https://youtu.be/dX23SJR6pLU
WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A defective drone in Iraq may have helped keep America from being dragged deeper into a widening Middle East conflict. The drone, which was launched at the Erbil air base by an Iranian-backed militia before sunrise on Oct. 26, penetrated U.S. air defenses and crashed into the second floor of the barracks housing American troops at about 5 a.m, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. But the device laden with explosives failed to detonate and in the end only one service member suffered a concussion from the impact, said the officials, who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely about the attack. The U.S. had got lucky, they added, as the drone could have caused carnage had it exploded. The incident was among at least 40 separate drone and rocket attacks that have been launched at U.S. forces by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria over the past three weeks in response to American support for Israel in the Gaza war, according to Pentagon data and the two U.S. officials. The bombardment has only caused a few dozen minor injuries so far, with many of the rockets and one-way attack drones intercepted by U.S. air defenses in Iraq and Syria, where a total of 3,400 American troops are based. David Schenker, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank, cautioned that while neither Iran and its allied groups nor the U.S. appeared to want a direct confrontation, the risks were growing. The possibility of a major strike that draws America into a conflict is “a very realistic concern,” he said.”I think they are calibrating the attacks to harass rather than kill en masse U.S. troops,” he said of Iraqi and Syrian militias. “But there’s a lot more they can do.” It’s unclear how President Joe Biden would respond to a major attack that kills a large number of Americans. Struggling in opinion polls ahead of next year’s presidential election, Biden has so far sought to limit the U.S. role in the conflict mostly to ensuring military aid to Israel. The war broke out when gunmen from Hamas – the Iranian-funded militant group that rules the Palestinian enclave of Gaza – burst into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 240 hostages. Since then, Israel has bombarded the coastal territory relentlessly, killing more than 10,000 people, many of them children. Iran says it had no role in Hamas’ Oct. 7 raid on Israel, though it has welcomed the attack. On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Iraq – where most of the attacks on U.S. forces have taken place – to push Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani to crack down on the militias operating there and avert any escalation.
Yet Sudani has had little luck in persuading the militia groups from letting up their assault, or convincing their bankrollers in Iran to rein them in, according to five senior lawmakers in Sudani’s governing coalition, a security adviser to the premier and a militia commander.
The prime minister and around 10 senior members of his government met with the commanders of about a dozen militia groups in Baghdad on Oct. 23 to press the groups to halt their attacks on U.S. forces, said the seven people, who were either present or were briefed on the meeting.
The plea largely fell on deaf ears, though, with most of the commanders vowing to keep up their assault until Israeli forces ended their siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip, they added.
“No one – not the prime minister or anyone else – can stand against our religious duty,” said Ali Turki, a Shi’ite lawmaker in the governing coalition as well as a commander with the powerful Iranian-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia.
Arif al-Hamami, another Shi’ite lawmaker, said the prospects for diplomacy looked bleak: “I don’t think that the prime minister has the power to stop the attacks as long as Israel is committing atrocities in Gaza with American help.”The Iraqi and Iranian governments didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the militia attacks and the risk of escalation. Iraq’s prime minister has limited control over the militias, whose support he needed to win power a year ago and now form a powerful bloc in his governing coalition. The militant groups, which proliferated in Iraq in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein and his Sunni government, are trained and funded by Shi’ite power Iran.
Biden faces his own dilemmas as he receives a steady stream of reports about hostilities in the region. Among attacks outside Iraq and Syria in recent weeks, Iranian-aligned Houthi fighters unleashed 15 drones and four cruise missiles off the coast of Yemen that were shot down by U.S. Navy destroyer with a crew of hundreds of sailors, U.S. military officials say. The present crisis has erupted following years of steady U.S. withdrawal of military assets from the Middle East, including air defenses, as Washington seeks to focus on Russia’s invasion in Ukraine and mounting tensions with China. That refocus accelerated after Biden’s complete pullout from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover there two years ago. The response by Biden has been cautious so far; he ordered overnight strikes on two Iranian-linked arms storage facilities in Syria last month while they were unoccupied, but has not ordered any strikes in Iraq. On Wednesday, Biden followed up with a similar strike in Syria and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin cautioned: “We urge against any escalation.” Biden has warned Iranian-backed groups across the region, including the large Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, against expanding the conflict but he and other officials have declined to be explicit about what they would do in response. NN: They are going push this as far as they can. By design they will push things too far and create a humanitarian crises.