Iraq set for conflict, even if US and Iran de-escalate

BAGHDAD: Arch-foes Tehran and Washington may be temporarily calling it even after Iranian missiles targeted US forces in Iraq, but analysts predict violent instability will keep blighting Baghdad. “Iraq will remain a zone of conflict,” said Randa Slim of the Washington based Middle East Institute.

Early Wednesday, Iran launched 22 ballistic missiles at bases in Iraq hosting American and other foreign troops, in a calibrated response to the killing of a top Iranian general in a US air strike last week. Iran warned Iraq about the raids shortly before they happened and in their immediate aftermath, foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tehran had concluded its “proportionate” retaliation.

US President Donald Trump, too, said Iran “appears to be standing down” and even suggested Tehran and Washington could work towards a nuclear deal while cooperating against jihadists. That hinted at a common desire to contain the fallout, but analysts say it would not be enough to spare Iraq.

“Both sides are so mobilised in Iraq, which has become such symbolic terrain for hitting out at the other,” said Erica Gaston of the New America Foundation. Indeed, US troops and even the embassy in Baghdad had been hit by more than a dozen rocket attacks in recent months, which have killed one Iraqi soldier and an American contractor.

The attacks went unclaimed but the Unied States blamed hardline elements of the Hashed al-Shaabi, an Iraqi military network incorporated into the state but linked to Tehran. The strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani outside Baghdad international airport on Friday also killed his top Iraqi aid and Hashed deputy chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.