Iranian-backed militants have ended a day-long siege of the American embassy in Baghdad following an order from their militia organisation, but the struggle between the US and Iran for influence in Iraq looked set to intensify further in 2020.
The US defence secretary, Mark Esper, announced that 750 airborne troops would be deployed to the region immediately, with more to follow in the next few days. Up to 3,000 soldiers are reportedly being prepared to move out to the Middle East, adding to the 14,000 sent there since May in an effort to counter Iran.
“This deployment is an appropriate and precautionary action taken in response to increased threat levels against US personnel and facilities, such as we witnessed in Baghdad today,” Esper said in a written statement. “The United States will protect our people and interests anywhere they are found around the world.”
The troops being deployed are drawn from a rapid reaction unit in the army’s 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Esper was vague on where they would be going, but a US official familiar with the decision said their initial destination was Kuwait.
The Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella group for disparate Shia militias operating in Iraq, issued a statement on Wednesday calling for the withdrawal of the several hundred militiamen and supporters who had mobbed the embassy on Tuesday. Many of them camped around the heavily fortified building overnight.
They took over a reception area of the embassy compound, smashed windows, lit fires on the roof and raised militia flags. They firebombed a second gate to the compound but did not breach the main building. US soldiers took up positions on the embassy roof and from there fired teargas rounds into the crowd on Wednesday.
After the PMF statement, the crowds began to disperse, though members of Kata’ib Hezbollah, a Shia militia considered the most closely tied to Tehran, initially refused to obey the instruction, waiting for an order from their own commanders, a reminder of the complex web of loyalties of the different groups involved in the embassy assault.
The militants left Baghdad’s diplomatic enclave waving militia banners and shouting victory slogans. Some vowed to return with weapons to remove the US presence from Iraq entirely.
The state department insisted that the embassy would not be evacuated and that the ambassador, Matthew Tueller, would be returning from leave abroad, where he had been at the time of the mob assault. However, the embassy suspended all public consular operations on Wednesday.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, put off a planned visit to Ukraine this week to monitor the situation in Iraq and “ensure the safety and security of Americans in the Middle East”, his spokeswoman said.
The breach of the embassy compound came in response to US airstrikes on Sunday that killed 25 Kata’ib Hezbollah fighters. The US said the strikes were in retaliation for last week’s killing of an American contractor, and the wounding of several US soldiers, in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base, the latest of a string of attacks which the US blamed on the militia.
US officials expressed dismay that Iraqi security forces had made no effort to stop the militiamen and their supporters from entering Baghdad’s Green Zone and approaching the US embassy. The inaction was in marked contrast to their brutal treatment of anti-government and anti-Iranian protests in Baghdad and across the country, which broke out in October.
The embassy siege marked a low point in relations between Iraq and the US and were a show of strength by Iranian-controlled forces.
Donald Trump blamed Iran for the attack and said Tehran would “pay a big price” for any US lives lost or damage to US property. The deployment of thousands of reinforcements in the region in response to Iranian and Iranian proxy attacks marks a sharp setback for his aspirations to extricate the US from the region in the coming election year.
Ranj Alaaldin, the director of the proxy wars initiative at the Brookings Institution in Doha and author of a forthcoming book on Shia militias, said: “Iran knows what it wants in Iraq and how to get it. It has a strategic and long-term and consistent policy in Iraq that is underpinned by a complex web of formidable interpersonal and inter-organisational links that permeate multiple sectors and theatres – the armed forces, ministries, religious networks and the economy.
“The US has the military superiority but hasn’t leveraged this with a political strategy ever since Obama withdrew US forces in 2011 and has alienated its allies in recent years. The US was never in a position to shape the politics in the aftermath of its strike and it probably never wanted to anyway given its limitations. The Iranians and their proxies will milk this as much as they can.”
