With US Troops Under Attack, Iraq Fears War in Gaza Could Spread to Baghdad

With U.S. troops in Iraq and neighboring Syria under regular attack by militias aligned with Iran, an Iraqi official told Newsweek that the country is working to rein in armed factions seeking to open a new front hundreds of miles away from Israel’s war in Gaza.

But Baghdad must seek a careful balance, as its government, led by Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, looks to avoid direct conflict with powerful forces opposed to the U.S. military presence in the country.

“The government cannot enter into an open military confrontation with any armed group, because that destabilizes Iraq and causes the participation of most groups in an open war,” the Iraqi official told Newsweek on the condition of anonymity. “We do not want the battle to move from Gaza to the streets of Baghdad, and this is certainly not in the interest of protecting the missions, diplomacy and international coalition forces in Iraq.”

As such, the official said that “the correct situation is for the government to resort to accommodation, appeasement, persuasion and pressure, in order to control matters completely without devastating collateral damage.”

“The government is making great private efforts, away from the media, to stop the attacks, and seeks to calm and persuade the attacking groups to stop the attacks.”

Iraq has long found itself caught in the crossfire of U.S.-Iran tensions, but the current crisis is already proving to be among the most serious threats to stability in years.

The unprecedented October 7 surprise attack conducted by Hamas and allied Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip against Israel, and the subsequent largest-ever Israeli campaign against the Palestinian territory, have had seismic effects across the region. In Lebanon, the powerful Hezbollah movement has escalated clashes along the border with Israel, while Yemen’s Ansar Allah, or Houthi movement, has conducted missile and drone attacks from more than 1,000 miles away.

In Iraq, where an array of militias aligned with Iran remain active since the U.S. invasion toppled President Saddam Hussein two decades ago and the more recent rise and fall of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) over the past 10 years, armed factions have taken the fight to U.S. troops.

Since October 17, the same day Israel and Palestinian factions blamed one another for a deadly strike on the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza, a group calling itself “the Islamic Resistance in Iraq” has claimed rocket and drone attacks on a daily basis against U.S. soldiers stationed at various sites in Iraq and Syria.

While the only recorded fatality has been by cardiac arrest of a contractor during a reported false alarm in Syria, at least 56 U.S. troops have been injured, according to the Pentagon.

This month, U.S. Central Command told Newsweek that the Islamic Resistance in Iraq “is a broader term used to describe the operations of all Iran-backed militias in Iraq to include the recent spate of strikes into Iraq and Syria during the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.”

On three occasions so far, most recently on Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has announced airstrikes against “facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iran-affiliated groups” in response to these attacks. But the militias have pressed on, claiming a new attack against “the American occupation base in the Green Village in the depth of Syria” with a drone just hours after news broke of the latest U.S. strike.

Another shadowy group, Ashab al-Kahf, has repeatedly threatened “the evil American Embassy” in Baghdad’s nominally secure Green Zone, evoking memories of a dangerous cycle of escalations that erupted in late 2019 and culminated in the U.S. killing IRGC Quds Force chief Major General Qassem Soleimani and his entourage at Baghdad International Airport in January 2020. Iran retaliated with the first direct missile attack on U.S. forces in Iraq and vowed to expel U.S. forces from the region.

Yet another murky formation believed to be composed of known militias, Alwiyat al-Waad al-Haq, has threatened to strike U.S. military facilities in neighboring Kuwait.

While Tehran has said it did not want the ongoing Israel-Hamas war to spread across the region, IRGC Aerospace Force commander Brigadier General Ali Hajizadeh said during a ceremony Monday that the conflict has already expanded and “it is probable that the extent of clashes will grow even bigger,” according to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency.

The same day, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani reiterated during a press briefing that “we have made it clear several times that the resistance groups in the region do not take orders from Iran” and that “we do not issue orders” to them, either.

Meanwhile, the broader Iran-aligned “Axis of Resistance” of militias across the Middle East has openly called for targeting U.S. troops. In Iraq, these include influential formations such as Kataib Hezbollah, the Hezbollah al-Nujaba Movement and Kataib Sayyed al-Shuhada, all members of the Popular Mobilization Forces coalition that was established to fight ISIS and later incorporated into the Iraqi Armed Forces, though member units continue to maintain varying degrees of autonomy.

The Popular Mobilization Forces’ late deputy commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was killed alongside Soleimani in the U.S. strike in January 2020, further inciting militias and their supporters across the country against Washington. Though Sudani’s confirmation as premier last year managed to ease a long-running political crisis in Iraq, the war in Gaza has proved a new call to arms for militias.

Newsweek has reached out to the Popular Mobilization Forces for comment.

Still, according to the Iraqi official with whom Newsweek spoke, “only two armed groups announced attacks” against U.S. troops since the war erupted in Gaza, “and the government was able to convince the rest of them to adhere to the efforts of the government and the state to manage the crisis.”

The government has also pursued legal means, according to the Iraqi official. After U.S. troops were targeted three times last Thursday, including armed drone strikes against U.S. forces at the Al-Harir Air Base in Erbil and the Ain al-Asad Air Base west of Baghdad as well as an explosive device that targeted a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol near the northern city of Mosul, the Iraqi official said the government has ordered the arrest of the perpetrators.

There was a diplomatic element to Iraq’s careful de-escalation efforts, as well. Just one day after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Baghdad, Iraqi premier Sudani traveled to Tehran to meet with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other top officials.

The trip was one of several steps the Iraqi government has taken “to communicate with regional parties” amid the crisis, according to the Iraqi official with whom Newsweek spoke.

Speaking to reporters last week amid ongoing attacks against U.S. troops following Sudani’s meetings in Iran, U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters that “we believe that the government of Iraq does have the ability to hold those groups accountable, and we believe that that work is ongoing.”