Dec 30, 2019

Senior Donald Trump administration officials insisted today that a series of strikes into Iraq and Syria were a defensive measure taken after a suspected Iran-backed attack this weekend killed an American contractor and wounded several US troops.

“We are not looking for any conflict in the Middle East,” the senior State Department official told reporters on Monday. “But we are not going to let Iran get away with using a proxy force to attack American interests.”

But the move to hit two targets inside Iraq, which senior State Department officials said came after 11 attacks by Iranian proxies on Iraqi bases in the past two months, has already led to severe condemnation from the embattled government in Baghdad.

Iraq has extended a tenuous invitation to 5,200 American troops to fight the Islamic State (IS) in the war-torn nation. But it’s not clear how the invitation would extend to any effort to deal with provocations from Iran-backed groups, such as Kataib Hezbollah.

In a statement Dec. 29, the Iraqi government called the bombings, which the Pentagon characterized as “precision defensive strikes,” a “dangerous violation” of the rules for the US military to fight IS. Iraq promised it would review US ties after the strikes.