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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   1264 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 28, 2023

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Iraq

Conflicts between American servicemembers and the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq continue to rage on:

The drone strike on a US base in Irbil in Iraq's Kurdistan region injured three US military personnel, one critically, US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said.

A militia collective called Islamic Resistance in Iraq, linked to Kataib Hezbollah, said it was behind the that attack.

The Irbil airbase had previously been hit by rocket attacks carried out by Iranian-linked militia. Kataib Hezbollah, which is financed and armed by Iran, has been one of the most prominent groups involved in attacks on US targets in Iraq. It forms part of the Hashd al Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation), an umbrella group of militia which has been integrated into the Iraqi armed forces.

Fortunately after several months of this the conflict remains at a low level, but also appears intractable and does seem to be steadily escalating:

U.S. President Joe Biden ordered the United States military to carry out retaliatory airstrikes against Iranian-backed militia groups after three U.S. service members were injured in a drone attack in northern Iraq.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said one of the U.S. troops suffered critical injuries in the attack that occurred earlier Monday. The Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, under an umbrella of Iranian-backed militants, claimed credit for the attack that utilized a one-way attack drone.

Iraqi officials said that U.S. strikes targeting militia sites early Tuesday killed one militant and wounded 18. They came at a time of heightened fears of a regional spillover of the Israel-Hamas war.

Iran announced Monday that an Israeli strike on the outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus killed one of its top generals, Seyed Razi Mousavi, who had been a close companion of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the former head of Iran’s elite Quds Force. Soleimani was slain in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.

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