Oa On February 15, Iraq-backed Shiite groups in Iraq fired barrage missiles – a minimum of 14 – at a U.S. base in Erbil, Iraq. One contractor was killed and five were injured; an American soldier has been wounded.
That no American was killed, it seems.
The American response so far has been only verbal. Foreign Minister Antony Blinken issued a statement saying, “We are furious about today’s rocket attack on the Iraqi Kurdistan region… I have reached the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Masrour Barzani. to discuss the incident and to support us in all efforts to investigate and hold those responsible accountable. ”
The ‘responsible’ is sitting in Tehran, and this is an important test for the Biden government: if the United States responds with words alone, the Biden government will show the Iranians that such attacks are free. The only lesson Iran’s leaders will learn from such a response is that the Biden government’s desire to return to nuclear diplomacy will enable Iran to endanger American lives whenever it wants. If the US response is to the Iraqi Shiite group that claimed the attack, it will play Tehran’s game again. Iran is delighted that the proxy can absorb US strikes while acting with impunity.
An Iraqi Shiite group calling itself Saraya Awliya al-Dam, meaning ‘Guardians of Blood Brigade’, said they carried out the attack. The militants backed by Iran have in fact made the attack largely irrelevant because Iran controls them all. Evidence can be found in the way Iran appears to have called off such militant attacks in October. At the time, Iran seemed to fear that if an American were killed and then-President Trump reacted strongly against Iran, Trump could become popular and win re-election. Attacks by Iranian-backed Shiite groups in the run-up to the election did not go unnoticed because they ran out of ammunition or decided to go on holiday; there is no other statement other than decisions taken in Tehran.
In November, December and January (especially around January 3, the one-year anniversary of the US assassination of Qasem Soleimani, chief of the Quds Force), the US government expected the attacks to resume. What followed was a successful attempt to deter Iran, especially after the one Iranian attack in this period: the rocket attack on the US embassy in December. While U.S. forces and diplomats in Iraq have taken great precautions to prevent injuries if they are attacked, the United States has delivered clear messages to Iran, both orally and through the deployment of military force. The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz were held at the station in the region after returning home, and there were regular B-52 flights across the Persian Gulf. It is in this context that Trump tweeted on December 23, two days after an attack on the US embassy in Baghdad: ‘A friendly health advice to Iran: if one American is killed, I will hold Iran accountable. Think about it. “
The messages were clear: if an Iranian proxy were to kill an American, the American response would not be directed at the proxy, but at Iran. What exactly this means was kept ambiguous; Iran had to calculate risks.
And the Iranian regime did it. From the election to the inauguration, there was one attack, and then the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad in December, the Iranian proxies declined. And to reiterate, there is only one logical explanation for this: Tehran got the message and ordered to stop.
This background explains why the attack on Americans in Erbil is so important. Iran understood the messages from the United States before January 20, but what is the message now? Will we be ‘held accountable’, as Blinken said, or will we rather allow Iran to hide behind proxies he controls? If we do the latter, the message to Iran is that such attacks are acceptable – and we can expect more from them. These are attempts to kill Americans, and by killing or injuring American servants and contractors to drive out the United States from Iraq.
Biden’s government should rather adopt a policy of deterrence and warn Iran that it will be held directly accountable. These messages, plus a clear willingness to carry through if necessary, worked. It did not reduce attacks to zero, but it did suppress their size and frequency considerably – because it had to be Tehran’s orders. These orders can once again be sent to the Iraqi Shi militias. It all depends on what Tehran hears from Washington.
If an American is killed by a military backed by Iran and the United States responds, does that mean the end of diplomacy or a broader war? It does not. The United States has a multitude of military options, some of which will clearly indicate to Iran that we do not want a major conflict – but that we insist that the Iranian regime stop killing Americans – or else. That’s the message Biden’s government needs to send this week.