US strikes bases of Iranian-backed militia in Iraq

Bloomberg

The US launched air strikes on five bases in Iraq and Syria used by an Iranian-backed militia after repeated attacks on the American-led coalition operating in the region.
“What we did was take a decisive response that makes clear what President Trump has said for months and months and months, which is that we will not stand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy,” Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said in brief remarks at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
Rocket assaults on or near Iraqi installations that host American troops and personnel have occurred since the fall, and Pentagon officials have expressed increasing concern about Iranian involvement. An American contractor was killed in such an attack on Friday, and several US service personnel were wounded.
The rare direct strike on an Iranian proxy came at an especially tense time and held the potential for escalation. The US and Iran are locked in a standoff over the Trump administration’s crippling economic offensive against Tehran — meant to force it to renegotiate the 2015 nuclear deal Washington has abandoned — and the Islamic Republic’s suspected reprisals.

Iran Condemns
Iran condemned the attack on the Kataieb Hezbollah militia’s bases as “an aggression against Iraqi soil and a clear example of terrorism,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, quoting Abbas Mousavi, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman.
Iraq’s parliament speaker, Mohammed Al-Habousi, also denounced the raid as a violation of his country’s sovereignty, even as he urged all parties to display restraint and stressed a commitment to protect “multinational forces who are on the ground at the invitation” of the Iraqi government. The coalition was deployed in 2014 to crush IS and roll back its conquests in Iraq and Syria.
Kataieb Hezbollah’s parent group reported that 25 fighters were killed and 51 were wounded. The militia nominally falls under the command of the Iraqi armed forces and fought IS alongside the Iraqi army and the US-led coalition. But it has also been armed by Iran and is assisting it in ferrying arms to Syria, where it is propping up President Bashar al-Assad’s troops.
There has been no reaction from Syria to the strikes.
Trump Briefed
Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper flew to Florida to brief Trump on activities in the past three days. Attacks on bases used by Operation Inherent Resolve coalition forces in Iraq have threatened American forces, and have been going on for weeks. An American contractor was killed in a rocket attack on Friday.
“This wasn’t the first attack against this particular Iraqi facility or others where there were American lives at risk,” Pompeo said. Esper said F-15 jets attacked five targets, three in western Iraq and two in eastern Syria that were either command control facilities or weapons caches. “The strikes were successful, the pilots and aircraft returned back to base safely,” he said.
Esper didn’t rule out addition actions in the region.
“We will take additional actions as necessary to ensure that we act in our own self defense and we deter other bad behavior from militia groups,” he said. Neither official took questions. Targets included weapon storage facilities and command and control locations.
Iran and their proxies must cease attacks on US and coalition forces, and respect Iraq’s sovereignty, to prevent additional defensive actions by US forces, the Pentagon said.