We learned from the mistakes, the military option is still on the table

And there is another message, no less important: harming Americans will be met with an immediate response that will hurt the perpetrators once they are identified with certainty. This is the main message, and there is another message for the Iranians also in the context of the nuclear project, the ballistic and long-range missile project, and the takeover of countries in the Middle East through emissaries; The message is: we are serious about efforts to prevent nuclear weapons in Iran through diplomacy and dialogue, but – although we do not say so explicitly – the US military option is still on the table.

This message is also very important from Israel’s point of view: it shows that if Iran tries to break into nuclear weapons, Israel can at least count on American aid, if not American operational participation in the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Some would say that this may be too far-reaching a conclusion, but there are other signs that President Biden’s United States does not outright rule out the use of military means against Iran, in case it releases the brakes and creates a record situation – conventional and unconventional – on US allies. In the Middle East, there are those who will see in what happened tonight also a signal to China aimed at a credible American threat situation against China’s threats to Taiwan and its attempts to take over the South China Sea.

The attack at night was carried out in retaliation for the attack on the US Air Force base in Irbil, in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. The base near Irbil International Airport was attacked 11 days ago by a pro-Iranian Shiite militia that fired rockets at it. A non-American and probably also non-Kurdish contractor, who worked for the U.S. Air Force, was killed and several American soldiers were injured.

After that attack, President Biden’s administration spokesmen said: “We will look into who did it, who carried out the attack, and then we will decide whether to respond and how to respond.” This response from the White House spokesman has been met with criticism from Republicans and hawkish line advocates who have argued that the Biden administration over-believes in diplomacy, and that the evasive response is a sign of weakness.

Now those critics will have to bite the hat off: it turns out the Biden administration did exactly what it said it would do and apparently checked intelligence with other friendly intelligence agents in the area, who carried out the attack in Irbil, and after the Pentagon DIA military intelligence determined it was indeed pro-Iranian militia The Pentagon has ordered the U.S. Air Force to attack the Imam-Ali camp of the Revolutionary Guards near the Syrian city of al-Bukhamal, about a kilometer or two from the Syrian-Iraqi border. It is estimated that the planes that attacked al-Bukhmal came from US Air Force bases in Iraq.

The Imam-Ali camp is a logistical and operational base established by Quds Force Commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Suleimani, while he was still alive, as part of the Iranian military establishment in Syria. This base serves as a very important transit station on the land corridor between Tehran and Damascus and the Lebanon Valley and houses pro-Iranian militias from Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, whose men are destined to be sent to the border with Israel or to fight regime enemies in Idlid province in northern Syria. The camp is located several hundred kilometers from the Israeli border and is therefore considered safer from Israeli attacks.

Nevertheless, several attacks attributed to Israel were carried out in the al-Buchmal camp, the last of which was unusual in scope, and was carried out on January 13 this year. More than a dozen militia and weapons depots and Revolutionary Guards facilities were hit. The Americans, it is important to note, have a small base about 300 km from the Imam-Ali and al-Buchmal camps in the Tanaf area on the Syrian-Iraqi border in Syrian territory, and it can be assumed that from this base they gather intelligence on what is happening in the al-Buchmal area. Special operations of American and British forces against ISIS.

Most important to note is the time of the attack: The same base that was attacked tonight in Irbil was attacked by the Iranians on January 8, 2020 as retaliation for the assassination of Qassem Suleimani and leader of the pro-Iranian Shiite militias at Baghdad airport a few days earlier.

President Trump, who ordered the assassination of Suleimani and the leader of the Iraqi militias, ordered not to respond to the Iranian attack that was carried out with medium-range heavy ballistic missiles, even though more than 100 U.S. military personnel suffered concussions and other head injuries as a result of the missile landing in the base. Trump underestimated these vulnerabilities and decided not to respond.

It is worth noting one more thing: The US attack, although in response to attacks by pro-Iranian Iraqi militias on Iraqi territory – in Baghdad and Irbil – was carried out on Syrian territory; In an ungovernable area in Syria that the Iranians took over through their emissaries as they did elsewhere in the Middle East; In Lebanon, Yemen and to some extent also in Iraq. But the Americans refrained from attacking Iraq so as not to embarrass the Iraqi government and so as not to provoke an angry reaction from the Iraqi parliament, in which the Shiite parties have a majority and support Iran’s demand to expel US troops from Iraq.

After Suleimani’s assassination, the Iraqi parliament recommended that the Iraqi government demand the removal of all American forces from Iraq, which would have given the Iranians one of their greatest strategic victories. The US military presence in Iraq is considered by the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guards to be the number one security threat posed to the Islamic Republic of Iran and the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq is therefore considered a very important target of Iranian subversive, terrorist and diplomatic efforts in the region. The current Iraqi-led government in Qadimi wants a continued US-American military presence in Iraq, both for economic reasons and to prevent chaos in Iraq like the one in Syria and Yemen.

Although Trump has greatly reduced the number of U.S. military personnel on Iraqi soil in recent days and now has between 2,500 and 3,000 military personnel scattered mainly in the Baghdad area and northern Iraq, they allow the Iraqi government to produce oil and maintain relative stability. The Americans also provide equipment and train the Iraqi government army.

Even politically, the moderate Shiite parties in Iraq, and certainly the Sunni political bodies, do not want Iran to turn Iraq into its full metaphor just as it turned Lebanon into an Iranian metropolis through Hezbollah. Therefore, for all these reasons, both the Iraqi government and the Americans have an interest in keeping their army in Iraq and preventing the pro-Iranian extremists in Iraq from getting what they want.

This is why the Americans probably did not attack the pro-Iranian militias at their bases in Iraq but in Syria; A wise and calculated act that probably indicates that at least for the time being the decision-making mechanisms of the military and civilian government are working properly and with discretion.