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International

Iran’s retaliation is more conventional than expected

Iran struck back at the United States early Wednesday for the killing of a top Iranian general last week, firing a series of surface-to-surface missiles at an Iraqi air base housing US troops and warning the United States and its allies in the region not to retaliate.

The Pentagon confirmed the strike at Ain Assad as well as another at a separate base housing US troops.

“At approximately 5:30 p.m. (EST) on January 7, Iran launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles against US military and coalition forces in Iraq,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “It is clear that these missiles were launched from Iran and targeted at least two Iraqi military bases hosting US military and coalition personnel at Al-Assad and Irbil.”

A man holds a picture of late Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani as people celebrate in the street after Iran launched missiles at U.S.-led forces in Iraq, in Tehran on Wednesday.

After a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani last week, America braced itself for the unexpected: The Department of Homeland Security issued an advisory warning that Iran may launch cyberattacks against critical infrastructure. New York’s governor deployed the National Guard to New York City’s major airports.

Those precautions are wise and understandable. But Iran’s missile attacks on bases hosting U.S. troops in Iraq on Wednesday shows that the regime’s retaliation may be more conventional than expected.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has used terrorist groups as proxies to strike at civilians and embassies, attempting to obscure their own responsibility for these attacks.

Now the Iranian regime is signaling a new approach.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told his advisers last week that its response should be a “direct and proportional attack on American interests,” according to the New York Times, and that it should be “openly carried out by Iranian forces themselves.”

That said, there is good reason to doubt that Iran’s response will be limited to this attack. Iran has fought its wars through proxies since the 1990s. This was Soleimani’s legacy. From 2003 until his death last week, he built up militias in Iraq, Yemen and Syria, waging an imperial war in the shadows on Iran’s behalf throughout the Middle East.

Some analysts acknowledge that Iran’s military has the capability to do a lot of damage, particularly to U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But it “is not going to be able to out-escalate the United States,” says Alireza Nader, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Khamenei understands this, he says, and he may be attempting to convey strength at a moment when the regime has been weakened.

Another possibility is that the U.S. drone strike demolished the strategy of plausible deniability that Iran has relied on for so long. It’s not just that Iran’s generals could no longer count on being spared the fate of the terrorists they cultivated and sponsored. The strike signaled a new U.S. strategy that imposes grave costs for Iran’s broader proxy war.

The regime will almost certainly still depend on its terrorist proxies. But Iran’s missile strike shows that it is prepared to engage in direct military attacks to take revenge for Soleimani. The world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism will also rely on conventional warfare

Bloomberg

International

Donald Trump: US targeting 52 Iranian sites if Tehran attacks Americans

Mr. Trump took to Twitter after pro-Iran factions ramped up pressure on U.S. installations across Iraq with missiles and warnings to Iraqi troops.

U.S. President Donald Trump. File.U.S. President Donald Trump. File.   | Photo Credit: AFP

Donald Trump warned Saturday that the U.S. is targeting 52 sites in Iran and will hit them “very fast and very hard” if the Islamic republic attacks American personnel or assets.

In a tweet defending Friday’s drone strike assassination of a top Iranian general in Iraq, Mr. Trump said 52 represents the number of Americans held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for more than a year starting in late 1979.

Mr. Trump said some of these sites are “at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!”

Mr. Trump took to Twitter after pro-Iran factions ramped up pressure on U.S. installations across Iraq with missiles and warnings to Iraqi troops — part of an outburst of fury over the killing of Soleimani, described as the second most-powerful man in Iran.

The attack has prompted fears of a major conflagration in the Middle East.

In the first hints of a possible retaliatory response, two mortar rounds hit an area near the US embassy in Baghdad on Saturday, security sources told AFP.

Almost simultaneously, two rockets slammed into the Al-Balad airbase where American troops are deployed, security sources said.

The Iraqi military confirmed the missile attacks in Baghdad and on al-Balad and said there were no casualties. The U.S. military also said no coalition troops were hurt.

With Americans wondering fearfully if, how and where Iran will hit back for the assassination, the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin that said “at this time there is no specific, credible threat against the homeland.”

International

2 Missiles Hit Green Zone Near US Embassy in Baghdad, Rockets Target Iraqi Air Base Hosting US Troops

Baghdad: Two missiles hit the Green Zone in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Saturday, according to security sources, a day after a deadly American strike.

The precision drone strike outside the Baghdad airport on Friday killed the Iran Revolutionary Guards commander General Qasem Soleimani. The US now fears a backlash against its mission and bases where its troops are deployed across Iraq.

Several reports suggested that the twin blasts took place in the Green Zone, the high-security enclave where the US embassy is based. The Iraqi military said one projectile hit inside the zone, while another landed close to the enclave.

Sirens immediately rang out at the American compound in Baghdad hosting both diplomats and troops, said sources.

A pair of Katyusha rockets then struck the Al-Balad Air Force Base hosting US troops in the north of the capital. Security sources there reported blaring sirens and said surveillance drones were sent above the base to locate the source of the rockets.

Soleimani was one of the most popular figures in Iran and was seen as a deadly adversary by the US and its allies. Top Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an adviser to Soleimani, was also killed in the attack on Friday.

Thousands of people marched in Baghdad on Saturday to mourn Soleimani and others killed in the air strike, with marchers waving Iraqi and militia flags in a sombre atmosphere. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and militia commander Hadi al-Amiri, a close Iran ally and the top candidate to succeed Muhandis, attending the procession.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed “severe revenge” after the attack. “Martyrdom was the reward for his ceaseless efforts in all these years,” Khamenei said on his Farsi-language Twitter account in reference to Soleimani.

The US embassy in Baghdad had urged American citizens in Iraq to “depart immediately” over fear of fallout from the strike.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had slammed Soleimani’s assassination as “an extremely dangerous and foolish escalation”.

“The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism,” Zarif had said in a post on Twitter on Friday.

The US embassy in Baghdad as well as the 5,200 American troops stationed across the country have faced a spate of rocket attacks in recent months that Washington has blamed on Iran and its allies in Iraq.

One attack last month killed a US contractor working in northern Iraq, prompting retaliatory American air strikes that killed 25 hardline fighters close to Iran.

Iran has been locked in a long conflict with the US that escalated sharply last week with an attack on the US embassy in Iraq by pro-Iranian militiamen following a US air raid on the Kataib Hezbollah militia, founded by Muhandis.