Second U.S. strike against Iranian failed
Commander targetted on same day as general killed by drone in Iraq
WASHINGTON— On the day the U.S. military killed a top Iranian commander in Baghdad, U.S. forces carried out another top secret mission against a senior Iranian military official in Yemen, according to U.S. officials.
The strike targeting Abdul Reza Shahlai, a financier and key commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force who has been active in Yemen, did not result in his death, according to four U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The unsuccessful operation may indicate that the Trump administration’s killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani last week was part of a broader operation than previously explained, raising questions about whether the mission was designed to cripple the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or solely to prevent an imminent attack on Americans as originally stated.
U.S. military operations in Yemen, where a civil war has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, are shrouded in secrecy. U.S. officials said the operation against Shahlai remains highly classified, and many declined to offer details other than to say it was not successful.
Officials at the Pentagon and in Florida were monitoring both strikes and had discussed announcing them together, had they gone well, officials said.
“If we had killed him, we’d be bragging about it that same night,” a senior U.S. official said, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified military operation.
Another senior official said the two strikes were authorized around the same time and that the United States did not disclose the Shahlai mission because it did not go according to plan. The official said Shahlai may be targeted in the future, though both countries have signalled an interest in de-escalating the crisis.
The rationale for the Trump administration’s decision to kill Soleimani has come under scrutiny in Congress, with House lawmakers approving a resolution on Thursday to restrict the president’s authority to strike Iran without congressional approval.
Defense and State Department officials said the strike against Soleimani saved “dozens” if not “hundreds” of American lives under imminent threat. The strike against Shahlai potentially complicates that argument.
“This suggests a mission with a longer planning horizon and a larger objective, and it really does call into question why there was an attempt to explain this publicly on the basis of an imminent threat,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran scholar at the Brookings Institution.
The Trump administration views Shahlai as a particularly potent adversary.
Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich, a Pentagon spokesperson, said the Defense Department does not discuss “alleged operations” in the Middle East. “We have seen the report of a January 2 airstrike in Yemen, which is long-understood as a safe space for terrorists and other adversaries to the United States,” she said in a statement.
The State Department offered a $15-million (U.S.) reward last month for information leading to Shahlai and the disruption of the IRGC’s financial mechanisms. The announcement said that Shahlai is based in Yemen and has a “long history of involvement in attacks targeting the U.S. and our allies, including in the 2011plot against the Saudi ambassador” at an Italian restaurant in Washington.
U.S. officials have alleged Shahlai, born around 1957, is linked to attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq, including a sophisticated 2007 raid in which Iranian-backed militiamen abducted and killed five U.S. soldiers in the city of Karbala.
In a news conference last year, Brian Hook, the special representative for Iran, said the United States remains “gravely concerned by his presence in Yemen and potential role in providing advanced weaponry of the kind we have interdicted to the Houthis,” who continue to battle a Saudi-led coalition for control of Yemen.
Iran has provided support and training to the Houthi rebels in their battle against a coalition backed by Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional foe.
It is unclear why the operation did not succeed. The State Department and White House declined to comment.
The killing of Soleimani, the first U.S. targeted killing of a senior member of a foreign military since the Second World War, prompted Iran to retaliate Wednesday in Iraq by firing ballistic missiles at U.S. locations there, though no casualties were reported.
Following the strike, President Donald Trump said the United States would respond by imposing economic sanctions on Iran, and noted that the “United States is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it.”
Trump’s top aides have continued to tout the “imminent” nature of the threat from Soleimani.
“There is no doubt that there were a series of imminent attacks being plotted by Qassem Soleimani,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on Friday. “We don’t know precisely when and we don’t know precisely where, but it was real.”