Iran’s media gave major headlines to claims of attacks on US forces in Syria on July 4. The date was symbolic. It was Independence Day in the US. What better day for Iran to claim it had struck at a US base in Syria. However, it turns out the rumors of the rocket attacks were likely false, and the US-led Coalition denied any incident happened in Syria.
That doesn’t matter for Iran’s media, and the media stations that have links to Iran’s IRGC. The reports claimed there were attacks and “explosions” at a US base. However sources there denied the reports. What Iran may be messaging on this issue is more complex than just rumored attacks. Iran may be pinpointing where the next front will begin in its conflict with the US. Since 2019 Iran has upped attacks on the US in Iraq. It has used militias such as Kataib Hezbollah to carry out numerous attacks. It also downed a US drone in June 2019 and mined ships in the Gulf of Oman in May and June. At the time US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned about the Iranian threats. The threats increased rapidly through the fall of 2019.
At the same time in 2019 there were concerns expressed by US officials in the fall of 2019 that Israeli-Iran tensions could affect the US. A report from the US Lead Inspector-General on the anti-ISIS coalition Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) in November 2019 spotlighted “tensions with Iran and suspected Israeli airstrikes,” as a complication for the OIR mission against ISIS in Iraq. In addition, the report noted that US Central Command was concerned that “Iranian backed forces in Syria might look to target US military personnel or its partner forces in Syria if they view the US as complicit in Israeli strikes on its [Iran’s] forces.”
The report noted a July 2019 incident in which there was the “first of several suspected Israeli drone strikes in Iraq” and that it targeted a Popular Mobilization “munitions depot near Baghdad.” What did this mean? “Tensions with Iran and suspected Israeli airstrikes complicate OIR this quarter,” the report said at the. time. “According to media reports, suspected Israeli airstrikes on Iraqi bases belonging to Iranian-aligned militias this quarter exacerbated ongoing tensions between the United States and Iran and complicated the OIR mission.”
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