The People's Liberation and Resistance (PLR) was an Iranian ultranationalist paramilitary insurgent group which was led by Faruk al-Bashir during the 2010s. The PLR was founded by Quds Force as an Iranian proxy during the Iraqi Civil War, operating from bases in Iraqi Kurdistan and waging war against the United States in the region. In 2014, in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in Iraq and Iran, al-Bashir - by then a war hero in Iran - took advantage of the situation to assert his control over the Iranian military, steering it along an ultranationalist course and leading to a covert US invasion of Iran. The PLR failed in its attempts to use Russian suitcase nuclear bombs to destroy Paris and New York City to frame Russia and divert US attention from the Middle East to a costly war with Russia, and, on 2 November 2014, al-Bashir died in a car crash while attempting to escape the US Marine Corps team sent to apprehend him. al-Bashir's death and the foiling of the PLR bomb plots in Paris and New York led to the Iranian government shutting down the PLR, whose actions had nearly resulted in an all-out war between the USA and Iran, and a major distraction from the escalating fight against ISIL in Iraq.