Thursday, March 4, 2021

Biden needs to respond to rocket attacks on US forces in Iraq - analysis

Most of the details of an attack on Wednesday that targeted US forces stationed at the Al-Asad base in Iraq have been revealed.

A truck was used; ten rockets were placed in the truck’s bed and then a false bed was put on top of them to obscure them. This was a method that has been used in the past by pro-Iranian militias. The rockets were 122mm and are an Iranian type. Iran was likely behind the attack by operationalizing one of its local militias.

But key questions remain about which militia carried out the attack and what the militias expect will come next. One source told Iranian media that the attack had three messages: One was to avenge an airstrike the US carried out in Syria in February. That airstrike was itself a response to an attack on US forces in Iraq's Erbil in mid-February. The second and third messages were designed to challenge the so-called US “occupation” of Iraq. The pro-Iranian “resistance,” led by Kataib Hezbollah there, was apparently sending these messages.
But the US is not being hasty in saying who did it. This is because naming names requires actually doing something in response. If a person ordered it, or Iran, then more airstrikes on warehouses and bases in Syria would not be an appropriate response. Yet the US knows from long experience that Iran uses Iraq as a kind of “near abroad” battleground to bleed the US.
Iranian-backed militias have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq since 2003. Iranian-backed groups used the infamous “EFPs” that exploded and killed Americans a decade ago. These roadside bombs were later altered. Now Iran uses 107mm and 122mm rockets to attack American troops.

The questions facing the Pentagon are also about force protection. The US withdrew from most facilities in Iraq but wants to continue to have a footprint at Union III in Baghdad, at Al-Asad and in Erbil. It expected to be safe in Erbil. But America lacks many of the key components of a multi-layered air defense system to stop these rockets.
Iran is using the same kind of munitions it advised Hezbollah and Hamas to use against Israel. However, Israel has developed Iron Dome and other systems to protect itself and stop those rockets. The US has Patriots for longer range ballistic missiles and it has C-RAM for shorter range munitions. But Washington doesn’t appear desirous of moving more air defense systems into Iraq. This leaves US forces and Coalition contractors a bit at the mercy of the Islamic Republic.
The key questions linking Iran to the attacks, such as signal intelligence or some kind of courier that brings the orders to Kataib Hezbollah, and the planning structure or even the garage where the rocket trucks are assembled, are key parts of Iran’s threats in Iraq. Finding those would require more cooperation from Baghdad.
So far, Tehran continues to get the plausible deniability it wants with the rocket attacks in Iraq. The US under the Biden administration appears hesitant to launch airstrikes the way Trump’s administration did there.