“HAAA is an Iraq-based Iran-backed militia group, which is part of the ‘Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI)’— a front group that includes multiple Iran-aligned terrorist and militia groups, including US-designated terrorist organizations Kata’ib Hizballah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada. These groups have repeatedly attacked the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria,” stated Matthew Miller, US State Department spokesperson.
“The IRI has claimed responsibility for dozens of recent attacks against US military personnel in Iraq and Syria, including the January drone attack that killed three US service members at Tower 22 in Jordan. HAAA was involved in that attack and has publicly threatened to continue targeting US interests in the region,” Miller added.
According to Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and co-founder of the Militia Spotlight platform, “This decision of declaring HAAA as a global terrorist organization could be connected to two main options: the first could be that the U.S. is formally putting HAAA in the list to strike them more in the future, by saying that they are targeting a terrorist group.”
“The second option could be that the US has recently learned something else on the group and is taking this step to prevent them from posing a serious threat not only to the US personnel in Iraq and Syria but to the overall region. This statement aims at showing that America is doing something, but sanctions remain ineffective,” he explained to The Media Line. READ MORE
