IRAN GENERAL FLIES TO IRAQ TO CALL OFF ANTI-US STRIKES
▶ Moves after killing of American troops reveal Tehran’s influence on militias in the region
A senior Iranian commander travelled to Baghdad and met Tehran-backed militants to urge de-escalation immediately after the attack that killed three US soldiers at the Jordanian-Syrian border, sources told The National.
The attack against a US base just inside Jordan on Sunday was attributed by Washington to the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iran-backed group of militias that includes Kataib Hezbollah.
The strike sparked fears of escalation after US President Joe Biden vowed to retaliate.
Kataib Hezbollah announced on Tuesday that it was suspending attacks against US targets after a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps visited Baghdad, the sources said. “A top IRGC commander visited Baghdad after the Jordan strike and urged the factions to de-escalate a bit,” one of the sources said.
“The Kataib Hezbollah statement was the fruit of a direct Iranian request to de-escalate with the Americans and the Iraqi government.”
The IRGC commander’s visit was confirmed by an Iraqi politician linked to the Co-ordination Framework, the largest bloc in Iraq’s parliament, which includes representatives of Iran-backed political factions and militias.
Shiite politicians told The National on Wednesday that Tehran and the CF believed that the militias “went too far” in their attack, which was rare in terms of both killing US troops and hitting Jordanian territory.
Iran’s quick involvement at a senior level suggests Tehran is keen to avoid any uncontrolled escalation with the US, as tensions are high across the region, with the Israel-Gaza war threatening to spill over into a regional conflict.
But US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs Barbara Leaf insisted that the US response is “going to be at a time and a place of our choosing and could be in a multitude
of ways”. She gave little detail about what Washington’s response could be and described the attack on the US base in Jordan as “horrendous” and a “tragic loss of life”.
“This is part and parcel of proxy network across the region fostered, in some places created altogether by Iran, resourced by Iran, that has had terrible repercussions on the stability and security of this region,” she said.
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said that the US would take “all necessary actions” to defend itself and its interests and also suggested that expected strikes against Iran-backed militias would involve several targets.
“We will have a multi-tiered response,” Mr Austin said. “We have the ability to respond of a number of times, depending on what the situation is. The President will not tolerate attacks on American troops and neither will I. Our teammates were killed by radical militias backed by Iran and operating inside Syria and Iraq.”
He added that US adversaries did not have a “one-and-done mindset”, suggesting he expected attacks to continue.
“They have a lot of capability. I have a lot more,” he said.
Despite the visit by the Iranian commander to Baghdad, the two other major militia groups under the Islamic Resistance in Iraq umbrella, Harakat Hezbollah Al Nujaba and Kataib Sayyid Al Shuhada, did not announce any suspension of operations against the US.
Late on Wednesday, The True Promise Corps, a small group within the network, announced the “continuation of military operations that target the US occupation forces and the Zionist entity wherever they are in the region”.
These attacks will continue “until the Zionist-American-British aggression against our Palestinian people stops”, the group added, suggesting a potential rift among the Iran-backed factions. Early on Thursday, the Islamic
Resistance in Iraq said it had launched a drone attack against Israel’s Mediterranean commercial port of Haifa. Israel had yet to confirm the attack on Thursday evening.
The previous day, the US blamed the Islamic Resistance in Iraq for the attack on the Tower 22 base in Jordan, which killed three American soldiers and wounded about 40. The network claimed three attacks in Syria, including at Al Tanf base, across the border from Tower 22, but did not mention Tower 22 or Jordan by name.
“We believe that the attack in Jordan was a plan resourced and facilitated by an umbrella group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which contains multiple groups including Kataib Hezbollah,” said John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesman.
Kataib Hezbollah said its decision to suspend operations was made to prevent “any embarrassment” to the Iraqi government. But the move appears to have had little effect on Washington.