President Donald Trump, accompanied by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, left, speaks during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on August 16, 2018, in Washington, US.
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Iran or its proxies planned a sneak attack on US targets in Iraq, and warned they would pay a “very heavy price” but gave no details.
“Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on US troops and/or assets in Iraq. If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!” Trump said in a post on Twitter.
Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq. If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 1, 2020
It was not immediately clear what information Trump was referring to in his tweet, which was posted after he was scheduled to have a 1600 GMT intelligence briefing.
US intelligence about a potential Iran-backed strike in Iraq suggests it would likely be a deniable attack, as opposed to the kind of overt missile strike that Tehran carried out on January 8, a US official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The official said intelligence threads about a potential attack by Iran or Iran-backed forces had been building for some time. The official did not disclose intelligence on the timing or precise locations of any attack.
Speaking before Trump’s tweet, a top military aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Washington against “provocative actions” in Iraq, Iranian news agencies reported.
US-Iranian relations have been bitter since the Islamic Revolution toppled the US-backed shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, in 1979 and ushered in an era of theocratic rule.
While there was a detente with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, relations have deteriorated with Trump’s decision nearly two years ago to abandon that multilateral agreement and reimpose US sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy.
Worsening tensions, a January 3 US drone strike in Iraq killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, as well as Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, who founded Iraq’s Shia Kataib Hezbollah militia after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
Iran retaliated with a rocket attack on Iraq’s Ain al Asad base where US forces were stationed on January 8. No US troops were killed or faced immediate bodily injury, but more than 100 were later diagnosed with traumatic brain injury.
The US has blamed Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah for a March 11 rocket attack that killed two American troops and a 26-year-old British soldier in Iraq and, a day later, carried out air strikes against its militants in Iraq.
Phillip Smyth, an expert who tracks Shia militias at Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, said he believed Trump’s warning was prompted by the emergence of the League of the Revolutionaries, a group he said was formed to give deniability to Kataib Hezbollah to attack US targets.
The US and Iran have also been engaged in a war of words over US sanctions, which aim to force Iran to curb its nuclear and missile programs as well as its use of proxies in conflicts in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.
Washington has repeatedly tightened its sanctions, which are designed to choke off Tehran’s oil exports, in the last month as the coronavirus outbreak has spread in Iran, one of the nations in the Middle East hardest hit by the virus.
Copyright © 2024 TRT World.