Week in Review
Tensions with Iran flare amid clashes in Iraq
On New Year’s Eve, a protest followed by an attack erupted at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, two days after U.S. airstrikes killed at least two dozen Iran-backed fighters in Iraq in retaliation to a Dec. 27 rocket attack, which killed one American. Dozens of Iraqi Shiite militiamen and their supporters broke into the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, smashing a main door and setting fire to a reception area in one of the worst attacks on the embassy in recent memory.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike on a
Baghdad airport that killed top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani — raising the spectre of further destabilization in the region and the possibility of war.
Trump claims the commander was plotting "imminent and sinister attacks" on Americans, adding that the decision was one of deterrence rather than aggression. Meanwhile, the U.S. is sending 3,000 troops to the Mideast who will join roughly 650 others already deployed to the region and stay there for some 60 days.