US moots deploying Patriot system to shield its troops in Iraq

The United States may soon deploy air defense missile systems to Iraq and the Kurdistan Region to help shield its troops from rocket and ballistic missile attack following the Iranian strike that targeted Ain Al-Asad Airbase in Anbar province on January 8. 

“The US is deploying PAC-3 Patriots to Iraq, and is arranging the modalities of this with the Iraqi government now,” Michael Knights, an Iraq expert and the Lafer Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Rudaw English. 

Knights anticipates one system being deployed “to cover Erbil” and the other to Al-Asad. 

The MIM-104 Patriot missile defense, especially the PAC-3 variant, is designed to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles like the ones Iran used on January 8. 

The US already has such systems protecting its military facilities in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. On several occasions over the last 30 years, the US and NATO deployed Patriots to Turkey to help defend it against potential Scud missile attacks from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and later from war-torn Syria. 

Iran-backed units of the Shiite-majority Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), also known as Hashd al-Shaabi, have targeted bases hosting US troops in Iraq with rockets numerous times in recent months. 

On December 27, the Kataib Hezbollah group killed an American civilian contractor in one such rocket attack at the K1 base in Kirkuk – the first American fatality caused directly by one of these attacks. 

The US promptly retaliated two days later, killing 25 paramilitiamen in five airstrikes, three in Iraq and two in Syria. 

Iran fired at least a dozen ballistic missiles at Al-Asad airbase and Erbil International Airport in the Kurdistan Region five days after a US drone strike assassinated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) extraterritorial Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani and Kataib Hezbollah leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis on January 3. 

While the missiles didn’t kill any US troops, 50 of them suffered brain injuries in the Al-Asad strike. The Americans seemingly had hours of forewarning about when the attack would commence and took precautions to ensure the Iranian missiles caused minimal damage to personnel and equipment on the base.

However, the US troops did not have any adequate air defenses with which to counter the missile strikes. That could be about change with the Pentagon mulling plans to send such missiles to Iraqi bases with US troops in the near future. 

“After Iran fired ballistic missiles at US forces stationed in an Iraqi base in Anbar there was talk in the US media that the Americans might deploy anti-missile defenses to protect them from another such attack,” Joel Wing, author of the Musings on Iraq blog, told Rudaw English. 

“They might do that, but the immediate threat is from short-range rockets fired from pro-Iran Hashd units,” he said.

“It seems like fortifying camps Americans stay at would be the priority over sending anti-missile defenses to Iraq.”

The Patriot missile is not designed for countering the kind of short-range Katyusha-type rocket artillery Kataib Hezbollah has fired at US bases in recent months. 

“Lower level air defense platforms could be sent to smaller bases,” Knights said. 

He suggested that AN/TWO-1 Avenger mobile short-range air defense systems and possibly additional C-RAM (Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar) units might fulfil this role. 

The C-RAM, in particular, is designed to detect and destroy incoming artillery and mortar rounds as well as short-range rockets. Such a system might prove well suited for deflecting the kind of rocket and mortar attacks Iran’s proxies in Iraq carry out against US targets. 

In the aftermath of the Soleimani strike, there have been growing calls in Baghdad for the removal of all US and foreign troops from Iraq, including a non-bonding vote in parliament on January 5 demanding their expulsion. 

However, neither Knights nor Wing anticipates the US facing any serious political pushback from Baghdad over any such deployment. 

“Whether the US sends missiles or not will not change attitudes amongst Iraqis one way or another,” Wing said. 

“Those that want the US out are committed to that goal regardless of what the Americans do.”

Knights pointed out that the Patriots and other missiles “are defensive systems and they would protect Iraqis on the bases too.”