US Must Prepare for War Against Iran and Iraq

Baghdad Embassy Attackers Pull Back; Tehran Foresees Iraqis Expelling US Forces

(CNSNews.com) – Pro-Iranian Iraqi militiamen and supporters pulled back from the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on Wednesday following a second days of clashes and tensions, but from Tehran came optimistic predictions that Iraqi authorities will now work to end the U.S. military presence there.

The compound had come under attack by members of the Iran-backed Shi’ite militia Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH), but after incidents of rock throwing met by tear gas fired by U.S. forces they withdrew by Wednesday evening, after Iraqi government appeals for calm.

The militiamen were angered by U.S. military strikes last Sunday on five KH bases in western Iraq and eastern Syria which cost the lives of at several dozen fighters.

Those strikes were in response to the latest in a series of rocket attacks targeting U.S. personnel in Iraq. An American civilian contractor was killed when multiple rockets were fired at a military base near Kirkuk.

KH, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization since 2009, is a key component of the “Popular Mobilization Forces” (PMF), a force formed in 2015 to help Iraq’s military in its fight against ISIS terrorists.

For that reasons and others, many Iraqi politicians and lawmakers reacted heatedly to the U.S. strikes.

Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s top Shi’a cleric, condemned the strikes and accused the U.S. of violating Iraq’s sovereignty. He said the Iraqi government alone was responsible for dealing with the “illegal practices carried out by some sides” – likely a reference to the rocket attacks that prompted the U.S. response.

The prominent Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said he was ready to work with his political rivals to get the roughly 5,000 American troops in Iraq expelled, through political and legal means – or if unsuccessful, then by taking “other actions.”

The move is significant because Sadr, whose political bloc controls the largest number of seats in parliament since elections in 2018, has been critical of both Iranian and U.S. involvement in Iraqi affairs.

In Tehran Keyhan, a hardline newspaper whose editor is appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, insinuated that the U.S. had ulterior motives for attacking the KH bases.

A Keyhan writer began with the allegation that Khamenei himself has leveled – that the U.S. wanted to avenge the PMF’s successes against ISIS (which the regime bizarrely claims is a U.S. creation.)

The writer then offered other possible motivations for the military strikes, including an attempt by President Trump to divert attention from a pending trial in the U.S. Senate; and an attempt flex U.S. muscles in response to the recent Iran-Russia-China joint naval maneuvers.

Whatever the actual reason for attacking KH bases, the writer said, “the U.S. has disturbed a hornet’s nest whose lethal stings will soon see its end in West Asia.”

Keyhan noted with satisfaction Sistani’s statement and Sadr’s readiness to work to expel U.S. troops.

“[I]t is only a matter of time for the executive and legislative branches of the government to coordinate moves for formally ending the undesirable military presence of the Americans,” it said.

‘This will not be a Benghazi’

Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, Florida on New Year’s Eve that he neither wants nor envisages a war with Iran.

Asked whether he foresees going to war with Iran, he replied, “ I don’t think that would be a good idea for Iran. It wouldn’t last very long. Do I want to? No. I want to have peace. I like peace.”

“And Iran should want peace more than anybody. So I don’t see that happening. No, I don’t think Iran would want that to happen,” Trump said.

Trump also noted that, when violent protests erupted at the embassy on Tuesday, a taskforce of U.S. Marines were dispatched “immediately,” contrasting the incident with the Sept. 2012 attack by armed militants on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

“This will not be a Benghazi,” he said. “Benghazi should never have happened. This will never, ever be a Benghazi.”

The 2012 attack cost the lives of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Controversy surrounding the Obama administration’s handling of the episode plagued former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign.

As part of the response to Benghazi, U.S. Marine crisis response taskforces have deployed or been repositioned in the U.S. Central Command and U.S. Africa Command areas of responsibility.

It was members of the Central Command element, known as the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force – Crisis Response – Central Command, that deployed from Kuwait to the Baghdad embassy in MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft on Tuesday.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced the same day that at the president’s direction he has authorized the deployment of a battalion from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division’s Immediate Response Force to the Central Command area, “in response to recent events in Iraq.”