After launching 30 rockets at an American military base in Iraq last week, the Iran-backed Kata’ib Hizballah militia—a sister organization of Lebanese Hizballah—attempted to storm and set fire to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The rockets killed a U.S. contractor and wounded four soldiers. While Washington responded with force to that attack, it faces the more serious problem that Tehran now exerts sizable influence over the Iraqi government itself, to the extent that Iraqis have taken to calling the commander of Kata’ib Hizballah “the de-facto prime minister.” Michael Pregent writes:
Instead of condemning Hizballah for launching rocket attacks on an Iraqi base against a joint force of Americans and Iraqi security forces on December 30, the government of Iraq condemned the United States for defending itself against a terrorist organization that answers to [Iran], and one that Baghdad is powerless to control.
The people attempting to storm the embassy were not anti-Iran protesters turned anti-American, [as some reports suggested]. They belong to the very militias that are killing Iraqi demonstrators in [Baghdad’s] Tahrir Square—the very same Iraqis who are protesting against Iran and Iran’s influence on their government, many of whom were killed by Tehran-backed militias while the Iraqi security forces did nothing to protect them.
There will be more attacks, and the U.S. needs to be prepared to punish Iran directly by hitting its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. . . . The U.S. [also] needs to tell Baghdad that all loan guarantees for the $30 billion for “reconstruction”—money that will fall into the hands of corrupt officials tied to Iran—will end if Baghdad continues to bow to Iran.
Read more on Jerusalem Post: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-Baghdad-we-were-told-existed-does-not-the-one-we-warned-about-does-612847