After US attacks Iranian-backed militias, is America back in the game?

Both Israel and the US have warned that Iran and its proxy militias are the biggest threats to peace in the region and hope to weaken Tehran's growing influence across the Middle East.

DECEMBER 30, 2019 22:09

U.S. army soldiers fuel a military truck at Qayyara airbase west of Mosul, Iraq, August 10, 2017 (photo credit: REUTERS/SUHAIB SALEM) — U.S. army soldiers fuel a military truck at Qayyara airbase west of Mosul, Iraq, August 10, 2017

(photo credit: REUTERS/SUHAIB SALEM)

Just days after IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi lamented that Israel was going up against Iran alone, airstrikes rocked several locations belonging to Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq and Syria, killing dozens.

The airstrikes, which came two days after a barrage of over 30 rockets were fired towards the K1 Iraqi military base in Kirkuk which killed a US civilian contractor and wounding dozens of Iraqi and American troops, were described by the Pentagon as “precision defensive strikes” against the group that "will degrade" the group's ability to carry out future attacks against coalition forces.

The rocket barrage and the subsequent retaliatory strikes in the area of Al-Qaim are the latest peak in tensions between Washington and Tehran. And might have negative effects on Israel, which has been carrying out a war-between-the wars campaign against Iranian entrenchment since 2013.

Situated in Iraq’s restive Anbar province on one side and Syria’ Deir Ezzor province, al-Qaim is an area which is under the control of pro-Iranian Shiite militias who are handled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds force.

Only last week Israel’s top military chief publicly admitted to Israeli airstrikes in Iraq, stating that Iran’s Quds force is smuggling advanced weapons in the country on a monthly basis “and we can’t allow that.”

The first strike close to Iraq attributed to Israel was in June of last year near the town of Al-Bukamal, killing 22 members of a Shiite militia. The next month several other blasts rocked Shiite militia warehouses and bases across the country.

Both Israel and the US have warned that Iran and its proxy militias are the biggest threats to peace in the region and hope to weaken Tehran's growing influence across the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

Did Kochavi’s warning push Washington to retaliate against Iran through hitting its proxies?

Tensions have been boiling over the past year since US President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal and exerted maximum pressure including a severe economic squeeze on the Islamic Republic.

Iran in turn is believed to be behind a string of attacks across the region beginning in May against oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, a major Saudi east-west oil pipeline, suicide attacks in Afghanistan, the downing of a drone over international waters and the attack against the Saudi Aramco oil facility in September.

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In all instances, the US barked but there was no followup. No bite.

Iran got away with their attacks, perhaps because there were no American fatalities-until Friday.

“The fact that the US has taken so long to respond to Iranian escalation, and only responded to the loss of life, risks communicating that America’s red line and bar for action against Iran-backed malign activity remains high,”Benham Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told The Jerusalem Post.

And “it’s precisely this high-bar” that has made Israel “actively pushing back against Iran” in Syria, and now Iraq.

While Taleblu estimates that the strikes are a one-off aimed at punishing and deterring Iran, “American military power, even when judiciously and narrowly applied, can also signal that Washington can’t be written off permanently from the equation.”

According to Taleblu, while the target following these strikes remains America, “Iran has long engaged in cross-domain escalation, absorbing costs in one area while responding in another.”

And Israel, he added “will need to develop contingencies for what, where, and how Iran-backed militias will respond to these air-strikes.”

So have the rules of the game changed? Is Israel no longer alone in the ring against Iran and its proxy groups?