The American air strikes against Iranian-linked paramilitaries in Syria this week were a deterrent response to attacks on American forces in neighboring Iraq. However, they also appear to have been a conscious rebuttal by the Biden government of the Trump administration’s wild and dangerous approach to Iraq and Iran.
Trump’s recklessness almost sparked a regional war. The way Biden’s team handled Thursday’s air strikes seems intentionally un-Trump – but Trump left Biden in a dangerous enough situation in Iraq that even a more careful and deliberate approach may not be enough to fix it. .
On Thursday night, US aircraft bombed Iraqi paramilitary factions on the border between Syria and Iraq, in what the Pentagon said was a deterrent response and an effort to prevent “ongoing threats”. An Iraqi paramilitary group official told Reuters that the US attacks killed one fighter and wounded four.
The US air strikes came after a rocket attack on February 15 against a base used by the US and partner forces in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, which killed a contracted civilian and wounded others. A wounded Iraqi civilian died several days later. On February 22, three rockets hit the United States Embassy in Baghdad, but left only material damage.
The Syrian government denounced the US attacks “in the strongest terms”. One of the targeted Iraqi factions, Kataib Hizbullah, also condemned American “crime”.
US forces are in Iraq as part of the US-led international coalition against ISIS to support Iraqi efforts to combat the jihadist group. In recent years, however, violence against paramilitaries linked to Iran has risked overshadowing the mission against ISIS.
Thursday’s air strikes looked almost like a repeat of the U.S. air strikes in December 2019. The Trump administration then responded to a deadly rocket attack by bombing Kataib Hizbulllah’s facilities on the Syrian-Iraq border, killing 25 fighters and wounding more than 50. Made up of the U.S. Embassy, Trump retaliated – on an impressive climb from 0 to 60 – by killing Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary veteran and security officer Jamal Jafar (better known by nom du guerre “Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis”) in a drone attack. For days, the Middle East seemed on the verge of a broader war between Iran and the United States. The tension did not dissipate until after Iranian missile attacks on Iraqi bases that hosted wounded US forces, but did not kill US personnel, which perversely paved the way for the slowdown.
The US presence in Iraq has remained precarious since then. Violence in Iraq has been steadily increasing, US-led coalition forces have evacuated most of their Iraqi bases, and the Trump administration has nearly closed the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Iraqi paramilitaries continue to maintain that the coalition forces are a foreign “occupation”.
You can be forgiven for a sense of déjà vu, then, on Thursday’s air strikes on some of the same Iraqi paramilitary factions, hitting the same stretch of the Iraq-Syria border – and worrying about the repeat escalation. spiral that marked the beginning of 2020.
However, this latest action by the Biden administration also differs from Trump’s air strikes in December 2019 in some important ways.
“The Biden government seemed eager to reduce the temperature regionally, below the constant near-war atmosphere fueled by the Trump administration.“
First, the regional context is different. The backdrop for the December 2019 air strikes was the Trump administration’s campaign of “maximum pressure” on Iran, a strategy whose stated goals effectively amounted to regime change. The rocket launch against US forces in Iraq that precipitated those 2019 air strikes was apparently part of an asymmetric response by Iran’s regional partners to crush US economic sanctions on Iran – after all, Iran could hardly pay back in a useful way imposing its own sanctions on the USA
The Biden government, on the other hand, has expressed its intention to return to the nuclear deal with Iran that Trump has left, which promises a relaxation of economic pressure on Iran. More generally, the Biden government seems eager to reduce the temperature regionally, in relation to the constant atmosphere of near war fueled by the Trump administration.
The Biden government’s messages about Thursday’s air strikes reflected this shift in the regional context. The Trump administration, in announcing its 2019 air strikes, clearly emphasized the ties of these Iraqi paramilitaries to Iran. The Pentagon’s statement ended with a dissuasive warning addressed primarily to Iran: “Iran and its KH proxy forces must cease their attacks to US and coalition forces and respect Iraq’s sovereignty to avoid further defensive actions by US forces. ” In fact, Trump further intensified his rhetoric in the last days of his presidency, threatening to retaliate directly against Iran for launching rockets into Iraq. “Some friendly health advice for Iran: if an American is killed, I will hold Iran accountable. Think about it,” he tweeted in December 2020.
The Biden government, on the other hand, called the Iraqi factions “militant groups supported by Iran”, but maintained its focus mainly on the two specific groups it claimed were responsible for the recent rocket attacks. When Biden was asked by a reporter on Friday what kind of message the attacks sent to Iran, he said: “You cannot act with impunity. Be careful. “Even so, the authorities avoided turning the attacks into a Trump-style duel between Iran and the United States.
The rhetorical restraint of Biden’s team may reflect his awareness of how to manage greater involvement with Iran that is delicate and encompasses a number of issues, of which restoring the nuclear deal with Iran appears to be the overriding priority. They may also be more sensitive to the legality of military action and how safely they can assign responsibility for the Erbil rocket attack.
Even though the Biden government is inclined to blame Iran for Erbil’s attack, the real extent of Iranian control over Iraq’s armed factions is debated, especially after the death of Suleimani and Muhandis. Without them, these Iranian factions would have become more rebellious and inclined to unilateral action.
In addition to its rhetoric, the Biden government has moved away from Trump’s approach in other important ways. The reported number of U.S. air strikes on Thursday – one fighter, not dozens – was apparently more commensurate with the Erbil rocket launch. The Biden government said the bombing was “conducted in conjunction with diplomatic measures”, including consultations with Coalition partners whose personnel are at risk of retaliation alongside Americans in Iraq.
The emphasis by Biden government officials that they attacked these factions within Syrian territory is another apparent contrast to the Trump administration, which provoked the condemnation of even US-friendly Iraqi officials last year when it bombed paramilitaries unilaterally in Iraq and killed Iraqis not involved. By attacking in Syria, Biden may have mitigated concerns about the violation of Iraqi sovereignty and avoided the political controversy that could endanger a friendly government in Baghdad.
These paramilitary factions are part of the official aide to Iraq’s “Popular Mobilization Forces”. In Syria, however, they operate outside the auspices of the Iraqi state as part of the “Axis of Resistance” led by Iran.
Still, these paramilitaries contest the dominance of the American authorities over geography. In a statement of mourning for the fighter killed in Thursday’s air strikes, Kataib Hizbullah said he was killed “in the Iraqi region of al-Qaim specifically”, implying that he died on the Iraqi side of the border. Kataib Hizbullah described the man as “his martyr”, but also a member of the 46º Brigade, who was “standing guard on the Iraq-Syria border, protecting the land and people of Iraq from ISIS criminal gangs” and “joined the martyrs’ caravan for the nation’s sovereignty and dignity”.
Furthermore, wherever the United States bombs, the Iraqi government may still face a political backlash. How much Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi’s government knew before Thursday’s air strikes is unclear. US officials had previously said that they were supporting the Iraqi authorities’ investigations into rocket attacks, but they would also act, in coordination with Iraqi partners, at the time and place of their choice. Biden spoke by phone to Kadhemi on Tuesday; a White House reading said the two “agreed that those responsible for [recent rocket] attacks must be fully accountable. “
Iraqi paramilitaries and their political allies took particular advantage of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s comments. Following the attacks, Austin said, “We allow and encourage Iraqis to investigate and develop intelligence for us, and that was very helpful in refining the target.” US officials have since tried to back down denied using Iraqi information in Thursday’s air strikes. But Austin’s comments could still put Kadhemi in danger. Iranian factions had previously claimed that Kadhemi was complicit in the death of Soleimani and Muhandis in his former capacity as head of Iraqi intelligence.
Even if the U.S. air strikes this week do not trigger a repeat of last year’s escalation, they risk perpetuating a cycle of violence that raises questions about the continued value of the US presence in Iraq. US and Coalition partners still play an important role, allowing Iraqi forces to pursue ISIS militants, who are waging a guerrilla war on Iraq’s rural periphery. Coalition forces are still in the country at the invitation of the Iraqi government; without their technical contributions, the ISIS insurgency seems likely to become more dangerous.
However, if US forces become more occupied, in balance, with self-defense than with their mission against ISIS, then, eventually, they will be a negative network for Iraqi security. With each new spasm of violence, the lives of Iraqis are put at risk.
This is not a dilemma of the creation of the Biden government. It was Trump’s aggressive “maximum pressure” policy that appears to have started this cycle of violence. But now that the cycle is underway, it is far from clear that even the most deliberate and well-adjusted US policy can usefully interrupt it.
The Biden government said it carried out Thursday’s attacks “deliberately, with the aim of slowing the general situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq”. But now that the US has acted, the initiative belongs to Iraq’s paramilitary factions. They are the ones who will choose when and how to respond, and whether the Biden government’s more calibrated approach really does any good.