Prior to setting off on a visit to the region, Leaf held an online press briefing on Thursday on the topic of US policy in the Middle East following the Hamas attacks of October 7, during which she outlined the White House’s priorities in the area for the near term, among which she mentioned “seeking to ensure the conflict does not expand.”
“That has been a focus of every bit of our diplomacy since the first days of the conflict,” said Leaf, highlighting that said conflict is rendered more complicated by the “destabilizing actions undertaken by Iran-backed actors across the region.”
A drone strike on Sunday killed at least three US service members and injured over 40 others in an American military base in northeast Jordan, near the Syrian border. Washington has blamed the pro-Iran Islamic Resistance in Iraq which includes Kataib Hezbollah for the attack.
Leaf told Rudaw’s Diyar Kurda that for a proxy like Kataib Hezbollah to launch an attack on a foreign country, which she stressed is a partner to Iraq, constitutes “an assault on sovereignty in the most primal form.”
Attacks by this “collection of Iran affiliated militias are first and foremost, an assault on the sovereignty of Iraq,” said Leaf. “They are an assault on the sovereignty of the state itself, on the state to have control of arms and for the state to have control of foreign and national security policy,” added the Assistant Secretary.
“It is first and foremost Iraq’s responsibility to bring these creatures under control,” she stated, albeit it being a hard feat to achieve in light of the fact that as Leaf acknowledged “they have been nourished and resourced and provided arms by Iran over the years.”
Leaf noted that this is an issue on which the US consults “very closely” with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani as well as other members of the Iraqi government, noting that the US would “like to see more action … that prevents and that holds people to account.”
There have been at least 165 attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria since mid-October, according to the Pentagon. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed most of them, linking it to the US support for Israel in its war in Gaza.
Around 2,500 American troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria are leading an international coalition through Operation Inherent Resolve that has assisted Kurdish, Iraqi, and local Syrian forces in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS), which once held swathes of land in Iraq and Syria but was declared territorially defeated in 2019.
