US On Brink Of War In Iraq

We Are Entering the Time of “the Perfect Storm”, and Most People Have Absolutely No Idea What Is Ahead of Us …

What a time for the war to be brewing in the Middle East yet again: Washington warned Iraq’s government on Monday it is ready to act “self-defense” if American forces come under attack. This follows last week’s rocket attacks on Taji base just north of Baghdad, which houses US troops. At least two Americans have been killed in the recent attacks, blamed on Iran-backed militias, especially Kataib Hezbollah.

Pompeo told Iraqi PM Adil Abd al-Mahdi in a phone call that Baghdad “must defend Coalition personnel supporting the Iraqi government’s efforts to defeat ISIS,” according to a Monday State Dept. press release.

Those “responsible for the attacks must be held accountable,” the statement warned. The US “will not tolerate attacks and threats to American lives” and will take “military action as necessary in self-defense,” it added. US Air Force file image: F-15E Strike Eagles drop 2,000-pound joint direct attack munitions.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said last week “all options” remain on the table, and that President Trump had authorized a military response. An initial Pentagon response did come last Thursday in the form of broad airstrikes across southern Iraq, targeting at least 5 Kataib Hezbollah military sites. 

Iraq was prompt to condemn the US strikes which left at least 6 dead, most Iraqi national military personnel, as well as one civilian. 

Meanwhile, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry says it will submit a formal complaint to the UN Security Council condemning the repeat US violations of Iraqi sovereignty. 

“Iraq will complain to the United Nations and the Security Council about overnight U.S. airstrikes, a spokesman for the foreign ministry said on Friday,” Reuters reports. “The Iraqi military said earlier on Friday that the airstrikes had killed six people and described them as a violation of sovereignty.”

A volley of rockets struck the Camp Taji military base in Iraq on the evening of March 11, killing three US-led coalition service members, two of them Americans and one British, and injuring 12 others. The targeted military base is a large facility located in a rural region approximately 27km north of Baghdad.

After the shelling, Iraqi security forces found the improvised rocket launcher used in the attack in the nearby area of Rashidiya. It was forty 107mm barrels installed on the back of a Kia Bongo truck. Three rockets were still remaining inside the barrel.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack. However, over the past months, US-linked targets have witnessed a number of similar rocket attacks. Most of them led to no casualties. In general, US sources blame Kataib Hezbollah and other Iran-linked groups for these incidents.

The situation became especially tense after the US strike on a convoy of Iraqi and Iranian officers moving near Baghdad International Airport on January 3. The prominent Iranian general, commander of the Qods Force, Qassem Soleimani, was assassinated in this strike. The attack caused a large-scale crisis in the region and prompted an Iranian retaliatory missile strike on US military bases in Iraq. Washington swallowed a public attack on its forces by a state claiming that there were no casualties. In the following weeks, these ‘no casualties’ steadily turned into at least 110. All of them, according to the official version, received a traumatic brain injury.

Additionally, the Iraqi Parliament accepted a bill demanding US troop withdrawal from the country, which Washington ignored, even threatening Baghdad with devastating sanctions, should Iraq continue to act like it is a sovereign, rather than occupied, country.

Following the attack on Camp Taji, ‘unknown aircraft’, most likely belonging to the US-led coalition, struck positions belonging to Iranian-backed groups near the Syrian-Iraqi border. The surroundings of the Syrian town of al-Bukamal, located on the highway linking Deir Ezzor and Baghdad, became the main target of the attack. Pro-Iranian sources claimed that the strikes caused material damage only.

Meanwhile, US forces in northeastern Syria strengthened their military positions by deploying additional howitzers. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces declared in an official statement that the military buildup was needed to provide US bases with additional protection. Another troop withdrawal announced by the administration of President Donald Trump is apparently successfully ongoing.

Syria’s northwest is also a source of tensions. On March 11, intense fighting erupted among Turkish-backed armed groups in the town of Azaz. As always, the incident was caused by internal contradictions between Turkish proxies who are involved in a wide range of various criminal activities and regularly clash for spheres of influence.

In the region of Greater Idlib, Turkish-backed groups, including those linked with al-Qaeda, are preparing to sabotage another ceasefire deal. They reinforced their positions north of the M4 highway and east of Jisr al-Shughur and declared that they are not planning to withdraw from any areas south of the highway. These statements go contrary to Turkish claims that preparations for the creation of a security zone in the area and the start of joint Turkish-Russian patrols are successfully in progress. Despite these, Ankara continues blaming the Syrian government for supposed violations of the Moscow deal and threatening it with military action should the ceasefire be violated. It seems that Turkey once again seeks to sweep agreements regarding the withdrawal and neutralization of radicals under the carpet, thus pushing the region into a new round of military escalation. Source southfront.org/ zerohedge.com HNewsWire

ILLUSTRATIVE: A US servicemen is at the Ayn al-Assad airbase that was targeted by Iranian missiles on January 8

Unguided rockets targeted the Iraqi military camp Taji that hosts US troops, the Iraqi military said in a statement on January 14.

The Taji military camp is located near Baghdad. According to reports, the strike caused no casualties. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The January 14 strike became the second attack of this kind during the past 3 days.

On January 12, four Iraqi personnel were wounded after eight rockets were fired at the Balad airbase, another facility that houses U.S. forces. This base is located about 80 km north of Baghdad.

The tensions in Iraq have been growing rapidly since the US military’s assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and other prominent Iranian and Iraqi officers in Baghdad on January 3. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units, was killed in the same attack.

The US commonly blames factions of the Popular Mobilization Units for the shelling of its facilities in Iraq. Washington describes this part of the Iraqi Armed Forces as ‘Iranian proxies’.

Source:

The Trump administration charge that Soleimani had to be killed because he was planning an immediate, large scale operation against America in Iraq strikes no one in Iraq or Iran as very likely. An Iranian professor observed that Soleimani had not sneaked into Iraq but rather took a commercial flight and went through passport control with his diplomatic passport. Not signs of a covert operation…

As is always the way with Western colonialists, Trump administration figures such as secretary of state Mike Pompeo gave it out on Friday that the people of Iran are dying for the United States to invade and occupy them, and are just tickled pink that the US assassinated Gen. Qasem Soleimani. There are always divisions in the society targeted for colonization of which the imperialist seeks to take advantage. The French played Amazigh against Arabs in Algeria. So of course, many Iranians had conceived a dislike of the authoritarian hard liner Soleimani. But in the realm of nationalist feelings, it is one thing to denounce an s.o.b. and quite another thing to be happy that some overbearing, hulking foreign imperialist Power summarily rubbed him out. He was after all their s.o.b.

The Trump administration charge that Soleimani had to be killed because he was planning an immediate, large scale operation against America in Iraq strikes no one in Iraq or Iran as very likely. An Iranian professor observed that Soleimani had not sneaked into Iraq but rather took a commercial flight and went through passport control with his diplomatic passport. Not signs of a covert operation. He alleged that the Iraqi government had invited him. I would add that the US did not increase embassy security in the past week, which allowed the embassy to be invaded. If they thought there was a dire such threat in the offing, wouldn’t they have sent in some Marines? Only after they received a stronger than expected reaction to their assassination campaign did they finally take the security of the embassy seriously.

Now a global pestilence has erupted, and in Luke 21 we were specifically warned to watch for “pestilences” in the last days.

StevieRay Hansen
Editor, HNewsWire.com

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War, Iraq’s government, Iran-backed militias, Iraqi military camp Taji