Iran-backed militias intensify attacks against US, Israel and allies | Iran

Iran-backed militias in the Middle East are intensifying their attacks on Israel, the United States and its allies in retaliation for the ongoing joint US-Israeli offensive on Tehran as the war attracts new armed actors and poses the threat of broader chaos and violence.

As Israel and the United States target Iran’s network of militant groups, Iraq is emerging as a key front in this new and often secret conflict.

Militias in Iraq have launched dozens of attacks targeting Israel, US bases in Jordan and Iraq itself since the war began on Saturday.

In recent days, they have also targeted the infrastructure of Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups in the Kurdish-dominated, self-governing north of Iraq.

Israel and the United States are trying to weaken the capabilities of pro-Iran militias in Iraq through airstrikes and special forces operations, according to analysts and former regional intelligence officials with knowledge.

Since the US-led invasion in 2003, Iraq has become a proxy battleground between the US, its allies and Iran, but the country’s current leaders have sought to avoid being drawn into this new conflict. The militias are recruited from among Iraq’s majority Shiite community and follow orders from senior officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

On Tuesday, in a sign of the intensifying proxy war across the region, officials in Washington suggested they were considering mobilizing dissident Iranian Kurds, possibly for an invasion of Iran’s northwestern region.

Several Iranian-backed armed groups have claimed responsibility for attacks on the US base at Erbil airport in northern Iraq in recent days. Other drones and missiles were launched from areas in Iran’s western desert to targets in Jordan; Militias in the south launched missiles at Kuwait.

On Thursday, the militias issued a joint statement telling European countries not to join the war and threatening their “powers and bases in Iraq and the region.”

The Iraqi state-run Iraq News Agency reported that an attempt to launch a missile “intended to target a neighboring country” from an area in Iraq’s southern Basra province was foiled, and security forces seized a mobile launch platform carrying two missiles ready to be fired.

A spokesman for the Israeli military confirmed on Wednesday evening that drones had been launched from Iraq into Israel, “although not in significant numbers.”

Michael Knights, Iraq expert at New York-based strategic consultancy Horizon Engage, said Iran-backed Iraqi groups are trying to figure out how to react and respond to the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In what appeared to be a covert counter-attack, militia bases south of Baghdad and near the southern cities of Nasariya and Basra were attacked by small “suicide drones” that reportedly killed 15 fighters, mostly from Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful among Iraq-based pro-Iran groups.

Knights said: “Short-range drone systems are used in Iraq, which cannot be flown from Israel to here. We saw this exactly in the last war.” [between Iran and Israel last year] and suggests that some form of covert action was being carried out on the ground. “There are too many proxy wars going on.”

On Thursday, Kataib Hezbollah said one of its commanders was killed in an attack in southern Iraq the day before. Two sources from the group told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday that two fighters were killed in an attack that hit a vehicle near the group’s main base in southern Iraq. Later, the death toll rose to three, including the commander.

The group’s Jurf al-Nasr base has been attacked repeatedly since the weekend. There are also reports of major explosions at militia bases in Anbar province in western Iraq.

There were also a series of unexplained explosions that immobilized Iraqi government radar systems that monitor air traffic in Iraqi airspace.

Two former senior intelligence officials in Israel said they could not comment on the explosions, but the claim that those responsible were Israeli intelligence services or special forces was “credible.” A third said US forces may have been involved.

Iran has spent decades investing in a coalition of militant groups stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean to both deter attacks on Iran and exert influence across the region.

Israel launched a broad offensive in Lebanon after Hezbollah, the largest Islamist movement in Lebanon and which also has very close relations with Iran, joined the conflict by attacking Israel and also launched a drone towards the British base in Cyprus.

But the so-called “axis of resistance” has been severely weakened by successive Israeli attacks since one of its members, Hamas, launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering a series of recent wars.

Hamas, the Palestinian militant Islamist movement and Yemen’s Houthis have close ties to Tehran but have so far stayed out of the current conflict.

Renad Mansour, a senior research fellow at Chatham House focusing on the Middle East, said: “It’s very much about survival… And survival, to them, is based on calculations that are not about Iranian survival.”

Phillip Smyth, a US-based independent analyst on Iran’s allies and proxies, said Tehran may be keeping the Houthis “in reserve” but the movement’s leaders may also be “hedging their bets if the Iranian regime collapses”.

Another sign that the United States is likely to use proxies chosen from among Iran’s ethnic minorities to weaken the Iranian regime: attack reports An attack was carried out against the targets of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in southwestern Iran by an armed group affiliated with separatist movements within Iran’s Arab society.

A newly established group calling itself “Ahvaz Falcons” claimed responsibility for the attack on the Revolutionary Guard base in Ahvaz, a city in Iran close to the Iraqi border.