Iraq Condemns U.S. Airstrikes on Iran-Backed Militias

The Iraqi government on Monday condemned U.S. airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias near the Iraqi-Syrian border, and one of the targeted paramilitary groups vowed “open war” against American interests in Iraq.

The attacks, authorized by President Biden, hit facilities used by two militias that the Pentagon accused of involvement in recent drone attacks on American bases in Iraq. The Pentagon said Monday that the overnight airstrikes were meant to send a message while avoiding escalation.

But the strikes revived questions about the future of about 2,500 U.S. troops forces remaining in Iraq, where they serve as one of the country’s main security partners. The government in Baghdad has been unable to stop attacks on its U.S. allies by the Iranian-backed militias, even though they are on the government payroll as the country tries to integrate them into its regular security forces.

The Pentagon said the strikes had hit both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border. Two of the targets were just across the border into Syria and the third was inside Iraq.

The Iraqi government condemned the strikes as a “blatant and unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty and national security.” Maj. Gen. Yahya Rasool, military spokesman for Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, called for avoiding escalation and said Iraq did not want to be turned into an “arena for settling accounts” — a reference to the conflict between the United States and Iranian proxies in Iraq.

Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said that the United States was disrupting the security of the region with the attacks.

Mr. al-Kadhimi, Iraq’s former intelligence chief, called an emergency meeting of security advisers to discuss the American airstrikes. The Iraqi cabinet called them “a flagrant violation” of international law and said Iraq was in the advanced stages of dialogue with the United States on what it said were the logistical details of removing American combat forces from the country.

The United States and Iraq have been negotiating a new framework agreement governing security and other cooperation. Similar statements by the Iraqi government about an agreement to withdraw U.S. combat forces have been aimed at catering to Iranian-backed political parties and militias demanding their removal.

The American strikes were the latest escalation in tensions over recent revelations that Iranian-backed militias in Iraq had increasingly been using small, explosive-laden drones in late-night attacks on Iraqi bases, including those used by the C.I.A. and U.S. Special Operations units, according to American officials.

“There are clear signs of escalation,” said Farhad Alaaldin, head of the Iraq Advisory Council think tank, referring to recent attacks by the Iran-backed groups. “Really, the question for the U.S. is: ‘What does it take to say we have had enough, let’s go home?’”

The two militias that were targeted in the strikes, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada and Kata’ib Hezbollah, are part of the Popular Mobilization Forces umbrella group, which formed to fight the Islamic State in Iraq in 2014. The forces mobilized following a fatwa, or religious edict, from Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, when the Islamic State was nearing Baghdad in 2014.

Most but not all of the groups are Shiite Muslims, who are a majority in Iraq, and the most powerful ones are backed by Shiite Iran. In 2016, they were merged into the Iraqi government’s security force.

Despite that, the most powerful militias on the Iraqi government payroll are only nominally under control of Baghdad. The Popular Mobilization Forces are made up of more than 50 different paramilitary groups with an estimated 160,000 fighters.

Iran over the last two years has decreased its financial support for proxy paramilitary groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon because of the effect of U.S. sanctions, lower oil prices and the pandemic which has closed borders and reduced trade.

So the dozens of militia forces under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces have relied more on Iraqi government funding and moneymaking schemes that include oil smuggling and extortion at Iraqi borders and ports, according to security analysts and government officials.

American officials said they had not relied on Iraqi intelligence to identify and monitor the targets hit overnight, and had not consulted with the Iraqi government in advance. It was not known whether the United States notified Russia in advance of the airstrikes on the Syrian side of the border, but both countries operate in the same airspace in Syria.

The group Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada said that four of its fighters stationed along the border had been killed in the strikes.

“From now on, we will go to open war with the American occupation, the first action of which is targeting the enemy planes in beloved Iraq’s sky,” the group said in a statement.

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The command of the Popular Mobilization Forces said that the strikes targeting two of its brigades had been carried out about 10 miles from the border with Syria near the Iraqi town of Qaim in the western province of Anbar. It said that the soldiers had been stationed at the border to prevent Islamic State fighters from infiltrating from Syria.

The Popular Mobilization Forces denied Pentagon claims that weapons storehouses were targeted and said that the airstrikes had targeted its fighters.

A different umbrella group for Iranian-backed armed groups in Iraq, the Iraqi Resistance Coordination, vowed revenge and said it would continue to target U.S. forces.

“We will avenge the blood of our righteous martyrs against the perpetrators of this heinous crime and with God’s help, we will make the enemy taste the bitterness of revenge,” the group said in a statement.

The airstrikes were the second in the same area authorized by Mr. Biden since he came to power and the first since elections in Iran this month in which the hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi become president.

Although bodies are normally buried the same day under Islamic tradition, the Popular Mobilization Forces said that it would hold a public ceremony in Baghdad on Tuesday morning to transport the remains of those killed in the airstrike and to express condemnation of the attack.

Sabareen news, an outlet considered the voice of Iran-backed militias, said it had monitored the U.S. fighter planes that carried out the attacks returning to bases in the Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The United States does not disclose where airstrikes originate.

The normally calm Kurdish-led region has also come under increased attack from fighters suspected to be from the Iranian-backed militias. The latest incident was on Saturday when an explosive-laden drone landed in a village near Erbil, causing damage but no casualties.

The Kurdish region’s counterterrorism directorate on Saturday released photos of what it said were recovered drone pieces from an attack with an inscription referring to Abdu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Iraqi militia leader killed in Baghdad in a U.S. drone strike last year along with Iranian general Qassim Suleimani, commander of the country’s Quds Force.

Iran has said it has not yet avenged the killing of General Suleimani, who helped direct wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen and became the face of Iran’s efforts to build a regional bloc of Shiite power well beyond Iran’s borders.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.