Pentagon sending ‘clear message’ with strikes on Iraqi armed groups

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The purpose of United States attacks targeting Iraqi armed groups is to degrade their capabilities and safeguard American troops, a Pentagon spokesperson told Rudaw on Thursday. The strikes have angered Baghdad and prompted the federal government to work towards wrapping up the anti-terror mission of international troops in Iraq.

Pentagon spokesperson Major General Pat Ryder told Rudaw's Diyar Kurda during a press briefing that the February 2 strikes on multiple targets in Syria and Iraq were "efforts to degrade the capabilities” of the pro-Iran armed groups and to “send a clear message” that the US will take action if its forces are “attacked or threatened."

After a drone strike in late January killed three US troops in Jordan, Washington retaliated on February 2 by hitting more than 85 targets against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and Iran-aligned groups in Iraq and Syria, killing at least 16 Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) fighters and injuring another 36 in Iraq’s western Anbar province, near the Syrian border.

A US drone strike in eastern Baghdad’s Mashtal neighborhood in the late hours of Wednesday killed another three people, including Abu Baqer al-Saadi, a leading commander of the Kataib Hezbollah armed group.

Ryder said “there are no indications of collateral damage or civilian casualties” from the Mashtal strike. “Additionally, initial assessments indicate that there were not additional militants injured or killed beyond the one Kataib Hezbollah commander who was targeted.”

The Pentagon spokesman also said initial indications are that “over 40 militants associated with Iranian proxy groups were killed or injured” as a result of the February 2 strikes. 

Washington’s attacks drew the anger of Iraqi officials who condemned them as “a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and an undermining of the efforts of the Iraqi government” at a time when the government and hardline Iraqi politicians are seeking to expel forces of the US-led coalition from the country.

Yehia Rasool, military spokesperson for Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani, said in a statement on Thursday that US military actions in Iraq “would undermine the established understandings and hinder the initiation of bilateral dialogue.”

He warned that “This trajectory compels the Iraqi government more than ever to terminate the mission of this coalition, which has become a factor for instability and threatens to entangle Iraq in the cycle of conflict.”

Baghdad is currently engaged in talks with the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (ISIS) to wind down the mission and end the presence of foreign troops on Iraqi soil. The talks were instigated by Iraq’s anger over repeated US airstrikes on its territory. A US-Iraqi military commission overseeing the transition will next meet on Sunday to “discuss and schedule the end of the international coalition’s mission in Iraq,” Rasool said on Thursday.

Since mid-October, American troops have come under more than 165 rocket and drone attacks in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan by Iran-aligned armed groups condemning Washington’s support for Israel in its war in the Gaza Strip. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of shadow Iraqi militia groups affiliated with the IRGC, has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks. 

According to a CENTCOM statement, Saadi, who was killed in Wednesday strikes, was complicit in “directly planning and participating in attacks on U.S. forces in the region.”
 
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 ISIS, which once held swathes of land in Iraq and Syria but was declared territorially defeated in 2019.