US FORCES IN IRAQ AND ISRAELI FORCES FACE A COMMON THREAT: IRANIAN ROCKETS

Shi'ite fighters fire a rocket toward Islamic State militants in Baiji, north of Baghdad, 2015 (Credit: Thaier Haier al-Sudani, Reuters)

Officials inside the US State Department and the Pentagon have become increasingly vocal about the growing trend of rocket attacks on US bases in Iraq. The locations of the attacks and the weapons used indicate that Iranian-sponsored militias, and not ISIS, are responsible. This means that US forces in the region now find themselves in the same predicament as the Israeli military, which also has to defend against ongoing, intermittent rocket fire from Iranian-sponsored militias in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria. The connection is not lost on the Americans, who have recently considered the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system as a means of protecting US troops in Iraq.

So far, no casualties have been reported as a result of the rocket fire in Iraq. Whereas the Israelis have often taken a course of direct (albeit undeclared) action against Iran and its proxies, the US has instead sought to use the regular Iraqi security forces as intermediaries with the Iranian-linked militias in Iraq - known collectively as Popular Mobilization Units (PMU's) or "Hashd al-Shabi" - in an attempt to "deconflict." But as Iranian threats on US bases in the region increase, and as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) takes a more direct role in the Iraqi government in order to quell ongoing street protests, it seems unlikely that deconfliction will occur as long as both US forces and Iranian actors are present in Iraq.

https://www.jpost.com/…/US-suspects-Iran-behind-rocket-atta…

https://www.militarytimes.com/…/rockets-land-near-baghdad-…/

https://sethfrantzman.com/…/us-breaks-silence-on-rocket-a…/…