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Leader of Iranian-backed siege of US embassy once visited Obama White House





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A leader of the Iranian-backed siege of the US Embassy in Baghdad visited the White House with other Iraqi officials in 2011 during the Obama administration, according to a report on Thursday.

Hadi al-Amari was photographed outside the US diplomatic compound after the militiamen tried to storm the facility and was identified by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of being an Iranian “proxy” aiding terror groups in Iraq.

“The attack today was orchestrated by terrorists – Abu Mahdi al Muhandis and Qays al-Khazali – and abetted by Iranian proxies – Hadi al Amari and Faleh al-Fayyad. All are pictured below outside our embassy,” Pompeo wrote in a tweet on Tuesday as the siege was underway.





Amari, the head of the Fatah Alliance, Iraq’s second-largest political party, was Iraq’s minister of transportation in 2011 and accompanied then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on an Oval Office visit with President Obama, the Daily Mail reported.

As the leader of the paramilitary group the Badr Organization, Amari has deep connections with the Iranian leadership and the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

He fought alongside US forces against Islamic State terrorists as a commander in the Badr Organization.

Amari also played a crucial role in the formation of the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group of mostly Shiite militias in Iraq that includes Kataib Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran.





The US military conducted airstrikes over the weekend on five bases in Iraq and Syria belonging to Kataib Hezbollah, killing five fighters and wounded scores more, in an action that sparked the storming of the embassy in Baghdad.

The US blamed the Iran-aligned group with killing an American contractor and wounding four service members in a missile attack on an Iraqi base last Friday.

Louis Freeh, the FBI director in the Clinton administration, criticized Amari’s White House visit at the time because of the allegations connecting him to terrorist attacks, including the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 US military personnel.

The attack on the towers was eventually traced to Iran and Hezbollah, the Iranian-linked group based in Lebanon.





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