U.S. Sec Of State Pompeo And PM Netanyahu Speak Following U.S. Attacks In Iraq

Pompeo and Netanyahu speak following US attacks in Iraq

Elad Benari, 

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke on Monday with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the State Department confirmed in a statement.

The conversation followed the US air strikesagainst the Kataib Hezbollah militia in Iraq, which came in response to the killing of a US civilian contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base.

“Secretary Pompeo and Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed US strikes in Syria and Iraq and the threat Iran presents to the region. The Secretary reiterated that the US will take decisive action to defend its citizens and their interests against Iranian threats,” the statement said.

Earlier on Monday, Netanyahu said he spoke with Pompeo and congratulated him on what he called "the important US action against Iran and its proxies in the region".

Top US officials declared on Sunday that the air strikes against Iranian-backed forces in Syria and Iraq were “successful”, and hinted that the US was preparing for future attacks on Iranian assets in the Middle East.

Aftermath Of U.S. Strikes Against Iranian-Backed Forces - Israel Must Be Careful

Ex-IDF intel chief: Now that US engaged Iran, Israel must be careful

By YONAH JEREMY BOB

Following Sunday's US airstrikes on Iranian-affiliated militias in Iraq, Israel must now be more careful about its own airstrikes in Iraq, former IDF intelligence chief Amos Yadlin tweeted on Monday.

Yadlin said that the US decision to directly engage Iran and its proxies with kinetic force was "the crossing of a rubicon" in which the US set down a red-line for Iran that it will respond with military force if the Islamic republic kills Americans.

This past weekend a missile attack from an Iran-affiliated militia killed a US contractor and wounded US soldiers at a base in Iraq.

Iranian-affiliated militias had launched missile attacks on US forces for several weeks, but this was the first attack in which an American was killed.

Until now, many Israeli officials had criticized the Trump administration for failing to use force to respond to Iran's shooting down of a US drone, to an Islamic republic attack on Saudi oil fields and to the missile attacks on US bases.

In contrast, Israel has carried out airstrikes on Iranian militias in Iraq for between several months to even a year.

Last week, IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi even discussed the attacks in a more public and detailed manner than ever before.

Yadlin's point was that Israel had more freedom of action in Iraq against Iranians as long as the US was not acting.

However, now that the US is taking action against Iran, Israel must be more careful about such airstrikes in Iraq and coordinate them more closely with the overall US strategy.

Yadlin noted the risk that Iraq could force US forces out of the country and that Israel does not want to be the cause of such a scenario.

After US attacks Iranian-backed militias, is America back in the game?

By ANNA AHRONHEIM 

Just days after IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi lamented that Israel was going up against Iran alone, airstrikes rocked several locations belonging to Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq and Syria, killing dozens.

The airstrikes, which came two days after a barrage of over 30 rockets were fired towards the K1 Iraqi military base in Kirkuk which killed a US civilian contractor and wounding dozens of Iraqi and American troops, were described by the Pentagon as “precision defensive strikes” against the group that "will degrade" the group's ability to carry out future attacks against coalition forces.

The rocket barrage and the subsequent retaliatory strikes in the area of Al-Qaim are the latest peak in tensions between Washington and Tehran. And might have negative effects on Israel, which has been carrying out a war-between-the wars campaign against Iranian entrenchment since 2013.

Situated in Iraq’s restive Anbar province on one side and Syria’ Deir Ezzor province, al-Qaim is an area which is under the control of pro-Iranian Shiite militias who are handled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds force.

Only last week Israel’s top military chief publicly admitted to Israeli airstrikes in Iraq, stating that Iran’s Quds force is smuggling advanced weapons in the country on a monthly basis “and we can’t allow that.”

The first strike close to Iraq attributed to Israel was in June of last year near the town of Al-Bukamal, killing 22 members of a Shiite militia.  The next month several other blasts rocked Shiite militia warehouses and bases across the country.

Both Israel and the US have warned that Iran and its proxy militias are the biggest threats to peace in the region and hope to weaken Tehran's growing influence across the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

Iran got away with their attacks, perhaps because there were no American fatalities-until Friday.

“The fact that the US has taken so long to respond to Iranian escalation, and only responded to the loss of life, risks communicating that America’s red line and bar for action against Iran-backed malign activity remains high,”Benham Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told The Jerusalem Post.

“American military power, even when judiciously and narrowly applied, can also signal that Washington can’t be written off permanently from the equation.”

According to Taleblu, while the target following these strikes remains America, “Iran has long engaged in cross-domain escalation, absorbing costs in one area while responding in another.”

And Israel, he added “will need to develop contingencies for what, where, and how Iran-backed militias will respond to these air-strikes.”

So have the rules of the game changed? Is Israel no longer alone in the ring against Iran and its proxy groups?

Rumors Of War: More Military Action Against Iran?

Will It Be War? US Airstrikes Hit Iran-Backed Militias As Pentagon Warns More Military Action Coming

A lot of people seem to have forgotten that we were literally on the brink of war with Iran earlier this year. Back in June, President Trump cancelled a major U.S. bombing mission against Iran at the last minute, and things seemed to settle down quite a bit since that time. But now tensions are rising once again. On Sunday, U.S. airstrikes targeted Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria that U.S. officials believe have been behind recent rocket attacks against U.S. forces. Of course those Iranian-backed forces never would have launched such attacks in the first place if they did not have permission from Tehran itself.

The Iranians love to hide behind proxies, and for now the U.S. is only conducting airstrikes against those proxies. But at some point President Trump’s patience is likely to run out, and at that point we could start hitting Iran itself. 

Over the past six months, the U.S. has sent 14,000 more troops to the Middle East, and it is being reported that “the Pentagon is considering deploying additional forces to the region”. The drumbeats of war are starting to get louder again, and many believe that eventually one side is likely to push the other side a bit too far.

The attacks that we just witnessed were supposed to send a very strong message to Tehran. According to the Daily Mail, five separate targets were hit, and at least 19 people were killed…

US air strikes left 19 people dead in Iraq and Syria on Sunday in retaliation against an Iranian-backed militia group blamed for a rocket attack two days earlier that killed an American contractor.

F-15 Strike Eagles hit five targets associated with Kataib Hezbollah, the Iranian-sponsored Shiite militia group, said Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

These airstrikes were launched to directly retaliate for the casualties that U.S. forces suffered from a rocket attack on one of their bases in Iraq on Friday…

Officials with the U.S.-led mission to defeat ISIS said Friday that a U.S. civilian contractor was killed and several American troops were wounded in a rocket attack targeting an Iraqi base in Kirkuk.

The attack, which occurred Friday around 7:20 p.m. local time in Iraq, also wounded several Iraqi personnel, officials with Operation Inherent Resolve told Military Times in an emailed statement.

But of course that attack was just the latest in a series of rocket attacks that have targeted U.S. forces lately…

I am certainly not a fan of military conflict, but if I am sitting in the White House and someone keeps lobbing rockets at my troops I wouldn’t wait two months to hit them back.

As I noted earlier, these Iranian-backed militias wouldn’t be doing anything without approval from Tehran. If Trump really wants these rocket attacks to stop, Iranian leaders need to be sent a message that will be clear and unmistakable.

And it appears that U.S. officials may be starting to lean in that direction. In fact, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told the press on Sunday that more military action “could be warranted”…

Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared briefly in a club ballroom to comment on the airstrikes.

Esper termed the offensive “successful,” but said that Trump was informed that a further military response could be warranted.

Personally, I don’t know what the Iranians are thinking.

Perhaps they believe that if they use their proxies to make things uncomfortable enough for U.S. forces that Trump will eventually pull them out of the region.

Iran Declares That U.S. Dominance In Mideast Is Over

"US Dominance In Mideast Is Over": Iran Declares After Joint Drills With Russia & China

At a moment the US struck five supposedly 'Iran-linked' militia bases in Iraq and Syria on Sunday, sending regional tensions soaring, unprecedented four-day long joint naval drills involving Iran, Russia and China outside the Persian Gulf were simultaneously winding down. 

Iran used the occasion of being joined by Chinese and Russian warships in the Gulf of Oman and Indian Ocean to declare that US dominance in the Middle East is now over.

"Today, the era of American free action in the region is over," naval commander Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi said. "They must leave the region gradually," he added.

And now Iran has not only said the drills are set to continue annually upon their close on Sunday, but is inviting other countries to join.

Feeling emboldened by the official participation of the Chinese and Russian navies, Adm. Khanzadi further told semi-official Mehr news agency:

We are seeking to achieve collective security, and for that purpose, we are inviting regional countries to join us [in the drills].

From the start, Iranian officials have touted the joint naval drills as sending “a highly significant message” to the US and their allies, especially given the United States has struggled to attract key European allies to join its own 'maritime naval mission' in the gulf to thwart Iran. Instead, Europe has initiated its own mission which leaders have emphasized has nothing to do with the US project. 

Adm. Khanzadi continued, “There is no threat facing the Persian Gulf region except for the presence of foreign forces such as the US, which are endangering the security of this region.” He also said Iran is planning future such drills with regional allies in the Caspian Sea. The weekend's joint exercises were the first of their kind, and were conducted across an area of 17,000 square kilometers to demonstrate "various tactical exercises".

The statements inviting other powers to join Russian and China for next year's exercise come after Tehran charged Washington with committing acts of "terrorism" by its weekend airstrikes on sovereign Iraqi soil.

Russia too condemned the airstrikes as "unacceptable and counterproductive" in a foreign ministry statement on Monday.

Cartoon shared by Iran Navy's Telegram channel amid joint naval drills with Russia and China which started today and will last until Monday pic.twitter.com/dBE9Q7JPX9

— Reza Khaasteh (@Khaaasteh) December 27, 2019

And Kataib Hezbollah — which lost at least 24 of its members with scores more wounded in the US airstrikes — urged all Iraqi paramilitary groups to work to expel American forces from Iraq.

“We have no choice but confrontation,” a Kataib Hezbollah statement said. “Trump should know that he will pay a heavy price in Iraq and the countries where his criminal forces are present.”

Who Is Kataib Hezbollah?

Who is Kataib Hezbollah, the group the US attacked in Iraq and Syria?

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN 

On December 29, the US carried out five airstrikes against Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi-based Shi'ite militia that is linked to Iran and is accused of rocket attacks that killed a US contractor and wounded US soliders. Kataib Hezbollah is one of the most important of the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and a group with an extensive role in the Middle East, linking it to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and operations in Syria. Formed between 2003 and 2007 by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis it is a creature of Iran’s IRGC. Muhandis has threatened Israel in the past and is closely linked to both the IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and Lebanese Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah.

Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis is the leader of Kataib Hezbollah. An Iraqi, he was born in Basra and fled to Iran in the 1980s during Saddam Hussein’s crackdown on Shi’ites. He signed on to fight with Iran’s IRGC and became a close colleague of Qasem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC’s Quds Force. He was linked to the military wing of Iraq’s Dawa party at the same time, illustrating his influence among Iraqi Shi’ites in Iran.

The US Treasury found that Muhandis and his group threatened the peace and stability of Iraq. He had committed acts of violence. It said he was an advisor to Soleimani and the Quds Force. As such Kataib Hezbollah was designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Kataib was accused of receiving money from Iran through various European banks and using the money to finance attacks on Americans in the years before the US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011.

In 2014 when ISIS invaded Iraq the Shi’ite cleric Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa to raise Shi’ite  youth to fight the ISIS threat. Kataib Hezbollah, abbreviated often as KH, became one of the groups within the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) that emerged in 2014. Muhandis became the deputy commander of  the PMU, illustrating his importance.

The organization also built its own parallel state structures, storing munition and holding prisoners. In one facility south of Baghdad may hold up to 1,700 prisoners, according to a piece at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A RAND report argues that it is one of the driving forces for Iranian policy in Iraq.

In June 2018 a Kataib Hezbollah headquarters in Albukamal, Syria helping direct Iranian policy to aid the Assad regime and traffic weapons for Iran, was hit with an  airstrike. KH blamed the US and Israel for the airstrike. Kataib Hezbollah was allegedly behind a drone strike on Saudi Arabia on May 14, 2019 and an attack near the US Green Zone the same month.

The decision by the US to strike at KH was taken after intelligence showed KH’s role in rocket attacks going back more than six months. It was not a decision that was likely taken lightly because Muhandis has influence and the ability to strike back at a time of his and Iran’s choosing. 

The five strikes on both sides of the Iran-Syria border show the extent of the KH network. It has purposely colonized areas at Al-Qaim and Albukamal so that it can control the border crossing that is key to Iran’s “land bridge”  or road to the sea. It may be central to Iran’s plans to move ballistic missiles to Iraq, revealed by western intelligence services in August 2018 and December 2019.

Now KH is calling for a response to the US airstrikes. Iran is contemplating that response. KH’s long network from Beirut to Baghdad, including its ability to strike at Saudi Arabia and Israel, reveals its threat to the region and to US forces.