DEBKA Exclusive: Nasrallah pays secret lightning trip to Baghdad

Wednesday night, Nov. 2-3, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah was on a secret nocturnal visit to Baghdad and Karbala, DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources report. In the space of a few hours, he held talks with the Iraqi prime minister Khaidar Abadi and heads of the pro-Iranian Shiite militias, the Badr Brigades, the Shiite Popular Mobilization Force, the Kataib Hezbollah and the Asaib Ahl al-Haq, which are fighting alongside Hizballah in Syria and Iraq. Earlier that day, those militia chiefs threatened to kill every American soldier landing in Iraq, in response to US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s announcement that US Special Operations forces were being assigned to the country.
Nasrallah then traveled to Karbala for a rare audience with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shiite community’s most influential spiritual leader. The content of their conversation was not released, but Sistani’s willingness to receive the Lebanese Hizballah chief notched up his pivotal standing in the Iran-Iraq-Syria arena