The explosions that killed more than 100 people in Iran on Wednesday took place at an anniversary commemoration for Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the top Iranian commander who was killed by a U.S. drone strike four years ago. General Suleimani, the most powerful Iranian commander at the head of the foreign-facing arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, was considered a hero by some in Iran and in other parts of the region for building an axis of allied militias to defend Iran's interests across the Middle East, to counter the United States and Israel, and for helping to defeat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. In the United States, he was regarded as a force behind international terrorism campaigns, and President Donald Trump said his killing in January 2020 was ordered "to stop a war" because General Suleimani had been plotting attacks on American diplomats and military personnel. General Suleimani was designated as a terrorist by the United States and Israel, where he helped orchestrate waves of militia attacks.

In 2015, General Qassem Suleimani, the architect of Iran's foreign military strategy, travelled to Moscow to see President Vladimir Putin. He had a pitch--and a plea. During their two-hour meeting, Suleimani rolled out large maps of the battlefield in Syria, which was in the fifth year of a civil war with disparate rebel groups and had lost control of a third of its territory to ISIS jihadis. The stakes for Russia were high. For decades, Syria had been its only steadfast ally among the twenty-two Arab countries.

The aircraft carrier Nimitz is finally going home. The Pentagon last month ordered the warship to remain in the Middle East because of Iranian threats against President Donald J. Trump and other American officials, just three days after announcing the ship was returning home as a signal to de-escalate rising tensions with Tehran. With those immediate tensions seeming to ease a bit, and President Biden looking to renew discussions with Iran on the 2015 nuclear accord that Mr. Trump withdrew from, three Defense Department officials said on Monday that the Nimitz and its 5,000-member crew were ordered on Sunday to return to the ship's home port of Bremerton, Wash., after a longer-than-usual 10-month deployment. The Pentagon for weeks had been engaged in a muscle-flexing strategy aimed at deterring Iran and its Shia proxies in Iraq from attacking American personnel in the Persian Gulf to avenge the death of Maj. General Suleimani, the commander of Iran's elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was killed in an American drone strike in January 2020.

The Pentagon has abruptly sent the aircraft carrier Nimitz home from the Middle East and Africa over the objections of top military advisers, marking a reversal of a weekslong muscle-flexing strategy aimed at deterring Iran from attacking American troops and diplomats in the Persian Gulf. Officials said on Friday that the acting defense secretary, Christopher C. Miller, had ordered the redeployment of the ship in part as a "de-escalatory" signal to Tehran to avoid stumbling into a crisis in President Trump's waning days in office. American intelligence reports indicate that Iran and its proxies may be preparing a strike as early as this weekend to avenge the death of Maj. Senior Pentagon officials said that Mr. Miller assessed that dispatching the Nimitz now, before the first anniversary this Sunday of General Suleimani's death in an American drone strike in Iraq, could remove what Iranian hard-liners see as a provocation that justifies their threats against American military targets. Some analysts said the return of the Nimitz to its home port of Bremerton, Wash., was a welcome reduction in tensions between the two countries.

Two men have been indicted on charges stemming from the hacking of dozens of websites based in the United States, actions that the federal authorities said were taken in retaliation for the death in an American drone strike of Maj. The men, Behzad Mohammadzadeh and Marwan Abusrour, were charged with conspiracy to commit intentional damage to a protected computer and intentional damage to a protected computer, according to the indictment, which was dated Sept. 3 and unsealed on Tuesday. Mr. Mohammadzadeh, a citizen of Iran who the authorities believe is about 19 years old, and Mr. Abusrour, who is about 25 and whom the indictment identifies as "a stateless national of the Palestinian Authority," are believed to be in their home countries. The indictment, announced by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts, did not identify or describe the approximately 51 websites that were attacked. The attacks began days after American officials announced the death of General Suleimani, Iran's most powerful security and intelligence commander, in a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport on Jan. 2, according to the indictment.