCC scenarios to help meet mitigation targets. Adopting the IPCC argument that CO emissions need to be reduced by 2050 to avoid dramatic consequences, the Bellona Foundation justified CCS as a mitigation action. They claimed fossil fuels are unavoidable for the near term and consequently, CCS is the quickest way to reduce CO emissions.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: According to the Global CCS Institute, in 2020 there was about 40 million tons CO per year capacity of CCS in operation and 50 million tons per year in development. In contrast, the world emits about 38 billion tonnes of CO every year, so CCS captured about one thousandth of the 2020 CO emissions. Iron and steel is expected to dominate industrial CCS in Europe, although there are alternative ways of decarbonizing steel.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: CCS can be employed to achieve a number of goals regarding climate change mitigation, such as preventing average global temperature from reaching certain levels above the pre-industrial average. In December 2015, the Paris Agreement articulated a census to not exceed pre-industrial global temperatures by more than 2 °C and recognized that different countries would have different contributions to help realize this goal. Under the Paris Agreement, different scenarios and climate models were analyzed for different temperature goals considering a wide range of mitigation methods from a temperature goal of less than 2 °C to an upper limit of exactly 2 °C increase above the pre-industrial average.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: The terms CCS and CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage) are often used interchangeably. The difference between the two is the specified 'utilization' of the captured carbon and refers to its use for other applications, such as enhanced oil recovery (EOR), potentially making liquid fuel, or the manufacturing of useful consumer goods, such as plastics. Since both approaches capture emitted CO and effectively store it, whether that be under-ground in geological formations or long-term trapping in material products, the two terms are often treated the same.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: CCS is considered as a basis of one climate stabilization wedge, which is a proposed climate mitigation action to reduce approximately 1 billion tonnes of carbon emissions over 50 years.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Large scale CCS plays a crucial role in reaching climate change stabilization. According to the IPCC, the carbon emission patterns can greatly vary based on the uncertainty of human power consumption. A file regarding the fluctuations of greenhouse gas emissions is shown to the right. However, CCS' primarily role is to delay the shift from fossil fuels and thereby reducing transition costs. The implementation of default technology assumptions would cost 29-297% more over the century than efforts without CCS for a 430-480 ppm CO/yr scenario. The Paris agreement upholds a goal to reach no more than a 2.0 °C increase above pre-industrial temperatures. If the 2.0 °C goal is to be reached in time, CCS must be utilized to achieve net zero emissions by 2060-2070. After 2060-2070, negative emissions will need to be achieved to remain below the 2.0 °C target. The variations in methods depend heavily on the climate change model being used and the anticipated energy consumption patterns. It is widely agreed upon, however, that CCS would need to be utilized if there is to be any negative climate change mitigation.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: The concept of a 2.0 °C came to light in the European Union of 1996 where the goal was to reduce the global temperature range relative pre-industrial levels. The decision of the 2 °C range was decided mostly on the evidence that many ecosystems are at risk if average global temperatures exceeded this limit. In order to limit the anthropogenic emissions such that there is no more than a 2 °C change relative to the periods between 1861 and 1880, carbon emissions would need to be limited to about 1000 GtC by 2100 since that period. However, by the end of 2011 about half of the budget was already released (445 GtC) indicating that a lower budget is necessary.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: A distinctive path that aims for a 2.0 °C limit might have complications. The first complication involves the lack of positive feedback loops in IPCC climate models. These loops include reduction of ice sheet size, which would mean less sunlight is reflected and more is absorbed by the darker colored ground or water, and the potential release of greenhouse gases by thawing tundra. Since the lifetime of CO in the climate atmosphere is so long, these feedback loops have to be taken into consideration. Another important factor to consider is that a 2.0 °C scenario necessitates tapping into alternative fossil fuels sources that are harder to obtain. Some examples of these methods are the exploitation of tar sands, tar shales, hydrofracking for oil and gas, coal mining, drilling in the Arctic, Amazon, and deep ocean. Therefore, 2.0 °C scenarios result in more CO produced per unit of usable energy. Further, the danger of extra released CH via mining processes must be taken into account.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Different models are based on when the peak of carbon emissions happen on a global scale. In one article regarding the 2.0 °C scenario with respect to pre-industrial levels, possible approaches are short term and long term emission resolutions as well as the considering the cost effectiveness of different solutions to reduce carbon emissions. Short term goals are set to quantify progress towards the temperature goal. In a short term goal, looking ahead to the year 2020, the allowable carbon emissions must be between 41 and 55 GtCO per year. The short term 2 °C scenario is not feasible without CCS.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Currently, greenhouse gas emissions would need to be reduced by 7 Gt of carbon equivalent each year by 2050 to achieve 2 °C stabilization. This requires power generation with CCS at 800 coal-fired power plants of 1 GW energy generation capacity, 180 coal-synfuel plants, or natural gas plants worth 1,600 GW. In this scenario, one of the wedges, or 1 Gt of carbon is accounted for by CCUS.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: A change of temperature below 2 °C is, to certain extent, almost impossible to achieve due to the current carbon emission practices. The IPCC notes that it is difficult to assess a climate mitigation scenario that would limit average global temperature increase to only 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. This is mainly due to the fact that few reliable multi-model studies have been conducted to thoroughly explore this scenario. Nevertheless, what few studies that have been done agree that mitigation technologies must be implemented immediately and scaled up quickly and reflect energy demand decrease. A change below 1 °C with respect to pre-industrial era is now inconceivable because by 2017 there was already an increase of 1 °C.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Because of the immediate inability to control the temperature at the 1 °C target, the next realistic target is 1.5 °C. There is enough confidence that past emissions alone (pre-industrial time) will not be enough to go beyond the 1.5 °C target. In other words, if all anthropogenic emissions were stopped today (reduced to zero), any increase beyond the 1 °C change for more than half of a degree before 2100 is unlikely. If anthropogenic emission are considered, the probability for the planet increasing for more than 1.5 °C before 2100 are high. Then, scenarios where the degree change is maintain below 1.5 °C are very challenging to achieve but not impossible.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: For a below 2.0 °C target, Shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) had been developed adding a socio-economic dimension to the integrative work started by RCPs models. The advantage of using SSPs is that they incorporate social standards, fossil fuel use, geographical development, and high energy demand. SSPs also incorporate the use of six other models such as GCAM4, IMAGE, MESSAGE-GLOBIOM, and REMIND-MAgPIE. The combination of models and scenarios concluded that by 2050, annual CO emissions are in the range between 9 and 13 billion tons of CO. All of the scenarios estimated that temperature will remain below 2.0 °C change with a 66% probability of success. To do so, a 1.9 W/m within the year 2100 is necessary. Net zero GHG emissions have to be achieved between 2055 and 2075, and CO emissions have to be in a range between 175 and 475 GtCO between the years 2016-2100. All SSPs scenarios show a shift away from unabated fossil fuels, that is process without CCS.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: To achieve a 1.5 °C target before 2100, the following assumptions have to be considered; emissions have to peak by 2020 and decline after that, it will be necessary to reduce net CO emissions to zero and negative emissions have to be a reality by the second half of the 21st century. For this assumptions to take place, CCS has to be implemented in factories that accompany the use of fossil fuels. Because emissions reduction has to be implemented more rigorously for a 1.5 °C target, methods such as BEECS, and natural climate solutions such as afforestation can be used to aim in the reduction of global emissions. BECCS is necessary to achieve a 1.5 °C. It is estimated by the models that with the help of BECCS, between 150 and 12000 GtCO still have to be removed from the atmosphere.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Another negative emission strategy which includes CCS can also be approached through DACCS. Direct Air Carbon Capture and Sequestration (DACCS) is a carbon negative technology that utilizes solid amine based capture and it has proven to capture carbon dioxide from the air even though content of the air is much lower than of a flue gas from a coal plant. However, it would require renewable energies to power since approximately 400kJ of work is needed per mole of CO capture. Furthermore, it is estimated that the total system cost is $1,000 per tonne of CO, according to an economic and energetic analysis from 2011.


title: Carbon capture and storage

text: Going forward in the utilization of models such as SSPss and RCP, feasibility of the model has to be to take into consideration. Feasibility includes concerns in various fields, such as geophysics, technology, economics, social acceptance, and politics, all of which can serve to facilitate or obstruct the carbon capture and sequestration of emissions needed in order to achieve the global temperature targets. Uncertainty in feasibility is especially a problem with more strict temperatures limits such as 1.5 °C. Real world feasibility of SSPs models, or any other models, in general are coarse approximations of reality.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: Thomas Rhett Akins Jr. (born March 30, 1990) is an American singer-songwriter. He is a son of singer Rhett Akins.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: Rhett has released six studio albums for Big Machine Records' Valory Music imprint: "It Goes Like This" (2013), "Tangled Up" (2015), "Life Changes" (2017), "Center Point Road" (2019), "" (2021) and "Where We Started" (2022). He has received four Grammy Award nominations with two albums being nominated for Best Country Album in 2017 and 2019.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: His five albums have produced 21 singles on the "Billboard" Hot Country and Country Airplay charts, with 17 reaching the No. 1 position on the latter: "It Goes Like This", "Get Me Some of That", "Make Me Wanna", "Crash and Burn", "Die a Happy Man", "T-Shirt", "Star of the Show", "Craving You", "Unforgettable", "Marry Me", "Life Changes", "Sixteen", “Remember You Young”, "Look What God Gave Her", "Beer Can't Fix", "What's Your Country Song", and "Country Again".


title: Thomas Rhett

text: In addition to much of his own material, Rhett has written singles for Jason Aldean, Lee Brice, Florida Georgia Line, LoCash, and Michael Ray, among others.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: Rhett was born in Valdosta, Georgia, to mother Paige Braswell and father Rhett Akins. He was raised in Hendersonville, Tennessee. He grew up knowing other singers including Tim McGraw and Brooks & Dunn. He has one younger sister, and two younger half-brothers; one on his mother's side, and one his father's side.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: After learning to play drums while attending junior high school, Rhett later would go onstage with his father and play. In high school, he was part of a band named The High Heeled Flip Flops. Rhett went to Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, to study communications. He dropped out of college when he was 20 to pursue a career in music. He subsequently accepted a publishing deal by Big Machine Label Group to write songs.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: Rhett co-wrote the song "I Ain't Ready to Quit" on Jason Aldean's 2010 album "My Kinda Party" and signed a recording contract with Big Machine Records' Valory Music Group division in 2011. The album's first 21 weeks were spent in the top 40 of the Billboard 200; it also has sold 1.7 million in its first years of release.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: Rhett also co-wrote the 2013 singles "1994" by Jason Aldean, "Parking Lot Party" by Lee Brice, and "Round Here" by Florida Georgia Line. During the chart week of September 21, 2013, the Country Airplay chart included five songs within the top 10 that Rhett or his father had co-written, including "It Goes Like This".


title: Thomas Rhett

text: In early 2012, he released his debut single, "Something to Do with My Hands", followed later that year by "Beer with Jesus". Both of these made top 30 on the Hot Country Songs charts. His third single, "It Goes Like This", topped the Country Airplay chart and also peaked at number 2 on the Hot Country Songs.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: His debut album, also titled "It Goes Like This", was released on October 29, 2013. The album's fourth single, "Get Me Some of That", became Rhett's second number 1 single in early 2014. The album's fifth single, "Make Me Wanna", was released to country radio on August 4, 2014. It reached number one on the Country Airplay chart on March 7, 2015. In between the two singles, Rhett sang guest vocals along with Justin Moore on Brantley Gilbert's "Small Town Throwdown".


title: Thomas Rhett

text: On April 7, 2015, Rhett released a new single titled "Crash and Burn" which served as the lead single to his second studio album. The album, "Tangled Up", was released on September 25. It reached at number one on the Country Airplay chart in September 2015. The album's second single, "Die a Happy Man" released to country radio on September 28, 2015. It reached at number one on the Country Airplay, Hot Country Songs, and Canada Country chart in December 2015. and January 2016. It stayed at number one on the Country Airplay chart for 8 weeks, becoming the second song in the chart's history to do so. The album's third single, "T-Shirt" released to country radio on February 16, 2016. It reached at number one on the Country Airplay in June 2016, but received poor critical reviews criticizing its lyrical content. The album's fourth single, "Vacation" released to country radio on June 13, 2016. The album's fifth single, "Star of the Show", released to country radio on October 3, 2016.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: On September 8, Rhett released his third studio album "Life Changes". It includes the chart-topping singles "Craving You" featuring Maren Morris, "Unforgettable", and "Marry Me". The title track was released as the album's fourth single on April 16, 2018. The album's fifth single was "Sixteen".


title: Thomas Rhett

text: On March 1, 2019, Rhett released "Look What God Gave Her" as the lead-off single to his fourth studio album, "Center Point Road". The following night, on "Saturday Night Live", Rhett performed another new song from the album, called "Don't Threaten Me With a Good Time." The album was released on May 31. "Remember You Young" was the album's second single, while "Beer Can't Fix" featuring Jon Pardi was the third single.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: In 2020, Rhett released the standalone single "Be a Light", a star-studded collaboration featuring Reba McEntire, Hillary Scott, Chris Tomlin and Keith Urban. All proceeds earned from the song are donated to the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund. Rhett won Entertainer of the Year at the 2020 Academy of Country Music Awards. He co-wrote the song "Don't Need the Whiskey" by Dallas Smith, released in August 2020.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: In March 2021, Rhett announced a double album release, with the first part, "", released on April 30, 2021. It includes the singles "What's Your Country Song" and "Country Again". In November 2021, he released the single "Slow Down Summer", which is the lead single from his sixth studio album "Where We Started", released on April 1, 2022. Rhett intends to release the album "Country Again: Side B" in late 2022.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: Rhett also released a promotional single in 2022 titled "Death Row", which features guest vocals from Tyler Hubbard and Russell Dickerson.


title: Thomas Rhett

text: Rhett married Lauren Akins ( Gregory), on October 12, 2012. In May 2017, they announced that they were adopting a baby girl from Uganda who was born on November 1, 2015, and were also expecting. They welcomed their daughter in August 2017. Their third daughter was born on February 10, 2020, and their fourth daughter was born on November 15, 2021.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 3 January 2020, Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general, was killed by a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport. The drone targeted and killed Soleimani while he was on his way to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi in Baghdad. Soleimani was commander of the Quds Force, one of five branches of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and was considered the second most powerful person in Iran, subordinate to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Five Iraqi nationals and four other Iranian nationals were killed alongside Soleimani, including the deputy chairman of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and commander of the Iran-backed Kata'ib Hezbollah militia, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis – a person designated as a terrorist by the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Pentagon says Soleimani and his troops were "responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: The strike occurred during the 2019–2022 Persian Gulf crisis, which began after the U.S. withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, reimposed sanctions, and accused Iranian elements of fomenting a campaign to harass U.S. forces in the region in 2019. On 27 December 2019, the K-1 Air Base in Iraq, which hosts Iraqi and U.S. personnel, was attacked, killing an American contractor. The U.S. responded by launching airstrikes across Iraq and Syria, reportedly killing 25 Kata'ib Hezbollah militiamen. Days later, Shia militiamen and their supporters retaliated by attacking the U.S. embassy in the Green Zone.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: U.S. officials justified the Soleimani strike saying it was necessary to stop an "imminent attack", though later clarifying the legal justification of the action as being taken "in response to an escalating series of attacks...to protect United States personnel, to deter Iran from conducting or supporting further attacks...and to end Iran's strategic escalation of attacks..." Some experts, including the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, considered the assassination as a likely violation of international law as well as U.S. domestic laws. Iran called the strike an act of "state terrorism". The Iraqi government said the attack undermined its national sovereignty and considered it a breach of its bilateral security agreements with the U.S. and an act of aggression against its officials. On 5January 2020, the Iraqi parliament passed a non-binding resolution to expel all foreign troops from its territory while, on the same day, Iran took the fifth and last step of reducing commitments to the 2015 international nuclear deal.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Soleimani's killing sharply escalated tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Iranian leaders vowed revenge, while U.S. officials said they would preemptively attack any Iran-backed paramilitary groups in Iraq that they perceived as a threat. Many in the international community reacted with concern and urged restraint and diplomacy. Five days after the airstrike, Iran launched a series of missile attacks on U.S. forces based in Iraq, the first known direct engagement between Iran and the U.S. since the naval battle precipitating the Vincennes incident on 3 July 1988. Following the shootdown of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 amidst the escalation, no additional actions took place.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: The modern Middle East has seen a number of occasions in which the assassination of high-level government and military figures was attempted, or at least considered. Such instances include United States decapitation strike air raids targeting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 1986 and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 1991, 1998, and 2003, in addition to killings of non-state terrorist leaders such as Anwar al-Awlaki and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Governments conducting assassinations of foreign leaders and officials was largely frowned upon in prior centuries, but that norm has been weakening over time, especially since World War II. The effectiveness of anti-terrorist "leadership targeting" has become a subject of scholarly debate, especially with regard to whether such killings are actually beneficial to a country's foreign policy goals.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: In the wake of the strike against Soleimani, both the topic of further eroding norms and questions regarding effectiveness were raised. The costs and benefits of foreign policy assassinations are difficult to compute, and decisions to go ahead with such actions often reflect the vague, and not always realized, hope that any successor to the targeted person will be less capable against, or will embody policies more favorable toward, the country taking the action.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: In 2014, the U.S. intervened in Iraq as a part of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR)–an American-led mission to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terror organization–and have been training and operating alongside Iraqi forces as a part of the anti-ISIL coalition. In 2017, ISIL forces in Iraq were largely defeated amidst a civil conflict, with the help of primarily Iran-backed Shia militias—the Popular Mobilization Forces, reporting to the Iraqi prime minister since 2016—and the U.S.-backed Iraqi Armed Forces.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Concerning the 15-year Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action provisional nuclear deal with Iran, some critics of the treaty argued that Iran could make a nuclear bomb after expiry of the limited-term nuclear deal. U.S. President Donald Trump criticized the nuclear deal, particularly the Obama administration's debt clearance of $1.7 billion to Iran. Tensions rose between Iran and the U.S. in 2018 after Trump unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions against Iran—which severely affected Iran's economy—as a part of his administration's strategy of applying "maximum pressure" against Iran for the purpose of establishing a new nuclear deal.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: The Quds Force, which Qasem Soleimani led, has been designated a terrorist organization by Canada, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the U.S. Soleimani himself was sanctioned by the United Nations and the European Union and was on U.S. terror watchlists.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was designated a terrorist by the U.S. in 2009. He was the deputy commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). He also commanded Kata'ib Hezbollah, a 25,000-strong militia considered a terrorist organization by Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and the U.S.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: General Qasem Soleimani was considered the second most powerful person in Iran, behind Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and in his later years enjoyed a near unassailable heroic status, especially with supporters of Tehran's hard-line politics.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Ever since the Iran–Iraq War (1980–88), in which Iran was attacked by Saddam Hussein's Iraq with significant assistance of several Western countries siding with Hussein against Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic republic in Tehran, with notably the U.S. supplying weapons and intelligence to Iraq, Soleimani had developed into the architect of all of Iran's foreign policies in the Middle East and a key figure in all of Iran's foreign and defence policies. He provided crucial support to President Bashar al-Assad's regime during the Syrian Civil War. In his 2008 letter to the U.S. General David Petraeus, then Commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, he asserted: "General Petraeus, you must know that I, Qasem Soleimani, am in charge of the Iranian policies concerning Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan". Iran's alleged ties to the Taliban were cited as part of the justification for the assassination of Soleimani.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: That made his killing by the U.S. on 3 January 2020 a significant aggravation of the existing tensions between the U.S. and Iran.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: In the days after the assassination of Soleimani, Iran's leaders vowed "shattering revenge" "on places and at times where the U.S. don't expect it".


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Responses to Qasem Soleimani's perceived influence in Iraq and abroad had been a topic of debate amongst U.S. officials for many years. In August 2007, as U.S. military officials attempted to learn more about the leadership of the Iran-backed proxy groups operating in Iraq, they received a message relayed through the Iraqi Minister of State for National Security, that Soleimani wanted them to know that he was "the sole decision-maker on Iranian activities in Iraq".


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: According to a report by NBC News, Eric Edelman, a career foreign services officer with senior diplomatic posts at the time, U.S. commander Army General George Casey, considered designating Soleimani and Quds Force officers enemy combatants, thus making them subject to military action. However, the idea was ruled out over concerns of opening a "new front" in the war. Edelman stated, "There were a lot of us who thought he should be taken out. But at the end of the day, they decided not to do that," due to concern of starting simultaneous conflict with Iran.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Former U.S. presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both considered and rejected targeting Qasem Soleimani, reasoning that it would escalate to a full-scale war. Retired CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos told "The New York Times" that Soleimani, unlike other adversaries killed by the U.S., felt comfortable operating in the open and was not hard to find. He often took photographs of himself and openly taunted U.S. forces.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: In October 2007, the Bush administration was the first to designate Soleimani a terrorist on the basis of his involvement with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force, and the increasing recognition of the role they played in the Iraq conflict. According to an interview with a PolitiFact journalist, retired U.S. Army Colonel Frank Sobchak, said that around the same time U.S. special forces had planned for his capture, but the mission was not approved by senior officials. He said, "Individuals that we talked to in senior positions of the U.S. government told us that with support for the war at an all-time low in 2007, the Bush administration recognized the importance of Soleimani to the war, but was not willing to risk the political capital and repercussions that could occur from expanding the war to that level."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: These activities preceded escalating concern and terror designations of Soleimani by the Obama administration. The first such designation was made in May 2011, in response to Soleimani's assistance to the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate in the violent suppression of Syrian protestors. The second, and more serious designation by the Obama administration came in October 2011, after a plot was revealed in which four senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) officers were planning to assassinate the Saudi Arabian Ambassador while in the United States, under the supervision of Soleimani.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: In September 2015, radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Donald Trump about Soleimani. After initially confusing him with a Kurdish leader, Trump argued that leaders like Soleimani would be dead under his administration.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: It was reported in 2015 that Israel was "on the verge" of assassinating Soleimani on Syrian soil; however, the U.S., during the Obama administration's negotiations for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, thwarted the operation by revealing it to the Iranian officials.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 25 August 2019, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said, "Israel is acting to strike the head of the Iranian snake and uproot its teeth... Iran is the head of the snake and Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, is the snake's teeth." In October 2019, Hossein Taeb, chief of the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told the press that his agency had arrested an unspecified number of people, allegedly foiling a plot by Israeli and Arab agencies to assassinate Soleimani. He said they had planned to "buy a property adjacent to the grave of Soleimani's father and rig it with explosives to kill the commander". He added the way of the assassination would have appeared as part of an internal Iranian power struggle to "trigger a religious war inside Iran". Yossi Cohen, chief of the Israeli foreign intelligence agency (Mossad), said in response, "Soleimani knows that his assassination is not impossible."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 2 January 2020, "The New York Times" author Steven Simon wrote in a comment: "What if the former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Qassim Suleimani, visits Baghdad for a meeting and you know the address? The temptations to use hypersonic missiles will be many."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: In early October 2019, according to two Iraqi militia commanders and two security sources who spoke with Reuters staff, Iranian Major-General Qasem Soleimani met in Baghdad to discuss a change in strategy with Iraqi Shiite militia allies. The new focus of strategy was to be an increase in targeted rocket attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, with the intended effect of provoking an antagonistic U.S. military response that would divert political pressure from Iran. Leading up to the meeting, there had been increasing anti-Iran sentiment amongst the local Iraqi population, culminating in prolonged and vocal anti-Iran protests, including such specific displays of anti-Iran sentiment as demonstrators banging their shoes on raised portraits of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. At least 400 protestors were killed and an estimated 20,000 wounded. Soleimani decided to step up attacks on U.S. forces. He chose Kata'ib Hezbollah because the group "would be difficult to detect by the Americans" and could to use Iran-provided scout drones for more precision in target selection for the rocket attacks. The US was becoming increasingly concerned at Iran's influence within the Iraq government.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 27 December 2019, the K-1 Air Base in Kirkuk Province, Iraq—one of many Iraqi military bases that host Operation Inherent Resolve coalition personnel—was attacked by more than 30 rockets, killing an Iraqi-American U.S. defense contractor, and injuring multiple U.S. and Iraqi service members. The U.S. blamed the Iranian-backed Kata'ib Hezbollah militia for the attack. Furthermore, a senior U.S. official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, said there had been a campaign of 11 attacks on Iraqi bases hosting OIR personnel in the two months before the 27 December incident, many of which the U.S. also attributed to Kata'ib Hezbollah. On 29 December 2019, retaliatory U.S. airstrikes targeted five Kata'ib Hezbollah weapon storage facilities and command and control locations in Iraq and Syria. 25 militia members died and 55 were wounded.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 31 December 2019, after a funeral was held for the Kata'ib Hezbollah militiamen, dozens of Iraqi Shia militiamen and their supporters marched into the Green Zone and surrounded the U.S. embassy compound. Dozens of the demonstrators then smashed through a main door of the checkpoint, set fire to the reception area, raised Popular Mobilization Units militia flags, left anti-American posters, and sprayed anti-American graffiti. U.S. president Donald Trump accused Iran of orchestrating the attack on the embassy and added that they would be held "fully responsible". Iran's foreign ministry denied they were behind the protests.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: The Pentagon evaluated Soleimani was the leader of Tehran's attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq, including the 2019 K-1 Air Base attack and killing of a U.S. civilian, and the shooting down of a U.S. aerial vehicle. Regarding the decision to kill Soleimani, the U.S. focused on both his past actions and a deterrent to his future action as the Pentagon announced that "he was actively developing plans to attack U.S. diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: According to an unidentified senior U.S. official, sometime after the bombing of Kata'ib Hezbollah in late December 2019, a security briefing was convened at President Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate where he and his advisors, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff General Mark Milley discussed how to respond to Iran's alleged role in sponsoring anti-U.S. attacks in Iraq. Reportedly, the targeted killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, whom U.S. officials regarded as a facilitator of attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq, was listed as the "most extreme option" of many options on a briefing slide, reflecting an alleged practice among Pentagon officials whereby a very extreme option is presented to presidents so as to make other options appear more palatable. Trump chose the option to kill Soleimani, prompting the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies that had tracked Soleimani's whereabouts for years to locate him on a flight from Damascus to Baghdad, reportedly to hold meetings with Iraqi militiamen. The air strike would have been called off if Soleimani had been on his way to meet with Iraqi government officials aligned with the U.S.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Trump did not notify the top congressional leaders of the Gang of Eight in advance of the strike. Senator Lindsey Graham indicated Trump had discussed the matter with him in advance of the strike, as he was visiting the president at his Mar-a-Lago estate. According to journalist Bob Woodward, four days before the strike, Graham tried to change Trump's mind as they discussed the decision while playing golf.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: According to unidentified sources cited by "The New York Times", Trump initially rejected the option to target Soleimani on 28 December 2019, but made the decision after being angered by television news reports of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad being attacked by armed Iranian-backed militiamen, namely Kata'ib Hezbollah and the Popular Mobilization Forces, on 31 December. This followed a 27 December rocket attack by Kata'ib Hezbollah on an airbase in Kirkuk that killed an American civilian contractor and injured four U.S. service members and two Iraqi security forces personnel. By late 2January, Trump had finalized his decision of the most extreme option his advisors had provided him, which reportedly "stunned" top Pentagon officials. "The New York Times" report cited unidentified U.S. officials as saying the intelligence regarding Soleimani's alleged plot against the U.S. was "thin" and that the Ayatollah had not approved any operation for Soleimani to carry out. However, General Milley said the intelligence was "clear and unambiguous" with a time frame of "days, weeks". U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence were reportedly the most hawkish voices arguing to retaliate against Iran. Vice President Pence later wrote that Soleimani was plotting "imminent" attacks on U.S. persons, but provided no evidence of this. U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien insisted that Soleimani "was plotting to kill, to attack American facilities, and diplomats, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were located at those facilities".


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: In contrast to the "Times"' reporting, according to unidentified sources cited by "The Washington Post" on 4 January 2020, Trump wanted to kill Soleimani to avoid the appearance of weakness amid the ongoing Persian Gulf crisis, since his decision to call off an airstrike against Iran in summer 2019 after the downing of a U.S. drone had led to what he perceived as negative media coverage. Lawmakers and aides who had spoken to him told the "Post" that the president also had the 2012 Benghazi attack in Libya on his mind. Furthermore, Mike Pompeo had discussed killing Soleimani with Trump months before the strike, but did not garner support from the president or the defense team then in place. However, according to "The Wall Street Journal" on 10 January 2020, Trump purportedly told associates after the strike that he was motivated to strike Soleimani for domestic political gain, particularly to sway Republican Senators to support him in his upcoming Senate impeachment trial.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On the day of the strike, U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo asserted the attack was ordered by Trump to disrupt an "imminent attack" by Soleimani operatives, although subsequent reports on that rationale were mixed. On 9January, Trump said "We did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy. We also did it for other reasons that were very obvious. Somebody died, one of our military people died. People were badly wounded just a week before." On 10 January, Trump claimed that Soleimani had been planning attacks on four U.S. embassies in the Middle East. Afterwards several members of Congress, including Mike Lee and Chris Murphy, claimed that the Trump administration had not informed them of this in the intelligence briefing on the strike. Three days after Trump's remarks, Defense Secretary Mark Esper clarified that, although "there was evidence" of a plot against the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the president "didn't cite intelligence" about the other three embassies he mentioned, and that the president instead shared his belief that there "probably could have been" a plot against those embassies.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 18 January, CNN reported that President Trump claimed that Soleimani was "saying bad things about our country", then he asked "How much of this shit do we have to listen to?... How much are we going to listen to?"


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Adil Abdul-Mahdi, Prime Minister of Iraq, said he was scheduled to meet Soleimani on the day the attack happened, with the purpose of Soleimani's trip being that Soleimani was delivering Iran's response to a previous message from Saudi Arabia which Iraq had relayed. According to Abdul-Mahdi, Trump had called him to request that Abdul-Mahdi mediate the conflict between the U.S. and Iran before the drone strike.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 3 January 2020, at 12:32a.m. local time, Soleimani's Airbus A320 Cham Wings plane arrived at Baghdad International Airport from Damascus International Airport after being delayed for two hours for unknown reasons. An MQ-9 Reaper drone of the U.S. Air Force and other military aircraft loitered above the area as Soleimani and other pro-Iranian paramilitary figures, including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, leader of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, entered a Toyota Avalon and Hyundai Starex and departed the airport towards downtown Baghdad. At 12:47a.m., the Reaper drone launched several missiles, striking the convoy on an access road as it departed the airport, engulfing the two cars in flames, killing 10 people.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: As news of the event broke, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a statement which said that the strike was carried out "at the direction of the president" and was meant to deter future attacks. Trump asserted that Soleimani had been planning further attacks on American diplomats and military personnel and had approved the attack on the American embassy in Baghdad.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: According to Saudi-based "Arab News", the drone that struck Soleimani's convoy had been launched from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, and was controlled remotely by operators at the Creech Air Force Base. A statement by the Air Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) stated that Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait participated, among other bases in the region, in the operation that was executed near Baghdad airport recently. Kuwait summoned the Iranian ambassador to Kuwait over the statement and expressed Kuwait's resentment and categorical denial at such statement. According to Ahmed al-Asadi, a member of the Iraqi Parliament, the drones "were 3 American UAVs that took-off from the military-base of Ain al-Assad and flew in the sky of Baghdad for 20 hours on Thursday morning and then came back directly to the Ain al-Assad base after carrying out the assassination operation."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: As DNA results were still pending regarding the identification of those killed, a senior Pentagon official said there was "high probability" that Soleimani would be identified. Soleimani's body was identified by a ring that he was known to wear. Ahmed Al Asadi, a spokesman for the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), confirmed the deaths of Soleimani and Muhandis. According to Ayatollah Ali Sistani's office, the casualties included "several commanders who defeated Islamic State terrorists".


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: The IRGC said a total of ten people were killed. Along with Soleimani, four other IRGC officers were also killed: Brigadier General Hossein Pourjafari, Colonel Shahroud Mozafarinia, Major Hadi Taremi and Captain Vahid Zamanian. The remaining five casualties were Iraqi members of the PMF: deputy chairman Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, chief of protocol and public relations Muhammed Reza al-Jaberi, Mohammad al-Shibani, Hassan Abdul Hadi and Heydar Ali.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On the same day of the Baghdad airport strike, an IRGC financier and key commander, Abdulreza Shahlai, was unsuccessfully targeted by U.S. drones in Yemen, which killed Mohammad Mirza, a Quds Force operative, instead. Shahlai was also responsible for the killing of five American soldiers in Karbala, Iraq on 20 January 2007.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: According to a "Washington Post" investigation, the unsuccessful operation might indicate a broader operation than previously explained, raising questions about whether the mission was designed to cripple the leadership of the IRGC or solely to prevent an imminent attack on Americans as originally stated.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Soleimani and al-Muhandis' deaths raised tensions between the U.S. and Iran. As stated by France 24, the targeted killing of Qasem Soleimani "caused alarm around the world, amid fears that Iranian retaliation against American interests in the region could spiral into a far larger conflict".


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Shortly after the attack, several planes with U.S. service members took off from bases in the eastern United States. The following day, the U.S. Department of Defense announced the deployment of 3,500 members of the 82nd Airborne Division to the region, one of the largest rapid deployments in decades. Defense officials said the deployment was not directly related to the airstrike which killed Soleimani, but was instead a "precautionary action in response to increased threat levels against U.S. personnel and facilities".


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 5January, the UK announced that the Royal Navy will accompany UK-flagged ships through the Strait of Hormuz.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: The day after the Baghdad airport attack, Iraqi state news reported that there had been another airstrike on a convoy of medical units of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces near Camp Taji in Taji, north of Baghdad. An Iraqi Army source told Reuters the attack killed six people and critically wounded three. The PMF later said there was no senior commander in the convoy, and the Imam Ali Brigades denied reports of the death of its leader. The PMF also denied that any medical convoy was targeted at Taji. There was no information about who conducted the attack. Spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve Colonel Myles B. Caggins III said the coalition did not do it, while Iraq's Joint Operations Command denied reports of any such attack occurring, saying it was simply a false rumor that spread quickly due to the prior airport strike.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: A spokesman for the Iranian government said the country's top security body would hold an extraordinary meeting shortly to discuss the "criminal act of attack". Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned that "retaliation is waiting". On 4January, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said there was "no specific, credible" threat to the U.S. mainland but warned about Iranian capabilities. Trump warned Tehran that any retaliation would result in the U.S. targeting 52 Iranian significant sites, including cultural sites. The 52 sites were reported to represent the 52 American hostages held during the Iran hostage crisis. Hossein Dehghan, the main military adviser of Iran, and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif asserted that attacks on Iranian cultural sites would be grave breaches of international law. U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo avoided a direct answer when asked about cultural targets, saying that Washington will do the things that are right and the things that are consistent with U.S. law. U.S. secretary of defense Mark Esper later asserted that cultural sites would not be targeted because "That's the laws of armed conflict."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 5 January 2020, the Islamic Consultative Assembly of Iran chanted "America, the greatest Satan", during its session. That day, Iran announced that it would suspend all its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal except that it would continue to cooperate with the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. The statement added, "If the sanctions are lifted... the Islamic Republic is ready to return to its obligations."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: In a speech broadcast on 8 January on Iranian television IRINN TV, Iranian President Rouhani stated that Iran will no longer stick to the 2015 nuclear agreement restrictions on uranium enrichment: "Iran's nuclear industry will prosper" he said. Secondly, Rouhani mentioned in his speech that "They cut off the hand of our dear Soleimani" and as revenge they, the Iranians, would cut off the legs of the Americans and toss them out of neighboring countries.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: The remains of Soleimani and the Iranian figures killed in the strike arrived in Iran on 5January, where they became part of mourning processions in several cities, first in Ahvaz and later in Mashhad, where one million people attended the mourning. It was initially reported that Iran canceled the mourning procession planned in Tehran because the city would not be able to handle the number of attendees expected after the turnout in Mashhad; however, the Tehran service was held, at which Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly wept while leading prayers for the funeral. Iranian state media said the crowd of mourners numbered in the "millions", reportedly the biggest since the 1989 funeral of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Iranian authorities planned to take Soleimani's body to Qom on 6January for public mourning processions, then onto his hometown of Kerman for final burial on 7January. Before the national procession was completed, multiple infrastructure works, such as the international airport at Ahvaz and an expressway in Tehran, had already been renamed after him. The funeral was boycotted by critics of the current government by using the hashtag #IraniansDetestSoleimani for the IRGC's war crimes. The hashtag was amplified by "inauthentic" accounts almost immediately after creation.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 7 January 2020, at least 56 people were killed and 213 injured in a stampede during Soleimani's burial at Kerman. As a result, the burial was postponed to a later time.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Shortly after the confirmation of Soleimani's death, U.S. spy agencies reportedly detected that Iran's ballistic missile regiments were at a heightened readiness but it was unclear at the time if they were defensive, cautionary measures or an indication of a future attack on U.S. forces.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 8 January 2020, Iranian forces launched ballistic missiles at the Al Asad Airbase and an airbase near Erbil, both in Iraq, where American personnel were located. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared that the strikes were part of their retaliation for the killing of Soleimani. No Iraqi or American casualties were initially reported.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: According to the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), the country's state-run news outlet, Iran fired "tens of ground-to-ground missiles" at the base and claimed responsibility for the attacks. The attacks unfolded in two waves, each about an hour apart. The Pentagon said these bases were on high alert after signs of the Iranian government were planning attacks on U.S. forces. Although the Pentagon disputes the number launched, it has confirmed that both the Ayn al-Asad and the Erbil airbases were hit by Iranian missiles. A military spokesman for U.S. Central Command said a total of 15 missiles were fired. Ten hit the Ayn al-Asad airbase, one hit the Erbil base, and four missiles failed. Other sources confirmed that two ballistic missiles targeted Erbil: one hit Erbil International Airport and did not explode, the other landed about west of Erbil. On 8January Saudi Arabia's Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman said the Kingdom would stand with Iraq and do everything in its power to spare it from the "danger of war and conflict between external parties". The same day a Ukrainian passenger jet was shot down by the Iranian military over Tehran after presumably being mistaken for an enemy cruise missile. All 176 people on board were killed.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Following a series of conflicting and confusing reports, the Pentagon confirmed that several dozen servicemen had been injured to varying degrees of severity, by the Iranian missile strikes.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Global oil prices rose moderately in reaction to Soleimani's death to heights not seen for three months, before falling back down. Following Iran's zero-fatality missile attack, prices were lower than before the airstrike that killed al-Muhandis.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 2 January 2022, the second anniversary of Soleimani's assassination, "The Jerusalem Post's" website was hacked, displaying an illustration threatening Israel's Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center. The image featured a ballistic missile shooting out of a red ring worn on a finger, an apparent reference to the notable ring worn by Soleimani. The Twitter accounts of the Jerusalem Post and "Maariv" were also targeted. It was unclear if the hack was state sponsored or was conducted by pro-Iranian sympathizers.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: In the wake of the Baghdad strike, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad urged Americans to leave Iraq immediately "via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land". The next day, Britain warned its nationals to avoid all travel to Iraq outside the Kurdistan region, and to avoid all but essential travel to Iran. Australia issued a similar warning advising its nationals to "leave Iraq as soon as possible".


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 4 January, the funeral procession for Soleimani, al-Muhandis, and the other Iraqis and Iranians was held in Baghdad and attended by thousands of mourners who chanted "death to America, death to Israel". Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi was also present. The cortege began around Al-Kadhimiya Mosque, a Shiite holy site in Baghdad, before heading to the Green Zone government and diplomatic compound where a state funeral was held. From Baghdad, the procession moved to the Shia holy city of Karbala and on to Najaf, where al-Muhandis and the other Iraqis were buried, while the coffins of Soleimani and the Iranian nationals were sent to Iran. Following the mourning procession in Baghdad, unknown people fired short-range rockets towards the U.S. embassy and at the U.S. Balad Air Base. The U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, said no Americans were harmed by the sporadic rocket attacks on 4January.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 6January, Chevron evacuated all its American oil workers from Iraqi Kurdistan as a "precautionary measure".


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Al-Manar reported that "in an extraordinary session on Sunday, 170 Iraqi lawmakers signed a draft law requiring the government to request the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Only 150 votes are needed that the draft resolution be approved." There are 329 lawmakers in total. Rudaw Media Network (Kurdish) described the 170 Iraqi lawmakers that signed the law as Shiite and that "Iraqi parliament's resolution to expel foreign troops has no legal consequences." Al Jazeera reported the resolution read "The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting Islamic State due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory" and "The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason." The resolution was approved in the Iraqi parliament. In response to the vote, Trump threatened Iraq with sanctions that would "make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame" and demanded reimbursement for American investments on military facilities in Iraq.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 6 January 2020, the Pentagon released a letter from Marine Brigadier General William Seely to Abdul Amir, the Iraqi deputy director of Combined Joint Operations Baghdad, informing him that "as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, CJTF–OIR will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement." Shortly afterward, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said, "That letter is a draft. It was a mistake, it was unsigned, it should not have been released... [it was] poorly worded, implies withdrawal, that is not what's happening."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: A couple of days later, United States Department of State warned Iraq that it could lose access to its Federal Reserve Bank of New York accounts, in a phone call if U.S. troops were asked to leave, according to Iraqi officials.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: In mid February, the Iraqi government confirmed to NATO, that they could restart its training missions, which have been paused since the attack. Troops from CJTF–OIR are expected to be moved and work under the NATO banner instead.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: The sustained massive street protests in Iraq that led to Abdul-Mahdi's resignation as prime minister (and temporary caretaker role) restarted in the days after the assassination of Soleimani and al-Muhandis, with a shift in the focus of protests from mostly anti-Iran to criticism of both the U.S. and Iran. The "Made in Iraq" street and online protests strengthened in Baghdad following the assassination. Major protests took place on 5January 2020 in many cities, "Made in Iraq" protests on 7January, and two thousand protested in Basra and Nassiriyah on 10 January, with one of the slogans being "Neither America nor Iran, our revolution is a young revolution."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 24 January, several hundred thousand Iraqis protested against U.S. military presence in Iraq and called for them to leave the country after Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for a "Million Man March." Iraqi President Barham Salih tweeted, "Iraqis insist on a state with complete sovereignty that will not be breached."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 31 December 2021, hundreds of Iraqis rallied ahead of the second anniversary of the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani, burning a model of the US embassy in Iraq. Demonstrators gathered outside Baghdad’s Green Zone – which includes the sprawling US Embassy compound calling for the expulsion of American forces still in Iraq.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: On 3 January 2021, the one year anniversary of the killings of Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, thousands of Iraqis demanded American forces pull out of the country in protests in Liberation Square, Baghdad. The anniversary of their deaths in Baghdad was also marked in Iran and by supporters in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: The airstrike's legal justification became a subject of debate. In 2022, Raisi declared that unless Trump and Pompeo are brought to trial in an Iranian Islamic Court, revenge will be sought.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: In January 2020, after the U.S. killed Soleimani, US Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft wrote a letter to the UN Security Council in which she said that the act was one of self-defense. At the same time, she wrote in the letter that the US stood "ready to engage without preconditions in serious negotiations with Iran, with the goal of preventing further endangerment of international peace and security or escalation by the Iranian regime."


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: The Charter of the United Nations generally prohibits the use of force against other states, if a country does not consent to it on its territory. The Government of Iraq did not grant permission to the U.S. to target a military commander from another country on its soil. Some legal experts believe a lack of consent from Iraq makes it difficult for the U.S. to justify the attack.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: Agnès Callamard, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, issued an opinion that the airstrike "most likely violate[d] international law incl[uding] human rights law", adding that killing of other individuals alongside Soleimani was "absolutely unlawful". On 6 July 2020, Callamard said that the attack was first known incident in which a nation invoked self-defence as a justification for an attack against a state actor in the territory of a third country and that the United States has failed to provide sufficient evidence of an ongoing or imminent attack against its interests in order to justify the strike. In a report to be presented to the UN human rights council, Callamard wrote "the course of action taken by the US was unlawful" and was a violation of the UN charter.


title: Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

text: U.S. officials denied the claim. On 8 July 2020, responding, the U.S. State Department said "This tendentious and tedious report undermines human rights by giving a pass to terrorists and it proves once again why America was right to leave the council." UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: "the intelligence information I have seen, under the right to defend yourself against an imminent threat, that would have been met."