Anti-War Groups Plan More than 70 Protests Across U.S. Against Soleimani Strike

Several anti-war groups planned more than 70 protests throughout the country Saturday to show their dissent against the Pentagon’s decision to kill Iran’s top general, Qasem Soleimani, and to send 3,500 more troops to the Middle East.

The groups, which include left-wing organizations such as Code Pink and Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), organized the protests to take place in front of the White House in Washington, DC, in Times Square in New York, at Chicago’s Trump Tower, and at the Brandenberg Gate in Germany, among other places.

“The targeted assassination and murder of a central leader of Iran is designed to initiate a new war,” ANSWER stated on its website. “Unless the people of the United States rise up and stop it, this war will engulf the whole region and could quickly turn into a global conflict of unpredictable scope and potentially the gravest consequences.”

A Facebook event for a protest in Madison, Wisconsin, had 175 people reply “going,” while a protest event hosted by Code Pink in Chicago had 110 people on Facebook reply as “going.”

The protests come after the U.S. killed Soleimani in Baghdad through the use of a drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump, raising the possibility of increased conflict between the U.S. and Iran.

Democrats in Washington expressed fears that Iran could launch an attack directly on the U.S. or on one of its allies, but the Trump administration defended the attack saying that Soleimani had killed Americans before and was planning another attack.