Iraq News Now

Iraq emerges as a potential target for Israel as it steps up

efforts to eliminate the Iranian land bridge to the Levant, Ceng Sagnic, the coordinator of Kurdish

Studies Program at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African

Studies in Tel Aviv said.

Israel may soon strike Iranian targets beyond Syria’s borders

and launch aerial campaigns in Iraq where the airspace is defenseless and the

political vacuum is too deep for the government to claim territorial

sovereignty, Sagnic wrote in Israel-based Jerusalem Post.

Notwithstanding the continuous story of Israeli airstrikes on

Iranian-affiliated targets across Syria, another interesting claim emerged in

Iraqi media last week that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned the central

Iraqi government of potential Israeli airstrikes against Shi’ite militia groups

in that country.

Iraqi news outlets alleged that Pompeo made it clear to Iraqi

Prime Minister Adil Abd al-Mahdi that the US government would refrain from

taking action should Israeli missiles start raining on Iranian targets inside

Iraq.

Reports that the US was concerned about a possible Israeli

aerial campaign against Shi’ite militias in Iraq emerged as the debate on the

government’s control over militias continue.

The only known fact within the dramatically complicated

political stalemate of Iraq is the notion that the Iraqi government has given

up the race to control the militias, and the current picture is about not

losing the government to Iranian militias entirely.

Israeli thinker Edy Cohen earlier confirmed the news about an

imminent Israeli strike on Iranian militias in Iraq.

In several tweets, he mocked Iran's fascist threats issued

by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, saying: "protect your troops in Syria

at first and then threaten Tel Aviv!."

Two years ago, Israel launched more than 250 raids on

Iranian sites in Syria and destroyed 80 Tehran facilities, Cohen said

sarcastically.

He addressed the Shiite militias saying: "if I

were you, I would join the Iraqi army because the [punishment] day is

nearing."

Observers considered Cohen's remarks not only an

affirmation of an expected Israeli strike on Iran's militia camps in Iraq, but

also an indication that this strike could be launched very soon.

Threatening Israel

Mohammad Ali Jafari, the Iranian

IRGC's top commander, denied Iran's intentions to withdraw from Syria,

threatening to strike Israel with missiles.

“You should be afraid of the day that

our precision-guided missiles roar and fall on your head,” Jafari was quoted as

saying by the semi-official ISNA news agency on Wednesday, in a speech full of

arrogance.

Jafari said that Iran will keep

military forces in Syria. “Iran will keep all its military and revolutionary

advisers and its weapons in Syria.”

Jafari called Israeli Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats “a joke” and warned that the Israeli government

“was playing with a lion’s tail.”

Israel threats

Seemingly, the leaders of the Shiite militias under IMIS

insist on bringing Iraq into chaos, not caring of the role Iraq plays in

preserving the security and stability of the Middle East.

Currently, IMIS is a threat not only to Sunnis

in Iraq; it has also sent its militias to fight in Syria to

protect the Syrian regime and implement the Iranian agenda, which Israel sees

as a red flag.

After confirming that Israel bombed

an Iranian weapons depot in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned

Sunday that the Jewish state will strike even harder if it proves necessary to

prevent Iran from gaining a military foothold in Syria.

This means that Israel will

probably hit the IMIS militias fighting in Syria as

part of the Iranian army there.