The American civilian defense contractor whose murder by Iran-backed forces in Iraq sparked American retaliation was Nawres Waleed Hamid, a Muslim-American immigrant from Sacramento, California. He was laid to rest last Saturday.
Hamid was killed in a rocket attack on Americans Dec. 27 at an Iraqi military base near the city of Kirkuk. Several American and Iraqi soldiers were also wounded in the attack, blamed on the Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hizbollah (KH). In response, the U.S. bombed five KH facilities in Iraq and Syria. Iran responded by using KH and another militia, the Popular Mobilization Force (PMF), to attack and damage the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Dec. 31.
In response, the U.S. launched a successful air strike against Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad last week. Soleimani led the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC) Quds Force, a terrorist organization.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Hamid was mourned deeply by the local Muslim-American community:
News of Hamid’s funeral spread through Sacramento’s Muslim community Friday, the day his body was finally returned home. More people received word of his death via WhatsApp. He was buried the next day, in line with the Muslim tradition that requires funerals to be held as quickly as possible.
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Hamid’s family belongs to a growing community of Iraqi immigrants in Sacramento and across California. Hamid’s widow told the Sacramento Bee that they came to the U.S. in 2011, when she was pregnant with their eldest son.
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It was not immediately clear whether Hamid and his wife moved to the U.S. on a special immigrant visa or through another pathway for Iraqis who have helped the American military, such as the P-2 Direct Access Program that allows people to apply for refugee resettlement in the United States through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.
Iran responded with a missile attack on Tuesday night that caused no U.S. casualties, then declared that its response had “concluded,” leading many analysts to declare that President Donald Trump had won the confrontation by re-establishing an deterrent against Iranian aggression without sacrificing additional troops or attacking Iran directly.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.