ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The outgoing US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief has expressed his concern over the “remarkable” growth in the number and efficiency of Iran’s ballistic missile force and grave threat the country poses, three days after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched twelve missiles that struck Erbil in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Appearing before his last Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Marine General Kenneth McKenzie, who has led American troops in the Middle East since March 2019, warned of the threat that the Islamic Republic’s ballistic and cruise missile capacity poses. “Today, Iran is no less of a threat to American interests or to the stability of the region than it was in 1979,” McKenzie said in his opening remarks. “To the contrary, the threat posed by Iran is graver than ever.”
"Iran continues to pose the greatest threat to US interests and the security of the region as a whole. Through its proxies and clients, Iran has fomented conflict, an arc tracing from Yemen through the Arabian Peninsula, across Iraq and Syria and Lebanon and to the very borders of Israel," McKenzie told the committee. "Everyone in the region is seized by the Iranian threat, and they want to be able to defend themselves against that threat - that threat is primarily in the air.”
“At a military level, my concern is first of all that they [do] not have their nuclear weapon, but I am also very concerned about the remarkable growth in [the] number and efficiency of their ballistic missile force, their UAV programme, their long range drones, and their land attack cruise missile programme,” he continued.
Pressed by US Senator Angus King on the range of Iranian missiles - and whether they could get to Paris, London, or New York - McKenzie responded that Iran has over 3,000 ballistic missiles of various types. “Some of which can reach Tel Aviv, to give you an idea of range, none of them can reach Europe yet, but over the last five to seven years, senator, they have invested heavily in their ballistic missile programme, their missiles are of significantly greater range and significantly enhanced accuracy,” he said.
“We have established a very clear set of red lines with Iran, I think as a result of that over the last several months their attacks have tapered off, particularly in Iraq, which I believe Iran views as the principal battleground for confronting the United States and our partners in the region,” he added, saying that one of the reasons for this was Iran's increasing difficulty in gaining “political traction with the government of Iraq.”
Despite this, under the pretext of hitting an Israeli base, Iran fired a dozen ballistic missiles targeting areas surrounding the US consulate building in Erbil early Sunday morning, injuring two civilians and causing severe material damage to houses. The attack came less than a week after Iran vowed to seek revenge against Israel, warning it would “pay the price” for the killing of two members of the IRGC in an airstrike in Syria. Iran's lawmaking body on Tuesday issued a statement commending the IRGC’s missile attack, signed by 213 lawmakers.
The US State Department told Rudaw on Sunday that a civilian residence was targeted by Iranian missiles, and that there was no indication that the US consulate was the primary target of the missile attack from Iran, and that “press speculation otherwise is simply wrong.”
At least four of the missiles landed on the residence of CEO and founder of the Iraqi-Kurdish oil company KAR Group Baz Karim Barzinji, who has no apparent ties to Israel. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Kurdish authorities have refuted all claims of the presence of Israeli bases in Erbil.
When asked by US Senator Kevin Cramer whether the IRGC belongs on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, McKenzie replied that, "From everything that I can see... the IRGC is a terrorist organization."
During the committee hearing, McKenzie also suggested that Israel’s entry into CENTCOM “has given us great opportunities, particularly in the area of integrated air and missile defense,” calling on Israel to integrate its air and missile defense system with its regional allies in the Middle East in order to “combat the threat posed by Iran.” Such a step, he said, would bolster security cooperation between Israel and its fellow Arab CENTCOM members, including Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.
With regards to the talks in Vienna between Iran and the signatories to the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh claimed on Monday that Tehran is waiting for the US to make its final decision. The talks, which have reached their final stage, were paused on Friday after Russian demands complicated negotiations.
“It is an overriding national policy objective of the United States for Iran to not have a nuclear weapon,” McKenzie said, adding that “you might have to make some tradeoffs to get to that point.” In a posture statement submitted by McKenzie before the committee, the commander assessed that “Iran will continue to use Syrian (and likely Iraqi) territory as a critical hub and resupply route for maintaining its campaign against Israel.”
Last month, US President Joe Biden announced his new pick to lead American troops in the Middle East as the next commander of CENTCOM, Army Lt. Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, who is expected to replace McKenzie in the next fortnight.
The combat mission of the global coalition against the Islamic State (ISIS) formally shifted its role to focusing on military advising, training, and intelligence gathering in Iraq at the end of the last year but it continues in Syria. In additional remarks to the committee, McKenzie stressed that over half of the population of detained ISIS-fighters and displaced persons camps in Syria come from other countries, and he called on the international community to repatriate their foreign nationals in order to address the threat of ISIS in northeast Syria.
Additional reporting by Dilan Sirwan
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