[ad_1]
December 21, 2020
A barrage of Katyusha rockets landed near the US embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone on Sunday in the latest attack the US blamed on Iranian-backed militias.
The US State Department said that at least one Iraqi civilian was injured as a result of the attacks and that the embassy suffered minor damage. The Iraqi military blamed “an outlaw group” for the attack.
US counter-rocket, artillery and mortar (C-RAM) systems activated the rockets, blasting jets of illuminated tracer rounds into the night sky over the Iraqi capital on Sunday.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh called the attack “unacceptable”, but suggested that the timing of the attack and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement were “dubious.”
Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most powerful Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, also criticized the attack, calling it “inappropriate.” Powerful Iranian-linked militias declared a pause in their attacks on US personnel and facilities in Iraq in October.
Still, sporadic attacks have continued, raising concerns that the U.S. assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani earlier this year may have eroded the influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps over various groups of Iraqi militias.
Sunday’s discharge comes just two weeks before the January 3 anniversary of Soleimani’s assassination by a US drone strike in Baghdad.
Pompeo warned Iraqi President Barham Salih in September that if the militia attacks were not stopped, the United States would withdraw its staff from the Iraqi embassy and attack the militias without distinction.
The U.S. military is slightly reducing its roughly 5,000 troops in Iraq on the orders of President Donald Trump.
In recent weeks, Washington has deployed two separate long-range strategic bomber missions to the Middle East and sent the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz back to the region as a deterrent against possible hostile Iranian actions.
The latest flight of the B-52 came after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for retaliation for the murder last month of a top nuclear scientist. Tehran officials have blamed Israel for the coup.
Tehran has expanded what is believed to be its main nuclear site at Natanz and enriched uranium beyond the limits set by the 2015 nuclear deal in response to the US campaign of economic sanctions against Iran, implemented after the Trump administration abandon the nuclear deal. in 2018.
In the final days of his administration, Trump allegedly gave Pompeo and other officials a blank check to “punish” Iran before “starting.[ing] Third World war “.
[ad_2]
